This tutorial was written by Dianna Richards of Digicats (and Dogs). Any resemblance to any other tutorial, published or unpublished, living, dead or undead, is purely coincidental.
Please do not rebroadcast, redistribute or otherwise claim this tutorial or any part there of as your own work.
Items you will need to complete this project:
The High Seas taggers kit by Pimp'd Designz. You can purchase this kit at Sophisti-Scraps.
Tube of choice. I am using "X marks the Spot" by Kevin Clark. You must have a license to use this tube, which may be obtained at www.mypsptubes.com.
Cameron Mask # 235, which you can download for free from her website.
Black Epoxy Alpha, which you can download HERE.
Font of Choice. I am using Orbus Multiserif which is a windows system font. If you don't have it, you can download it from Font Trader.
Note that H# and V# refer to Horizontal and vertical coordinates on your canvas grid. Make sure you have View, Rulers checked in order to see the ruler grid.
When I say "Add to your canvas" I expect that you will copy and paste it as a new layer, unless otherwise state in the tutorial.
This tutorial assumes you have a working knowledge of PSP. It was written using PSP X1, but should work in most other versions of PSP.
Open an new canvas, 800 x 800 pxls, Flood Fill White.
Open High Seas PP11
Select Layers --> load save mask -->Load mask from disk and find Cameron Mask 235. Make sure both the "fit to canvas" and "invert transparency" boxes are checked, then click on load.
Layers --> Merge --> Merge Group, then cut and paste pp11 to your canvas.
Open Pirate Ship. Resize to 75% and paste to canvas, centered at H400, V350.
Open Greens-2 and add to canvas at H550, V370.
Open Sand and add to canvas at H400, V650.
Open psp12039 X Marks the Spot by Kevin Clark, and copy the tube layer to your canvas, centered at H500, V450.
Open Net. Resize to 50%, and add to canvas, centered at H350, V650. Using you pick tool, rotate the netting slightly clockwise about 15 or 20 degrees, so that it covers the bottom of the Pirate's boot.
Open Starfish, resize to 50% and add to canvas, centered at H200, V620.
Open Bottle, resize to 35% and add to canvas, centered at H350, V640.
On the layers pallet, click on the tube layer to activate it, then add a drop shadow to the tube. I am using offsets vertical and horizontal of 10 (each), opacity of 60 and blur of 25 (color black).
On the Materials Pallet, set your foreground color to #000000 (black) and your background color to #0e697c (dark teal). Using a font of your choice, enter the copyright information for the tube that you are using.
For "X Marks the Spot" the copyright information is:
(c) Kevin Clark www.kc-art.com YOUR LICENSE NUMBER
You may also add the background & tagged by information if you wish. I have my information centered at H400, V750.
You may now save your artist's copy as a .pspimage.
Adding a Name: Usually I leave this up to you, but the Black Epoxy alpha works so good with Pirate tags I that have to recommend it at this point. If you don't want to, that's fine. But it is free...after all.
The alpha is a full sized one. For the moment, minimize your main canvas and open a new raster canvas, 800 pxls wide, 300 pxls high with a transparent background. You can turn your grid on if you'd like, I just use the little checkerboard pattern on the canvas to line things up.
Open the Black Epoxy Capital letter of choice. Resize to 25%, add to the canvas. Repeat the procedure with each of the lower case letters in the name you are spelling out. If you have double letters - as in the A and N in my name - you need only do this once as you can use duplicate function to replicate them on the canvas.
Using the pick tool, line the letters up on the new canvas to spell out the name you wish to add to the tag. Note that if you have a LONG name, you may need to make the letters a bit smaller to fit them all onto the canvas.
One you have the name composed to taste, select, Layers --> Merge --> Merge Visible. Edit and copy the name and then reactivate your main canvas. Add the name to the canvas, centered at around H200, V550. This may change depending upon how long the name is. Use the pick tool to resize and relocate the name to taste.
You are now ready to save the finished tag as either a .png or .jpg. Please note that if you plan to use this tag on message boards, you may need to use a .jpg size as their upload size may preclude using a .png file, which is generally about 6 times the size of a .jpg file.
To save as a .png, right click on the white layer on the layer pallet and select delete. (Are you sure? Yes.)
Go to Layers --> Merge --> Merge Visible. Go to Image --> resize and resize to 75% (600 x 600 pxls). This is also maximum size for most message boards. File --> "Save as" and save as a .png.
To save as a .jpg, follow the steps as outlined above, but do NOT delete the white layer.
I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. If you have any questions or get stuck, please feel free to E-Mail me.
