Wompie's Making Bordered Buttons with PSP Tutorial Page 2

Select the magic wand (ooooo) tool. (Right below the little lasso) Making sure that you have layer 2 selected, use these settings and click on the ellipse you have just drawn:

tut5.jpg (16569 bytes)

Your ellipse should now have the famous "marching ants" around it.

Select the flood fill tool again and this time flood fill with the smaller fill from Jane's. (xmas41b) Leave the ellipse selected.

Use your Eye Candy now. Image....plugin filters...eye candy...inner bevel. Here are the settings I used for this image:

Bevel width: 3
Bevel shape: Rounded
Smoothness: 5
Shadow Depth: 10
Highlight Brightness: 80
Highlight Sharpness: 45
Direction: 135
Inclination: 45

You can play around with these settings until you find the ones that please you.

Deselect. (selections...select none)

*Add a new raster layer.*

Use the picture tube tool (the little paint brush and inkwell) and add Jane's xmas412 tube somewhere to the left of the ellipse on the button. (Use the mover tool to position it where you want it.) Your image should now look something like this:

tut6.jpg (37961 bytes)

Add a drop shadow to your tube at this time if you like. I use Eye Candy (image...plugin filters...eye candy...drop shadow) with the following settings:

Direction: 9
Distance: 5
Blur: 10
Opacity: 26
Color: Black

Now use the crop tool to crop the image, being careful not to crop out your drop shadow.

*Add a new raster layer.*

Use the text tool (set at "floating...antialias") to add whatever text you want to your button. (text tool is the capital "A") I used Signet Roundhand in white size 26. Add whatever effects you want to your text while it is still selected. I used Blade Pro with the jlm-green glitter preset. Right click on your image to de-select.

Save your button with its existing layers as a .psp file. Then merge all layers (layers...merge...merge visible) Voila! What a good job you did on your button! To make additional buttons, open your saved .psp file, delete the layer with the text, add a new layer and change the text.

Of course, there are a million variations to this button. I'm sure you will discover your own special way to create by changing settings, text effects, etc.. Page 3 shows some other ideas for the buttons.


Notes:

If you export your first button, (file...export....jpg file...compression 1) you can then make all of the buttons with different text without losing quality as you do by re-saving .jpg files.

You can also make duplicates of all of the buttons you will need for a page (before you start adding text)  by using the keyboard shortcut, shift...D.

Remember, if you re-size a tube or rotate the layer, to sharpen it to get clarity back. (Image...sharpen...sharpen)
xmas41pg3.jpg (28156 bytes)

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