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Christmas Lights
Materials Needed - PSP 8 - Get it here - would work in ver. 7x with modification KPT 5 - if you don't have it, you can download my bulb here and skip to step #5 Note: Whenever I say to add a new layer, add a raster layer, unless otherwise specified. Some of the screenshots have been reduced in size for faster loading, so quality has been greatly compromised. 1. Open a New image 300 x 300 and flood fill with a colour if desired. 2. Take your preset shapes tool and set it to ellipse, retain style unchecked, create as vector and anti-alias checked, foreground null and background a colour of your choice (I used #47A34B), draw an ellipse on your canvas.
3. Click on your pen tool and right click on the top node and select Node Type --->Symmetric. Pull the node up a bit and then push in on the arrow to narrow the top.
On the bottom node, make symmetric and pull down and then push the arrow in.
4. Layers--->convert to raster layer. Rename the layer "bulb". With your magic wand, tolerance 0, feather 0, click on the shape. Apply KPT 5 Shapeshifter. Under Environment, load coolkitchen.jpg and use Lukewarm for lighting. Have your Environment and Main Shape set to the following:
Note: you may find your bulb has the "jaggies". Do not worry - when you use it as a tube and reduce the size before applying the tube, they will disappear. Deselect. 5. (for those using the bulb privided, open your image and) Add a new layer and name it "socket". You may need to move your bulb up a bit if you don't have room under it for the socket. Take your preset shapes tool and uncheck create as vector. Foreground null and background #0A6E0A. Draw a rounded rectangle under the bulb for the socket. Click on your deform tool and hold down the Ctrl key and push in on the bottom right node as shown:
Click on any other tool to apply the deformation. Effects--->3D Effects--->Inner Bevel. Use the Round preset but change the width to 1, smoothness to 100 depth to 1, and shininess to 0. 6. If you have a background layer, delete it. Make as many copies of the image as you want different colours. For each one, change the colour on the bulb layer using Colorize (Adjust--->Hue and Saturation--->Colorize). How you tube these will depend on how you want to use them. If you are not going to animate the lights to blink, then merge visible the layers so you have just one transparent layer. Use the auto-tuber to tube them (see my Using the Auto Tuber tut for instructions on how). If you want to animate the lights, you need to tube the bulbs and one socket separately. Take one image and duplicate it. Delete the bulb layer, leaving just the socket layer. Trim it with your crop tool and export it as a tube. I made two tubes of the socket, on one I flipped it using Image--->Flip for images where I want the lights to be upside down. Close the image without saving. On each of the bulb images, delete the socket layer, leaving one transparent layer (the bulb layer) and use the Auto tuber to tube them. 7. Now, we will make the string for the lights. Open a new image whatever size you want for your image. Flood fill with a colour if desired. Add a new layer and name it "string". Take your pen tool and UNcheck create as vector. Make sure anti-alias is checked, the segment type is set to line segments and set your line width to a width of your choosing. It will greatly depend on the size of your image. (I find resizing these lights does not work well, so I make the image the size I want it to be). For this image I used a width of 5. Draw a straight line across your canvas. Effects--->Distortion Effects--->Wave. Here are the settings I used, you might want to play around with them to get what you like. (Alternatively, you can draw freehand or draw vector and node edit to get curves)
If you are going to animate your lights, skip to step #10. 9. Add a new layer for your lights and use the tube tool to
put them down. I used a scaling of 40% for this image. You have
to scale it down to at least 65% to eliminate the jaggies. This
is why we made it so big. Delete your background layer and merge
visible the rest and you have a string of lights to use in your
christmas images!
10. Add a new layer for the sockets and using the tube tool, put down the socket tube at intervals along the string. I used scaling of 40% - you will want to use the same scaling for the socket and bulbs. Tip: I found it easiest to lay down one socket and put it where
I wanted it then copy and paste as a new selection and move into
place for the rest. If you are going to put some lights above the
line and some below you will need to lay down the appropriate tube
or use one tube and Image--->Flip the ones you want to be different.
Tip: If you want to rotate any of them, you don't need to put the sockets on a different layer for each one. All you have to do to rotate the individual socket is to take your selection tool and draw a rectangle around it, then take your magic wand and click once on the socket to select it. Rotate it and deselect. 11. Go down to your string layer. Add a new layer for the lights and using your tube tool, add the lights.Use whatever size you wish, but you will have to reduce it to at least 65% to get rid of the jaggies caused by the KPT filter. 12. For some lights you may want to Image--->Flip or use the Rotate to turn them upside down or to the side a bit. You might want to use a separate layer for each light - it means having many layers but the advantage is you can change a bulb if you don't like it without undoing everything you've done since. Please continue on to Page 2
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