This tutorial is my own creation. Any resemblance to another is purely co-incidental. Please do not copy, translate or place on another site without my written permission. You are more than welcome to use this tutorial in a group setting, but please link to this page only.

Tools needed to complete this tutorial:-

Paint Shop Pro V9
(This tutorial cannot be done in earlier versions)

Texturizer Plugin

A graphic of your choice.
The graphic I have used for this tutorial is by Jeffrey K Bedrick who has vry kindly allowed me to use his artwork in my tutorials and stationery. To see more of his wonderful work, you can click on his banner.

Ok, if you have everything you need, let's begin :)

1. Open your graphic of choice and hit shift + D to duplicate twice. You can close the original graphic down.

   BACKGROUND

2. Effects, Distortion Effects, Displacement map and use the burnout preset.

3. Effects, Image Effects, Seamless tiling and use the following settings:-
   • Corner Checked.
     
   • Bidirectional Checked.
     
   • Curved Checked.

4. Minimize your background for now.

   FRAME

5. Image, Add border and use the following settings:-
   • Symmetric:     Unchecked.
     
   • Top & Bottom:      0
     
   • Left & Right:     5
     
   • Color:     White or something light if white is on the outside of your graphic.

6. Using your magic wand, Sample merged and Contiguous checked, Replace Mode , RGB Value Match mode, tolerance and feather set to 0, click on the left hand border.

7. In your colour palette, change your foreground to pattern, and find the background pattern that we made earlier. Flood fill the left border.

8. Effects, 3D Effects, Inner bevel and use the following settings:-
   • Pie Bevel
     
   • Width:     8
     
   • Smoothness:     70
     
   • Depth:     70
     
   • Ambience:     0
     
   • Shininess:     50
     
   • Angle:     225
     
   • Intensity:     40
     
   • Elevation:     40

9. Effects, 3D Effects, Drop Shadow and use the following settings:-
   • Vertical:     0
     
   • Horizontal:     5
     
   • Opacity:     45
     
   • Blur:     10
     
   • Color:     Black

10. Deselect.

11. Repeat the above steps for the right border, but change the drop shadow Horizontal to –5 (minus).

12. Deselect.

13. Using your eye dropper, chose a light foreground colour, and a darker background colour from your graphic.

14. Image, add border and add a 5 pixel symmetrical border using your foreground colour.

15. Select the border with your magic wand.

16. Flood fill again with our pattern, and add the same inner bevel as before.

17. Effects, 3D Effects, Drop Shadow but change the vertical to 5 and the horizontal to 0.

18. Repeat the drop shadow changing the vertical to –5 (minus).

19. Deselect.

20. Image, add border, Uncheck symmetrical and use the following settings:-
    • Top and Bottom:     10
      
    • Left and Right:     3
      
    • Background colour.

21. Select the border with your magic wand.

22. Effects, Plugins, Texturizer and use a texture that you like.

23. Deselect.

24. Repeat steps 5 to 19.

25. Image, add border, and add a 25 pixel symmetrical border using your background colour.

26. Select the border with your magic wand and apply the same texture as before.

27. Deselect.

28. Repeat Steps 5 to 23.

29. Repeat Steps 5 to 19.

30. Add a new layer for your watermark.

31. Merge all flatten.

32. Image, resize and sharpen if necessary.

33. You can now save this as your framed graphic.

34. Back to your background image now to finish it off.

35. Promote background layer, lower the opacity to around 30% depending on the colours in the graphic.

36. Merge all, flatten and save as your background, JPEG format.

    You can now put it all together in Letter Creator. A program that comes with IncrediMail.

    
        

    
    © An Aushorty Creation – November 2004