Electric Stripe Text
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Along with the other new goodies in Paint Shop Pro 6, Jasc has introduced stunning gradients. Along with those already provided in the program, there is a Gradient Editor that allows you to customize existing gradients or create new ones. We're no longer limited to two colors!
Click on the New button to open a new image and set the options in the New Image dialog to match those below:
- Width: 500 pixels
- Height: 150 pixels
- Resolution: 72 (or higher)
- Background Color: white
- Image Type: 16.7 million colors (24 Bit)
Click the OK button.
Click on the Text tool and then center your cursor in the new image and click. The Text Tool dialog box will open. Press the Delete key to clear out any text that might be displayed in the lower window. Set the options in the dialog as follows:
- Font Name: I used the Dom Bold BT font for this example. If you don't have it, pick a font that is thick.
- Size: I set mine to 60. (You can type an unlisted size for the font)
- In the "Create As" section, check Selection and Antialias.
- Set the text to be centred as shown below, and pick white as the text color.
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Click in the text entry window and type your text. Click the OK button. Your chosen text will display in the new image, surrounded by a moving selection marquee. At this writing, the beta version of PSP 6 doesn't center text vertically as it did in PSP 5. If you want to reposition the selection, click on the Mover tool, right-click on the selection, hold the mouse button down and drag the text to the desired location. It's important for this exercise to center the text vertically as much as possible. (Hopefully Jasc will fix this problem before the final release.)
Click on the Flood Fill tool.
If the "Tool Options" box is not already open, type a lower-case "o" to open it. Click on the left tab and match your settings to the ones at the left, making sure to select a Fill Style of Linear Gradient.
Click on the Fill Style Options tab, which is the middle tab. Open the drop-down list under "Gradient" and select Electric Stripe. Match the other settings to the ones at the left. To set the angle, you can either drag the dial around with the mouse or type in the value of 180 directly in the Angle box. Click on the Edit button to open the Gradient Editor and make sure the transparency opacity is set to 50. Click OK to close it.
Click inside the selection with the Flood Fill tool to apply the gradient.
Go to Image > Effects > Inner Bevel... and apply the "Soft Edge" preset. Click the OK button.
Click on the Invert Selection button or, if this button isn't displayed on your toolbar, go to Selections > Invert. The background area will now be selected.
Assuming the Flood Fill is still the active tool, change the angle of the gradient to 0. Click inside the selected background to apply a reverse gradient. If you want a stronger background effect, fill once or twice more to increase the opacity and strength of the colors.
Remove the selection marquee (Selections > Select None), crop as desired, and save the file in the format of your choice (more information on file formats below).
Here's another version of the finished image where I've used the flood fill on the background three times instead of once.
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In this next one, I just copied and pasted the selected text onto a black background.
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The Last Word
- JPEG format does a pretty good job for this image, as long as you click on the Options button in the Save dialog and turn the compression factor to its lowest setting to produce the lowest rate of compression yet the best quality image. The finished examples were saved in PNG format to fully preserve the image quality.
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