Tutorial 13
Mixing PSP Effects with Outside Filters/Plug-Ins

In this tutorial you will make a tag using effects found within Paint Shop Pro and Mura Meister Copies.

Supplies needed:-

PSP - I am using PSPXI but this will work in most versions.

Graphic of choice or the one in the supplies Here. The graphic in the supplies folder was made by Rob, and you may use it with a credit as " Background courtesy Robert Peachey" on the finished tag. Rob's TOU are in the zip file.You can see more of his work at Deviant Art.

Tube of choice. I am using the awesome work of Elizabeth Austin. Elizabeth's work is licensed through CILM, an sd you must purchase a license and the tubes through them to be able to use them.

Mura Meister's Copies available free to download Here

Font of choice.

Unzip all your supplies. Place the plugin in your plugins folder. If you are not sure how to do this please refer to my Tutorial . Make sure you remember to have psp closed when you install the plug in or it will not work. Open your font and minimise it, and open your graphic and tube and minimise in psp.

If you wish to name your layers as you make your tag please do so e.g. once you have flood filled your image you might like to call it background. I tend only to name my layers when doing a complicated tag or an animation. Also remember to save your work often so that if your program or pc crashes you do not have to start from the beginning again.

Open a new image and flood fill with white:-

Copy and paste the graphic onto your image and resize by 75%, if you use another graphic you will need it to end up about 325 pixels wide.

Make sure you have Resize all layers unchecked. You should end up with something like this:-

After resizing, sharpen your image to retain it's quality:-

Now we are going to use the filter Mura Meister's Copies to create an effect with the graphic. Go to Effects and locate your filter:-

Now set the tabs at the following settings :-

Duplicate your image and x off the duplicate and make sure your original is your active, highlighted,layer:-

Now we are going to create an effect to go behind the graphic to help give the overall tag a 3d effect. With the original image active go to Adjust- Blur- Gaussian Blur:-

Now use the following settings, Radius 20:-

Click on ok, then go to effects and find texture effects, weave:-

Apply this effect with the following settings:-

Gap Size 1, Width 3, Opacity 1, Weave and Gap Colour White. Fill Gaps Checked, and click ok. Your background will now look something like this:-

Uncheck your hidden layer and make it your active layer. Now open your tube, copy and paste it as a new layer on the top of the active layer. Resize your tube as necessary so that it fits within the fractal image. I then mirrored it so that the fractal background was more visible:-

Move your tube slightly to the left of centre. The next screen shot shows the move tool, and the final position you want your tube:-

Now if you have a tube with a very flat bottom edge, you might want to soften that bottom edge of the tube so that it blends into the background a little better. Find your Freehand Selection tool and set it with the following settings:-

Now carefully draw a selection around your tube. It needs to be along the bottom edge, and fairly close to the the other edges as in the screen shot below:-

Now go to Selections -Invert:-

Hit your delete key a few times until you are happy with the end result.

Next add a drop shadow to your tube with the following settings:-

Next it's time to add some text to the tag. I am using the font Kunstler Script with the following settings:-

I set my background colour to #0F266D and foreground to null:-

Now add your text, place on your tag where you think it fits best and size it to your liking. When you are happy with it, convert it to a raster layer and add the following drop shadow:-

Now add your copyright and taggers mark or watermark. Save your work as a psp image so that you can come back to it at a later date and change it if you want. Now merge your layers:-

Now you can save or export your image as a jpeg and your tag is finished.

If you wish to have your tag look like the example at the top of the tutorial you will need to save it in png format.

To do that, x out the white background layer, then merge all other layers visible

The save as png

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and that it was easy to follow. If you have any

comments or queries, please contact me.