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Alb's
Tutorials / Paint Shop Pro
Tutorials / Metal Letters
 This one is a bit tricky but I love the effect it gives. As a wonderful side effect you will see quite a few new functions of Paintshop Pro. If you have questions please don't hesitate to send me an e-mail. But now let's go! :)) Open a new picture("File"/"New", 400x200 pixels, background white, foreground white, resolution 72 p/inch.   Check the color tab on the right side of the Paintshop Pro window. Foreground and background color should be set to white. This is important for the functions we want to use later in this tutorial.Activate the text tool. You may want to use Times-Bold, size 120, color white. Since you write white on white I selected the line afterwards to make it show. Write a few letters, ABC will do perfectly. Set "Create as" to "Floating".  Center the floating selection so you have sufficient space around it in your graphic.  Now we use a tool I really love: the "Hot Wax Coating" which I haven't found in any other graphic program so far. Click "Image"/"Other"/"Hot Wax Coating". Redo two to three times so you get real thick lines.   Have you ever wondered when you would need the "negative" function? Here we go: Click "Colors"/"Negative Image" to invert the color information inside the selection.  Your image looks like that afterwards:  The next step is to play a little trick on PSP. If we would try to use "Image"/"Effects"/"Outer Bevel" we would see it's not available. Therefore we invert the selection twice: Click "Selection"/"Invert" so that the ants are running around the whole picture and the letters. Click the same function again and the ants are running only along the borders of the letters. Now the "Outer Bevel" function is available.  Click "Image"/"Effects"/"Outer Bevel" to bring up the function window.  Choose the setting "Metallic" and click ok.  After that the graphic looks like this:  The next step brings up the final effect to what still looks flat. Click "Image"/"Effects"/"Sculpture":  Please use the settings as you see them on the next picture:  Apply the effect and you get this result:  Awesome, isn't it? Others may say, of course, that Cool 3D and other programs do this much easier but, hey: The graphics you do are done by knowledge, right? Further steps to enhance the graphic might be a drop shadow ("Image"/"Effects"/"Drop shadow") or a background. For the latter one you need to get a new layer first ("Layers"/"New Raster Layer" - use default settings), flood fill the background to your liking and do the metal letter bit on layer 1. I haven't included these steps in this tutorial because it would have become just too long and too complicated. But if I get enough e-mails I might make a follow-up on this one :) This finishes the "Metal Letters from Scratch" tutorial.
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