Dunno What Tutorials to Put...

Friday, June 8, 2007

Hey guys, I have seemed to run out of ideas for tutorials...

I think it is due to some of the tutorials I wanna put have been found somewhere else, and I wanna enjoy other stuff other than this blog (I have my life to live too). As for the tutorials, I will post them if I have the time and mood to do so.

Sometimes, I am worried that my tutorials may not turn out very nice (due to software limitations). Also, sometimes, I fear that certain stuff are just too complex to be mentioned briefly. Eg. a very long tut, consisting of many sub-steps. I know finding the information on how to do the many, many tiny sub-steps can be tiring.

I just hope that one day, there could be a team of people contributing to my blog. Well, I can't create so much on myself. But I think this can't be fulfilled easily. Many of my frens, I can say 99.9% of my frens don't know these graphic stuff. Most of them are just gamers, or newbies to this field. Sigh. Joshua (my only fremn who knows IT stuff) is... losing the mood too...

exams are near..

Labels: Rants

posted by text21 @ 4:22 AM : Go to top

Glossy buttons in Flash

Monday, June 4, 2007

I know that gloss buttons is quite a common tutorial in the web. And the famous gloss effect is used so widely, it is almost an overkill.

But, the gloss button tutorial is still widely sought after, due to its cool and classy look. And despite how simple it looks, to get a nice gloss effect is not that easy as you think. So, in today's tut, you can learn how to create vista-ish looking gloss buttons, directly in flash. No other graphic programs needed.

Lets see the result of this tutorial:

1st, Inserting a New Symbol For The Background:
Create a new flash document. In the 1st frame, create a new symbol (Insert>>New Symbol)
In the create new symbol window that popups, select movie clip for your symbol. Lets name this symbol background.

2nd, Drawing The Background:
In the background symbol, create rectangle. (dimensions are 200x80 for this tut)
The height of your rectangle is 2x the height of your symbol. This rectangle should not have any border. If you happen to create a border accidentally, just select the borders and delete them.

The rectangle is the gradient for the button. Click on the rectangle and In the color window, select the fill to be radial. Then for the left color, use #666666 and the right, use #000000.

3rd, Creating a Mask Layer The Background Rectangle:
Create a new layer in the timeline. (Right click the top layer and click Insert Layer)
In the new layer, create a new rounded rectangle 1/2 the height of the previous rectangle
(to create a rounded rectangle, in the click the set corner radius button). For this rounded rectangle, put the rounded radius to 2 points.

4th, Masking the Background Rectangle:
Then, go back to the 1st layer containing the bigger rectangle, can delete the bottom half of it, so the rounded rectangle overlapping it can cover all of its area. Next, mask the top layer over the bottom layer. (Right click the top layer and click mask)

5th, Creating A Symbol for the Button:
Go back to scene1. Then click insert a new symbol. This time, in the create new symbol window, select button as the type of symbol. Lets name this button1.

6th, Making a Glow In the Background:

Making an instance of the backgound:
In Button1 symbol, drag the background symbol from the library window onto the stage. Select the backgorund symbol. Then, in the properties window, click on filters and add a glow.

Setting the glow:
For the glow, apply the follow settings (Quality: low, Color:#FFFFFF, Blur x:11, Blur y:11, Strength:40, Inner glow)

7th, Adding Text:
Create a new layer and add some text (Static Text, Arial, Anti-alias for readability, #FFFFFF, 13px)

8th, Making a Glass Effect:

Drawing the highlight:
Make a new layer again. Zoom out enough, so the button is about 1/3 the width of the view.
Then create an borderless oval 3x the width of the background, covering only the top half of the background.

Setting the transcluency of the highlight:
In the color settings, choose radial for the color fill. The left color is (#FFFFFF, 35% opacity), The right color is (#FFFFFF, 10% opacity).

9th, Creating The Border:
Create another new layer. Choose the rectangle tool. With your rounded rectangle settings you have entered just now, draw a border around the background. The width of the border is 1.25px and the color of the border is #CCCCCC.

10th, Deleting the Excess Regions of the Highlight:
Go the the layer containing the highlight again. With the selection tool, select the parts of the highlight oval not covering the background and delete them.

11th, Creating an Extra Border for the Button:
Create a new layer, and drag it below all the other layers. Go to the layer containing the border, and copy the border. Then go to the bottom layer and paste the border in place. (Right Click>>paste in place)

Convert the border in the bottom layer into a new symbol (Movie Clip, Name: shadow)
Select this symbol and go to its filters, and add a drop shadow (Strength: 1000%, Distance: 0, Blur y: 3, Blur x: 3, Color: #000000, Quality: Low)

12th, Making the mouse Over and Down States:

Adding the keyframes for the states:
Add a keyframe to the end of the timeline for all layers. (Rightclick the hit frame and click insert keyframe) For the layer containing the background symbol, make a keyframe for the over and down frames too.

Adjusting the over and down states:
In the over frame, go to the layer containing the background and select the background symbol. In the properties window, set the brightness of he background symbol in the hover state to 8%, and in the down state to -11%.

Thats the end of this tutorial :). Do remember to save your hard work in a .fla file before exiting flash. You can use this button in your websites or flash applications. Maybe you may wanna tweak the settings of your button to suit your own site's color scheme or add some more effects to this button.

Labels: Flash, Graphic Tutorials

posted by text21 @ 10:53 PM : Go to top

Forum Signature Tut 2

Sunday, June 3, 2007

Hey guys, here's another sig tut.... This one is mostly for those anime graphics stuff... you may have seen them in some forums.

Since quite many of my frens and visitors are not very used to photoshop or paint shop, i cant just say the steps vaguely, like many of the tuts out there. Some ppl ask, erm, how you do this step, where is this button, why i cant do this??...? It's quite long winded, and I HATE to say it very detail, this and that bits.....

For this tut, the style is a bit cute, mixed with some grunge... hope some of you guys like it.
Anyway, take a look at the result.

For today's tut, you will need to have 2 fonts. The links are at the end of this tut. For the time being, lets take a look at the steps.

1st, Finding A Pic For The BackGround:
Go to www.google.com/images and find a nice picture of building construction ;)
Copy it and paste in paintshop, then resize it to 330x160. (Image>>Resize)

2nd, Colorize the Image:
For this tut, the background is colourized into a pink shade. (Adjust>>Hue and Saturation>>Colorize) The saturation of the colorizing is at 201 and the hue is at 240.

3rd, Adding a Motion Blur layer:

Duplicating the Background Layer:
Now, you have to duplicate the background layer (rightclick the background layer in the layers toolbar, and click duplicate).

Motion Blurring and Making The Duplicated Layer Translucent:
Next, give the new layer a motion blur. (Adjust>>Blur>>Motion Blur)
The settings for the motion blur are angle 37.00, and the strength is 100%
After motion bluring, you can make the layer slightly transparent by sliding the opacity meter in the layer toolbar.

4th, Brushing In A New Layer:

Setting up the airbrush:
In this step, we are using the AirBrush tool to add some streaks of diagonal lines!
Set the air brush to: (Shape: Circle, Size: about 71, Hardness: 0, Step: 5, Density: 100, Opacity: 15, Blend mode: Normal, Rate: 5)
Then, In your top color, choose the texture to be streaks, with the angle as 45 and the size as 55.

Brushing:
Create a new layer (right click the current layer and click new raster layer) for this round of brushing.
Then, Using your top color as black, do some streaks at the borders.

Then, Using a saturated yellow, (hex code: #FFCE25) do a bit of brushing in the middle.

5th, Adding Some Cute Vectors: (A Special Trick)
Haha, This step is a very unusual, but cool trick. Read on to learn it ;)
Create another new layer....
With two dingbat fonts, you enter some hearts and grunge vectors.
Size the fonts to a suitable size. Do a bit of rotation to each letter. The fonts can be downloaded at the end of this tut.

6th, Adding Some Extra Visual Elements: (Another Uncommon Trick)
Create a new layer.
Using the freehand selection tool to draw some messy polygons. The settings of the freehand selection are: (Point to point, And for the feather, put 1.)
Then select the paint bucket tool, and choose the letters1 texture in the main color. Choose white as your color as well.
With your paint bucket, fill in the polygons.

7th, Adding The Character:
Copy and paste the cleaned up image of your subject into the image. (You may have to resize it)

Giving your character a tint:
In the Layers toolbar, insert a Color Balance Layer. (Rightclick the top layer>>New Adjustment Layer>>Color Balance)
The settings are as follow (Red: 40, Blue: -21, Green: 0)

Adding a Reflection:
Duplicate the layer containing your character. Then, using the resizing tool, Invert the layer below your character, and drag it below the character.

Adding a Drop Shadow:
Use the magic wand tool and select your character in its layer. Then Apply a Drop shadow
(Effects>>3d Effects>>Drop Shadow)

8th, Adding your text and Some Extra Stuff:
I know it is tiring, its almost reaching the end... haha :)
Create a new layer for this step too.

Adding The Vectors:
Remember the step where you add those dingbat characters?
This is just a repeat of the step, just that the color of the vectors is white (pls deselect any texture in the color window, as the font shouldn't have a texture applied to it in this case).
For my example, the vectors are being rotated and is in a larger size now.

Adding your text:
In The same layer as the vectors, you can insert some text.

Giving The Text and The Vectors A Glow:
Duplicate the layer in which you have your vectors and your text.
In the bottom layer containing the vectors and fonts, apply a Gaussian blur of strength 8. (Adjust>>Blur>>Gaussian blur)

9th, Adding a Border:
Create your final new layer.

Now, select the Airbrush tool, and use these settings, (Shape: Circle, Size: about 37, Hardness: 100, Step: 5, Density: 100, Opacity: 26, Blend mode: Normal, Rate: 5)
With your Airbrush, draw along the edges of your image to create a black frame around the image
(You don't have to really draw staright lines, the objective of this step is to allow you to create a frame that looks like it's been drawn by hand).

With that, this tutorial has reached its end! You may wanna use your own anime images.. or what ever stuff. Even if this tut does not really suit your taste or style, I hope it has enhanced your knowledge of paintshop and you have learnt some new techniques from it.

Cleaned up Anime PNG from: http://beloved-melody.org

Fonts Used:
The Stars and hearts fonts (charmsbv):
http://www.bvfonts.com/fonts/browse.php?category=Picture&show=free&by=date
The other Grunge font (deadletteroffice) :
http://angelwerks.com/channelzero/dlo15.htm

Labels: Graphic Tutorials

posted by text21 @ 6:56 PM : Go to top

Dreamy Effect

This is quite a useful effect in paint shop pro, quite common in the media. It is actually meant to enhance an image.

This short tutorial will help ppl who don't know learn how this effect is achieved.
Before I start, lets take a look at the final result:

So, lets learn how to do it. :)

1st, Choose your Image:
For this tut, this image choosen is a pic of a rainforest, found in google.
Copy the picture and paste it into your paint shop

2nd, Duplicate the Layer and Greyscale it:
Now, you have to duplicate the background layer (rightclick the background layer in the layers toolbar, and click duplicate).

In the duplicated background layer, you have to greyscale it. This is done by colorizing it with a saturation of 0. (adjust>>color and contrast>>colorize)

3rd, Showing the Colored Image Through the Greyscaled one:
Choose the freehand selection tool, then use these settings (point to point, replace, feather: 83)
Select the middle of the pic, leaving a thick area around the selection, then delete the selected region.

4th, Bluring the Sides:

Selecting the Parts to Blur:
Select the whole of the greyscaled layer. Now, with the freehand selection tool with the feather on, change the replace to remove. Then, select the region not to be blurred (a bit smaller then the area of the image). The following screenshot shows you how the selection should look like.

Applying the Blur:
We do a Gaussian blur of strength 20. (Adjust>>Blur>>Gaussian blur)

5th, Adding Some Shadding Along The Sides: (optional)
Using the air brush tool with the folling settings (Shape: Circle, Size: 251, Hardness: 79, Step: 5, Density: 100, Opacity: 4, Blend mode: Normal)

6th, Adding Some Light Rays: (Cool Effect)

Drawing the lightrays paths:
Create a new layer. (Rightclick the current layer in the layers toolbar and cleck new raster layer)
Choose the Freehand Selection Tool again. But this time, set the feather to 0. Use it to make selections that look like lightrays (some thin pointed triangles that poke down from the top of the pic). With the selection, use the Paint Bucket Tool and fill them up with white, opacity 100%.

Realizing The LightRays:
Select the whole layer 1st. Now, give these selections a Gaussian Blur of strength 15.00

7th, Enchancing The Image:
In the Layers toolbar, Rightclick the topmost layer, and go to new adjustment layer, and click on bright and contrast. Then in the popup window, apply the following settings (Brightness:10, Contrast: 25)

Thats all for this tutorial. If you really followed this tut, you may wanna use this image for... what ever you want, but do save it in a high quality png first. You can actually use the techniques like the light ray effect and the greyscalling effect in your other graphics. Hope this tutorial had helped you gratly. :)

Labels: Graphic Tutorials

posted by text21 @ 5:15 PM : Go to top

Grunge Text Tutorial

Friday, June 1, 2007

Erm, I think today I'll make a tutorial, on how to make grunge text. I try to make it short and sweet, so you guys can do it right away.

Here is the end result:

1st, Making a New Image and The Base Text:
You have to make a new image in paint shop pro. dimensions are (300x150).......

Then use the text tool to make some text. You do need to promote it into a new layer, so as to make things easier to edit later on.
In the layer toolbar, right click the newly made selection (thats the text you've just made), and click promote selection into a layer.

Pls note the color being used (orange), it is in the material toolbar on the right. The font size depends on how big you want the font to be, for me it is size 29. The border of the text should be 0 and all other values are kept as the default.

2nd, Smudging the Text:
You use the smudge tool (If you don't know where is it, it is somewhere in the toolbar on the left) ..to smudge the orange text on its left edge.

Adjusting the smudge tool:
Once the smudge tool is in your hand, you can adjust its settings.. For this example, I've used a circular brush of hardness 100%. Pls note that the opacity of the smudge tool is set to somewhere around 60%-80%, and the step is 24 (so as to make the smudge fade away). The others are at 100%. If you are not sure, pls click on the screenshot to counter check your settings.

Texturing for a grungy effect:
For an added grungy effect, a sponge effect can be added to the brush. See the color selection on your material toolbar? You need to double click the top color to look at the color menu, and from there you select the texture you wanna use! For now, sponge works quite well, as it is one of the More Distorted textures. :)

3rd, Making the Main Text:
Then, use the font tool again, to create some black text. Also, for this time, promote the text selection into a new layer.
I'm not saying the font now, because it will be very messy it i do so. But the text Must be promoted into a layer! You might wanna, do a drop shadow to the text for a nicer look (It is found in the top toolbar: Effects>> 3d effects>> drop shadow).

4th. Smudging The Black Text In Another Layer:
After making the text, It's time to duplicate it's layer and smudge it!
(If you had not known yet, it can be done by right-clicking its layer in the layer toolbar, and clicking duplicate).
You see, you need to have two layers of the text for the effect. As you can see in the screenshot, a sort of grungey blur is made behind the orange and black text. It is done this way:

Remember the smudging you have done to the orange text? Now, you gotta use the smudge tool again. You don't really need to adjust it anymore, cuz' you should have set it correctly for the orange text previously. On the new layer, you can use to smudge the black text here and there.

After the smudging, you have to drag the smudged black text to the bottom of the layers. In The layer toolbar, drag the black smudged text to just above the background.

5th, Adding Ink Splats :
Let me introduce a 3rd new font to add blotches of ink splaaat....
The font size is somewhere around 20....

Because this font hasen't been "pre-eroded" to make a grungy look, you may want to use the eraser tool to erode it yourself.. In the settings for the eraser, the marble4 brush is preferred (Actually, any marble brush can do). Remember to scale it down to 25, so it will be small enough for the splats. Brush a little on the edges.

6th, Adding Extra Simple Brushing: (not really needed, unless you really want some fuller looking text)
Create a new layer above the background.
Select the airbrush tool, and choose the pencil edge medium brush (as shown in screenshot). Then, brush sparingly on the layer, around the text, just enough to make some parts darker.

7th, (optional step, not really part of tutorial)
Ok, for this part, I added the r-factor logo. lol...XD
Basically, it is just another repeat of step 5, but just that now the subject is an arrow instead of ink splats. Then, make another semi-transparent layer with a bigger logo and us the smudge tool to smudge it about ( for layer tansparency, you can set it via the opacity silder in the layer toolbar).

Once you have gotten the hang of it, you can use this tatic for your own banners, websites... etc.
And talking about the ink splat part, it was kind of a weird method, but you rather save time by using others's pre-made splats instead of drawing one yourself.

Text links.. the links may change anytime, so if it is broken let me know,
The orange grunge font (miasm infection): http://angelwerks.com/channelzero/miasmi.htm
The ink splat font (awesome 80's,.. only some characters are ink splats, you have to find it out yourself by testing):
http://www.bvfonts.com/fonts/browse.php?page=2&category=Picture&show=free&by=date
The black font (dekapotmasss):
http://cooltext.com/Download/Font/dekapotmasss.zip

Labels: Graphic Tutorials

posted by text21 @ 10:35 PM : Go to top