Shell's Tutorials

Spice Dots

For this tutorial you will need Paint Shop Pro.

I used version 7 but it will work equally well in 8.

Unplugged Tools Filter-Download here

Abaddon Font-Download here

A tube of your choice or you can download the one I used from Outlaw By Design

OK, let's get this done!

Open a new canvas 500x500

I always make my canvas big to give me room to work, we'll be cropping it later.

Open your tube in PSP. I exported mine to my tube folder. Click on your tube tool and go to tool options. Find the tube and set the scale. I set mine to 69

Go to Layers > New Raster Layer and click ok when the window opens

Click once on your blank canvas

Now click on your Text Tool (If you haven't put the font in your windows fonts folder, open the font and minimise it to make it available for use in PSP)

Click on your canvas. When the text entry window opens, type in your name. Set your Stroke and Fill colours. For the stroke I used #864411, for the Fill I used #BD8C73. Select your font and set the size to 72. Make sure anti alias and vector are selected. Click ok.

You will now have your text on the canvas.

Using the nodes (little squares on each side of the box) stretch the text so it fits under the tube

Go to the layer palette and click on layer 3,

keeping your mouse button pressed, drag layer 3 down so it goes under layer 2

Right click on layer 3

Click on Promote to raster

Right click on layer 2 and click on duplicate

Turn off copy of layer 2 by clicking on the glasses and click on layer 2 to make it the active layer.

Go to Effects > Plug ins > Unplugged Tools > Spice Dots.

Use the default settings

Click OK

Go back to the layer palette and duplicate layer 3 (the text layer)

Turn Off the copy of layer 3 and click on layer 3 to make it active.

Apply the spice dots effect to the text

Back to the layer palette and turn Off layer 1. Right click on layer 3 and click on Merge Visible

Your layer palette should now look like this

Turn Off the merged layer.

OK, now we're going to turn on copy of layer 2 and copy of layer 3.

Click on copy of layer 2 to make it the active layer

Go to Image > Resize. Use the following settings

Now click on copy of layer 3 to make it the active layer

Go to Effects > 3D Effects > Inner Bevel and use the following settings

You should now have this

Use the mover tool to position the tube on the text

Go to the layer palette and right click on Copy of layer 3. Click on Merge > Merge Visible

Go to effects > 3D Effects > Drop Shadow and use the following settings

Turn on all layers

Click on the spice dots layer to make it the active layer and apply the same drop shadow.

Using the mover tool, move the spice dots layer slightly so you can see the text

If you want to use your sig on a web page like I have, flood fill layer one with your background tile, if not, right click on layer 1 and merge visible.

Click on the crop tool

Go to the tool options box and click on Crop Settings

When the window opens, click on Select opaque area-current layer

Now click on Crop Image

Save as a .jpg file and you're done :o)

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. If you have any questions, please feel free to email me.