Stupid Text Tricks 1

This is first in a series of simple text effects designed for PSP6. Why the weird title? Well, most of my text effects "look" like something:Flames, Ice, Sand, Glass, and so on. These text effects don't really resembleanything at all, but I liked them and decided to share them. Justfor the fun of it.

This first effect gives text an interesting outline/bevel appearance.Yes, I know that there is an inner bevel filter in PSP 6, but it's notgoing to give you anything that looks quite like this. Start witha new file (File: New), with a white background and 16 million colors. here I've started with an image which is 400 x 200 pixels.

Before we go any further, we add a layer above the background layer(Layers: New Raster Layer.) Just accept all the defaults for the Layerproperties. Now place your text. A wide font seems to work best forthis effect. Here I've used Lingwalla Black Bold, 72 point. Arial Blackalso works well. When the Text Dialog opens, make sure thatthe boxes marked Antialias and Floating are both checked. For your textcolor, select black.

Next, contract your selection by about 4 pixels (Selections, Modify:Contract.) You may need to adjust the number of pixels if your text issmaller or larger than what I've used here. The idea is to edge the selectionin just a bit, so that the selected portion still covers a substantialpart of the body of the letters.

Now hit your Delete key. The inner part of your letters will disappear,leaving a black outline.

Next, choose your Selection tool and draw a rectangular selectionall the way around your outlined text.

Okay, now left click once anywhere on the black part of the letters.Your selection should contract to surround your text. At this point youneed to save your selection to the Alpha Channel. Go to Selections: saveto Alpha Channel. When the pop-up menu appears, click OK. You should seea black and white representation of your selection in the preview Window. In the next popup box, name your new Channel "Text Outline."

To start to get the 3D look, first deselect your text (CTRL D),then merge your layers (Layers: Merge All.) Now Apply the Sculpture effect(Image, Effects: Sculpture.) Choose the Gold preset from the dropdown menu.

Next we reload the selection we saved earlier. Go to Selections:Load from Alpha Channel. Choose the "Text Outline" selection from the list.The selection is a bit small for our purposes, but we can fix that. JustExpand it by 3 or 4 pixels (Selections, Modify: Expand.) Now copy yourcurrent selection (Edit: Copy.)

Paste your selection as a new image (Edit: Paste as New Image) toget your 3D outline. You'll see your text on a checkerboard background,which shows that everything but the text is transparent.

To get the final effect, go to Colors: Negative Image.

If the color doesn't appeal to you, you can change it by adjustingthe Hue (Colors, Adjust: Hue/Saturation/Lightness) or by Colorizing (Colors:Colorize.)

Copy and paste the text on the background color of your choice,add a drop shadow, and your ready to save your creation.

Email me at State_of_Entropy@hotmail.com

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Tutorials for PSP 4, 5, 6, and 7 as well as presets and tutorials for the BladePro plugin.