Making A Web Set

To see the printer friendly version of this, the header and the buttons tutorials, click HERE

This tutorial shows you how to make a simple four layer web set for the Welcome page on your new MSN group.

I used PSP 8 to make my web set.

OK, this is how I make my web sets.

MAKING THE TILES

First I find an image I want to use for either the welcome header or the main image of the page. I've chosen a Knuddelkids tube and I'm going to use it on the welcome header.

Please Note: I emailed Marion for permission to use her knuddelkids to make web sets. If you'd like to use her knuddels, please visit her site and email her.

Open your image in PSP. Press Shift and D to make a duplicate copy and close the original so you can use it again.

Open a new canvas  Use the following settings.

This is for our background tile. We need to make 3 tiles so press Shift and D at the same time. This will duplicate the new canvas so you now have 2. Repeat so you have 3 new canvases.

Now click on the Dropper tool

We're going to choose a dark colour from the tube to make our first tile. Move the dropper over the tube. You will see a little box appear. This box shows the colour the dropper is moving over.

 When you find a colour you like, left click once and this colour will go into the top stroke box. (Note: make sure you have the top stroke box set to solid colour. To do this, click on the solid black circle under the style box  This is the solid colour)

Now click on the Flood fill tool   and flood fill one of the new canvases with your solid colour.

We need a lighter for our top tile so the content is shown easily. To get a colour that matches your first tile, click on the top styles box so the colour palette options opens.

Now click on the little circle on the colour wheel and move it until you find a lighter shade of your original colour.

Now flood fill one of the bank canvases with your light colour

Our final canvas is going to be flood filled with a gradient, choose one that compliments your first 2 tiles. On the gradient options make sure angle is set to 0 and repeats to 1. This makes sure we don't have to use the seamless tiling effect because it's already done.

We now we have the start of our web set :o)

OK, we're now going to decorate the first tile.

I decided to use a piece of my tube to do this. I liked the strawberry which is hanging off her hat.

Click on the magic wand tool

and use the following settings

I zoomed in on my picture to make it easier to see the strawberry.

Holding down the shift key, click on the strawberry (or which ever part of your tube you are using) and keep clicking until the whole area you want is selected.

Now click on the copy icon then the Paste As New Image icon and you will have your strawberry on a new image.

Now click on the dark tile to make it active and go to Edit > Paste As New Layer

Your strawberry will now be in the middle of the canvas.

 I duplicated the strawberry layer (right click on the layer and click duplicate) 4 more times and moved the strawberries around on the tile.

Now it's time to make the tile seamless. Go to Effects > Image Effects > Seamless Tiling

Choose your own settings, here's what I used

You can click on Show tiling preview to see what the finished tile effect will look like. If you don't like, try different settings.

When you're happy with your tile, save it as a .jpg file.

On the light tile I just added a texture.

Go to Effects > Texture Effects > Texture. I used the old paper texture with the default settings

Save your tile as a .jpg file. You can also save your gradient tile as we don't need to do anything to that.

OK, we've got all our tiles.

 We now need to make our header, buttons and divider.

Page 2 - Making The Header