Saturday, May 30, 2009

Pirate Princess Tutorial

Pirate Princess


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 Any resemblance to any other tutorial, published or unpublished, living, dead or undead, is purely coincidental.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:

Pretty Princess Taggers kit by Aleah's Mommy, which can be purchased at Sophisti-Scraps.

Cookie - Pirate poser from Sophisticated Scraps, which can be purchased at Sophisti-Scraps

Wee Scots Lass mask #59, which you can download (for Free) HERE and #306, which you can download HERE.

Black Epoxy Alpha, which you can download (for free) HERE.

Orbus Multiserif which is a windows system font. If you don't have it, you can download it (for free) 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.

To begin, open a new canvas, 800 x 800 pxls, Flood Fill White

Open AMD PP Paper 14

Select Layers --> Load/Save Mask --> Load Mask from Disk. Select WSL Mask #59. Make sure the "Fit to Canvas" box is checked, and then hit load.

Select Layers --> Merge Group; and then Edit --> Copy and paste to your canvas as a new layer, centered.

Open AMD PP Frame Glitter 1, and add to canvas, centered.

Open AMD PP Paper 1

Select Layers --> Load/Save Mask --> Load Mask from Disk. Select WSL Mask #306. Make sure the "Fit to Canvas" box is checked, and then hit load.

Select Layers --> Merge Group; then Select Image --> Resize and resize the image to 60%. Copy & Paste to your canvas, centered at H500, V300.

Open AMD PP Flowers w Pearls, copy and paste to canvas, centered at H400, V600.

Open SSLisa's Cookie Pirate 3. Select Image --> Resize and resize the image to 60%. Copy & Paste to your canvas, centered at H250, V400.

Open PP Diamond Heart 4, and select Image --> Resize, resizing the element to 50%. Copy & Paste to canvas at H400, V550. Use your pick tool to rotate the element to the left about 30 degrees.

Repeat with PP Diamond Heart 1, however, center at H500, V45o and rotate to the right, about 30 degrees.

Open PP Tiara 3 then select Image --> Resize and resize it to 50%. Copy and add to the canvas, centered at H300, V130. Use you pick tool to rotate the tiara slightly to match the angle of the tube's head. Using your eraser tool, erase, just the little bit of black that shows off either side of the tube.

Add a drop shadow of choice to the pirate tube. I am using a Vertical offset of 5, a horizontal offset of 6, opacity 44, Blur 10, Color Black.

On the Materials Pallet, set your foreground color to #ff34a9, and your background color to #fe92e8 (these colors can be taken of the color swatch included with the kit).

Open AMD PP Tag Circle 3. Select the font Orbus Multiserif, which is a Windows system font, size 72 points, B, and Centered. Click in the middle of the tag and type your tagged by information.

Since you can't go any higher than 72 points, change to your pick tool and drag the boxes to enlarge the test enough to fill the tag.

Select Layers --> Merge --> Merge Visible. Select Image --> Resize and Resize the circle tag to 30%. Copy and paste the tag to your canvas, centered at H600, V500.

Open PP Staple 3, and cut and paste it onto your canvas over the tag. Use the pick tool to resize the staple to fit on the tag.

You can slightly angle the staple it you want and repeat the above steps to give you a crossed staple effect on the tag.

Select your font tool and change the font size to 8 pts. Click on your canvas at H400, V750 and add the copyright info for the pirate tube, which is as follows:

(c) 2008 LKDesigns; Scraps by Aleah's Mommy Designs

Similar to the text on the tag, this is not going to fit the canvas right, but this time It's going to be way too big. Switch to your pick tool, and resize, using the drag boxes. You may need to widen the text some to make it readable.

You can 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, you don't want to, I understand. 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 30%, 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 H550, V650. This may change depending upon how long the name is. Use the pick tool to resize and relocate the name to taste.

Just on a side note, you should always place your name somewhere over the image in you tags, as that helps to prevent piracy of your work. Yes, believe it or not, there are tag pirates out there too!

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.

If you wish to save this as a .jpg, I suggest changing the white background to something that matches the rest of the tag. I would suggest PP Paper 43. Open the paper and copy it to you clipboard, then dismiss the file. On the main canvas, click anywhere on the white areas to active the white layer, and then paste the paper from the clipboard onto your canvas.

Pirate Princess


I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. If you have any questions or get stuck, please feel free to E-Mail me.

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