Blue Winter

This tutorial is rather long and is intended for those with a reasonable working knowledge of PSP and Animation Shop. I have included as many screen shots as possible to try and make things clear, and divided the tutorial into 5 sections for ease.

Supplies Needed

Paint Shop Pro and Animation Shop

Tube of choice. I used a great tube by Zindy Nielsen. Zindy's work is licensed and both Licenses and Tubes can be obtained from her web site .

Filters VDL Adrenaline Snowflakes available Here and Mura's Seamless Shift at Zig-Zag available Here

Font Beffle can be downloaded Here from dafont

My supplies Here - contains the Becky Mask 022 and my winter picture to use to create your mask.

Remember to save your work often, and if you wish to name your layers please do so. The only layers I will name/number in the tutorial are the layers which will form the animated frame.

Part 1 - Making your Mask

Open the Winter Scene picture I have included in the supplies. This photograph was taken by me and and needs to have Photograph courtesy Helen Peachey if used in this or any other tag.
If you use any other photograph please ensure you credit as necessary.

Go to Image - Greyscale:-

Click on it and your picture will now just be in black and white.

With your Freehand Selection Tool set to Feather 20 as follows:-

draw around the section of the picture you wish to have in your mask. Right click into the picture and Select Cut, then paste this as a New Image.

Add a new raster layer to the new image and move it under the image. Flood fill this white and apply the Becky Mask 022.

Merge Group, then add another white layer under the mask, merge these two layers and save as a jpeg. (If you wish to keep this mask for further use, it might be an idea to add a layer with Photograph by Helen Peachey on,at the very bottom or top, so you know what credit to give it in future.

Minimise this for the time being ready to use in your tag later.

Part 2- Colourising your Image.

Open the tube you wish to colourise. Shift D to duplicate the tube and close the original. You need a tube from an artist that allows this to be done, so be careful which tube you pick. If your tube already has colour in it, go to Adjust - Hue and Saturation - Colorize

and use the following settings,Hue 0, Saturation 0.

This will make your image Black and White so you can colourise more easily.

The next part is probably the most fiddly part of this whole tutorial, but the longer you take over it, the better your final result will look.

With your Freehand Selection Tool, Zoom in and very carefully draw around the areas you wish to colourise. (make sure you turn the Feather back to 0 before you start).

In my image I first chose all the dark areas of the cloak. Choose which colour you wish to colourise and make a note of it. I used #3D3A76.

Now find your Manual Colour Correction Tool. If you've not got this already on your tools, go to View, Customize and drag it to your left hand tools.

Click on the tool and the following box will open:-

Make sure you have the Manual Target Colour Ticked, and Freehand Selection Ticked, and change the Target Colour to your chosen shade. Then click OK. Your selected area will now be colured and shaded in the new colour.

At this stage my tube looked like this:-

Go back to your image and select any further areas you wish to colour. I selected the rest of the girl's clothes and adjusted the lightness control to about 40.

Minimise your tube for the time being.

Part 3 - Make your Word Art

Open a New Image about 500 x 250 Pixels and flood fill black. This is just so that we can see what we are doing.
Now find your chosen font ( I used Bankoli, at size 72, Bold, Create as Vector) and I used the darkest colour I used to colourise my tube.
Type out your chosen text and center it in the canvas .Convert to raster.
Add an Inner Bevel, I used the Frosted Preset on mine. But pick whatever you have.

Now add a drop shadow in white , 3,3 100,2, then repeat at -1,-1,100,2.
If you are happy with it, delete the black layer and save as a png.

Minimise.

You should now have your mask, colourised tube and word art minimised ready to make your tag.

Part 4 - Assemble Your Tag

Open a new Image 600x 600 (72dpi) and flood fill white.
New raster Layer, Flood Fill with a colour that is mid-way between your dark and light colours you used to colourise your tube. I've used #8582B2.
Now go to layers, new Mask layer, and apply your Tree Mask with the following settings:-

Copy and paste your colourised tube, and position where you think it looks best on the mask. I placed mine at the left hand side .Duplicate the tube , and x out the duplicate for now.

Make sure that your original layer is active and go to Adjust Blur, Radial Blur:-

Apply with the following settings, Blur Type - Twirl, Blur Strength 50, Twirl Degree 90, Elliptical unchecked, Center Settings all at 0.

If the blur has small area in the corners of the image, use the selection tool to select them and delete. I found I needed to do this on the top and bottom left corners.
Now add a drop shadow to your duplicate tube layer at 3,3,50,4 , Black

Now copy and paste your word art, resize, sharpen and position to your liking.Drop shadow the same as your tube.

Make your mask layer active. Now add three raster layers above the mask layer and name them 1,2 and 3, from Bottom to Top. Close off the top two layers.

On layer 1, go to VDL Adrenaline Snowflakes, and apply with the following settings, Amount 20, Size Range begin 0,Size Range End 12, Hardness 100, Transparency 0, Snow Colour - Basic Snow, Random Seed 5 :-

Repeat on the other two layers, changing the Random seed to 5000, and 9999.

Now change your Font to Beffle, Size 48, Stroke 1, Direction Vertical and Left, Create as vector and type your name. Stretch to the size you want and when happy with size and position convert to a raster layer.

Duplicate your text, and close out the duplicate.

On the original layer, apply Mura's Seamless Shift at Zig-Zag.

Number 57,Shift 55, Offset 20, Ratio 149, Slope 255, Direction86

Move this layer below the snow but above the mask and change the blend mode to Difference, or mode of your choice. Lower the opacity to around 60.

On your duplicate text layer, add the same inner bevel as you used for your word art, and drop shadow as before.

Now crop any excess white off your image and resize as necessary.

Add your copyright, license number if necessary and your taggers mark.

Part 5 - Animate

Make sure you have snow layers 2 and 3 closed off.

With the background layer active, right click into your image and select the Copy Merged option, then take this to Animation Shop and paste into the workspace as a new animation.

Back in PSP, close off Snow Layer 1, and open Layer 2. Copy merged again and then right click into your first frame in Animation Shop and choose paste after current frame:-

Now repeat the procedure closing off Layer 2 and opening Layer 3.

View your animation, adjust the speed to one of your liking, found around 20 worked best, then optimize and save your tag as a gif.

If you have any queries on this tutorial , please contact me. I would also love to see your results.

This Tutorial was written in July 2010 by Helen Peachey, and the concept of the tutorial is copyrighted.
Please feel free to LINK to the tutorial and/or print it out for your personal use,
but please do not copy it in any way to put online, pass out or re-write without permission.
The image you create using this tutorial is for you to do what you wish except for monetary gains or for merchandising.
© Peachies Designs and Tutorials. Any Resemblance to another tutorial is purely coincidental.