This tutorial is about a simple yet great effect. All we need is the cutout and drop shadow effect.
We start opening the picture "sundown - sky" (or similar) from your Paint Shop Pro 9 example pictures folder. Cut it and bring it to a width of 350 pixels so that it will look similar to the following pic:
Activate the text tool and use following settings:
Free, Arial, size 40p, borderline 0, colour whatever you want (we will delete it afterwards anyway). Write some text (I used "SUNDOWN"):
You'll find a new entry in the layer palette (F8) called "floating selection" or similar. Right-click this entry and turn it into a layer.
Now delete the filling colour of the text by pressing "Del" on your keyboard. Only the selection remains.
Now click the menu "Effects" / "3D effects" / "Cutout" and use the following settings:
vertical and horizontal: 3, opacity 50, blur 3, shadow colour white.
This turns the graphic into the following:
Not bad, but we can do better. Shrink the selection by going to the menu "Selections" / "Change" / "Shrink" and set to 2. Afterwards you feather the selection by pressing CTRL+H and set the width to 3.
Now click "Effects" / "3D effects" / "Drop shadow" and use following settings:
Again vertical and horizontal 3, opacity 50, only the colour is not white but black. Afterwards the graphic looks like this:
Delete the selection by pressing CTRL+D and we are done.