I adapted this effect (with permission) from a Photoshop tutorialby Anders Qvicker. His site is . I suggest that everyone take a look at this site. It's incredibly well done and many of his effects can easily be adaptedto PSP. Goes to show you that there really isn't much that can be donewith Photoshop these days that can't be done with PSP 5.
Start by opening a new file, about 250 x 200 pixels, 16 million colors.The background can be anything you like. Here I've chosen gray.
Now using the Selection Tool, draw a rectangle. Be sure that antialiasis checked before making your selection. The selection should actuallybe somewhat smaller than you want your final screen to be.
Next, go to Selections, Modify: Expand. Expand your selection by10-15 pixels. This will give you nicely rounded corners. After the expansion,copy your selection to the clipboard (Edit:Copy). We'll need it later.
Okay, next we create the inset effect for the screen. Set your foregroundcolor to a lighter version of the color you used for your window. HereI've used white, but a light gray would have worked as well. Go to Image,Effects: Drop Shadow. Set the Vertical and Horizontal Offsets to 2, andthe shadow color to foreground.
Apply a drop shadow again, but this time set the offsets both to-2, and the shadow color to black. When you're done, go to Selections:Select None.
To smooth this out a little, we apply a slight Gaussian Blur. Goto Blur: Gaussian Blur, and set the Radius to 0.7. Using the up/down arrowbuttons works best for setting this.
So far, so good. Now for the screen. First paste in your selectionthat you copied and then center it in the frame you created.
Change your foreground color to RGB 124/160/120 andthe background to RGB 64/79/63. Choose your Flood Fill Tool and setthe Fill Style to Sunburst Gradient, the tolerance to 10, the opacity to100. In Options, set the Blend Mode to Normal, and the Vertical andHorizontal Offsets to 14%.
Next the gradient needs a bit of smoothing. We do this by addingnoise. Go to Image, Noise: Add. Check Uniform and set the % noise to 6. This evensthings out quite a bit.
If all you want is a blank screen, you can finish up by addinga Lens Flare using any Lens Flare filter. Move the bright spot near theupper left corner, use a 50-300 mm Zoom, and set the brightness to 70.For those of you who don't have a Lens Flare filter, don't worry, there'sa work-around below.
If you want to add text to your screen, start by adding a new layer(Layers:New). Add your text to this layer and position it on your screen.
To set the text into the screen better, adjust the properties ofthe text layer by decreasing the opacity (Layers: Properties, then lowerthe opacity to about 70).
Merge the layers, select a box around your screen, and again addthe Lens Flare.
For those of you who don't have a Lens Flare filter, nearly thesame thing can be done with masks. Download lensmask.zip,and unzip it to your PSP directory. Add a new layer to your graphic, thengo to Masks: Load from Disk. Find the file called lensflare.msk. Changeyour foreground color to white and use the Airbrush Tool to color in yourlensflare. If the shape and size of your screen are not the same as mine,then you may need to move the top layer around until the flare is adequatelypositioned. The only thing you really lose using the mask is the subtleshading.
A wide variety of shapes and colors can be used with this technique,with only a small amount of tweaking. The images can be used for Remotecontrols, Mouseover buttons, and much more.
