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Mini-Plaques You can use this tutorial with any version of PSP. Pictures shown are from PSP 9. You can download a trial version of PSP 9 at http://www.jasc.com Feel free to link back to my page and to share with your friends & groups! What are we making? This!
This plaque is actual several small projects in one. We'll start with the photo, move to the green "tag", and pull it together with the black background and white text. 1. Open a picture you want to make into the plaque. For this tutorial, we'll use this picture of Nicholas Brendon. Copy it to your drive, and open it in PSP.
2. Obviously, this picture is way to large for our purposes. For best results, I like to crop at this point, rather than smaller. 200 x 300 pixels cropped around his face should do it. Remember you can enter the numbers (200 and 300) into the spaces provided in the crop area at the top of the screen (see below).
3. Now that the picture is a little more manageable, we'll resize it to something small. 40% should be great. These should be the default settings, but just for good measure, please match my settings here. Now that our picture is the right size, let's move on to making the tag.
*note* If you are here for Adopt-A-Celeb, you can visit the page to pick up pre-made plaques. 1. Open a new image, 100x15. Yes, 15. It's supposed to be very small. You can choose transparent or color at this time. If you choose transparent, go ahead and flood fill it with any color you like. We'll be using bright green. (#008000)
2. Choose a font. Something that will go VERY small and still be readable. You can get LOTS of good, small fonts on the internet. When enlarged, they might look horrible and pixilated, but small, they're great. For our purposes, we'll use simple little "Ariel" at 8pt. This will look a little crowded, but it'll work. 3. Center the text on the area. Choose "Objects" - "Align" - "Center in Canvas" as shown below. This will automatically move your text to the center of your pictures. Once done, go ahead and convert your text to a raster layer..."Layers" - "Convert to Raster Layer".
4. To make it stand out, we'll add a drop shadow. "Effects" - "3D Effects" - "Drop Shadow". Apply the following settings.
5. Now we add a little border. Click "Image" - "Add Borders" and say "OK" if it says you will be flattening the picture. Add a 2px border, symmetric, white.
6. Using the "magic wand" select your border. You'll probably need to zoom way in to see the border and choose it. Once it's selected, choose "effects" - "texture effects" - "sculpture". Use the default settings to start with, then change the following things. Change the texture from leopard to canvas, smoothness to 3, and make sure the color is set to white. (see settings below) Apply effects.
7. Save and you're all done! Now we'll put everything together.
1. Open your small image and your little plaque in PSP. 2. Start a new image, 120x200. Copy each of your smaller images and paste them into the new image. 3. Adjust them where you want. Add text if you'd like. 4. Merge - merge all layers. 5. Now we add a little border. Click "Image" - "Add Borders" and say "OK" if it says you will be flattening the picture. Add a 2px border, symmetric, white. (see #5 of plaque step) 6. Using the "magic wand" select your border. Choose "effects" - "texture effects" - "sculpture". Use the settings we used before. (see #6 of plaque step) 7. Save!
Want to adopt your own celebrity? Visit Adopt-A-Celeb today!
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