AWARD PLAQUE
Created June 22, 2002 © Copyright Moon's Designs
Property of Moon's Designs
This is my creation, any similarity to other tutorials
on the Internet is unintentional.
Please do not copy or place this tutorial
or any graphics to any other place without written permission
directly from me. Thank you.
This tutorial is written by request from
Cheryl-Anne, who signed my Guestbook and then wrote to me
with the request. There are several ways to make awards, it
all depends on what you are trying to do. This tutorial shows
you how to make an award plaque, using only PSP features.
Screenshots are resized and compressed for
faster loading. Don't forget to SAVE your work often.
My tutorials are only guidelines to help
you accomplish a certain creation. Please feel free to be
inventive and take whatever liberties you would like. I encourage
each of you to do your "own thing" and make your
creation yours! Your finished creation is yours to do with
as you please.
This tutorial is written in and for PSP Version
7.04 and assumes you have a working knowledge of PSP at a
beginners level. I am sure this can easily be done in Version
6 with a few adjustments in paths but I have only used Version
7 so I can't make promises *S*
FOR THIS TUTORIAL YOU WILL NEED:
JASC's PSP (30 day free trial)- You can get it HERE
A Wood Fill ~~ I used a wood fill from Patao's site. She has
a wonderful variety of wood, you can find them HERE.
If you make your wood into a seamless tile, you will eliminate
the seams that invariably show up. For this tutorial I am
using Patao's wood natural. I have already converted it into
a seamless tile. If you would like to use my seamless tile,
please right click on the wood below and save it to your hard
drive.
Step 1:
Open a new image 300x350, 16 million colors, transparent background.
Open the wood fill that you will be using, minimize it on
your desktop. On your color palette, set your foreground styles
to Pattern and scroll up to your wood pattern. Mine is set
at 100%, 0 angle.
Floodfill your image. No, you do not have
to make a new layer *grin*. Go to Effects-->3D-->Inner
Bevel and apply the following settings:
Save your work!
Step 2:
Add a new layer, name it plate. Make your foreground color
null, background color to any color. I happened to have a
dark green color already there and left it. Using your preset
shapes tool, 
,
set to rectangle - antialias checked - retain style and create
as vectors UNchecked, draw out a rectangle for your plate,
similar to what I have below.
Step 3:
In order to change this to a metal color, go to Effects-->Enhance
Photo-->Manual Color Correction. Click on the zoom (1)
so you can more easily see your rectangle. Make sure the Freehand
selection (2) is unchecked as well as the Preserve Lightness
and Preserve saturation boxes (3). With your mouse, or Wacom
pen, select your rectangle by drawing from the upper left
corner to the lower right corner.
Choose Metals in the Color Category (4)
There are a number of metals for you to choose from, I
selected brass. You can see how it looks in the preview window
on the right side.
This is what my plaque now looks like.
Step 4:
Go to Effects-->Noise-->Add. Enter 5 in the number and
check uniform. Click OK. Go to Effects-->3D-->Drop Shadow
and apply the following settings:
Reapply the drop shadow, but this time change
the vertical and horizontal offsets to Minus 3. Save.
Step 5:
To make our plaque more realistic, I added screws to corners.
Add a new layer, name it screw. If you are using the brass
from the Manual Color Correction, change your foreground color
to #E1C79F and your background color to #AC9163. If you chose
another metal from the Manual Color Correction, use your eye
dropper and right click on the plate to choose your background
color. Make the foreground color about 4-5 shades lighter
than the background color.
Now that we have our foreground and background
colors set, make your foreground styles to NULL. Change your
background styles to gradient. Choose the #1 foreground/background
gradient using the Sunburst style. Horizontal and Vertical
at 50 and Repeats = 0. Make sure that your lock is checked,
otherwise when you switch your tool your colors will revert
back to the previous colors when using that tool.
Whew! Now we can make our screw LOL. Change
your preset shapes to Ellipse, leaving your other settings
the same. Holding down the shift key, draw out a small circle
(about 12x12) in the upper left corner of your plate.
Go to Effects-->3D-->Drop Shadow and
apply the following settings.
Step 6:
Add a new layer. Pick up your draw tool, 
,
set at single line; line width = 1;solid line; create as vector
= UNchecked; Antialias = checked. Change your foreground color
to #5B5231, background to Null. Draw a straight line across
the middle of your screw. You can draw horizontal, vertical
or diagonal if you like.
This drop shadow is optional, depending on
the metal you selected in the manual color correction. Go
to Effects-->3D-->Drop Shadow and apply the following
settings:
When you are satisfied with your screw, go
to your layer palette and close layer1 and the plate layer
by clicking on the eye glasses. You will get a red X on those
layers. Make sure you are on the top layer, go to Layers-->Merge-->Merge
Visible. Rename this layer head. Save. Open your closed layers
by clicking on the eye glasses to remove the red X.
Step 7:
While on your merged layer, go to Edit-->Copy (Ctrl+C).
Edit-->Paste-->As a New Layer (Ctrl+L) and with your
mover tool place your screw in the upper right corner. Paste
as a New Layer twice more and place in the lower corners.
Once you have your screws in place, close
layer1 and merge your plate and screws visible. Make sure
you are on the top layer when merging. Rename this layer plate.
At this point you may want to save your award template into
a special PSP Folder so you can use it again. You can colorize
your plate layer or change the metal of your plate in the
manual color correction. Because we have merged the screws
with the plate, your screw heads will also reflect the color
change. *smiles*
Step 6:
Add a new layer, name it text. Set your foreground Null, and
your background can be any color as we will be doing a cutout
so the text will appear etched into your plate. Pick up your
text tool, click on your image, the following text box will
appear. I used Garton font, set at 36 and bold. Make sure
that your text is set to center and that floating and antialias
is checked. Type in what you want on your plaque and click
okay.
Keep selected. In order to have the etched/cutout
appearance you must DEFLOAT your text. Go to Selections-->Defloat.
This is very important or it will not work. Go to Effects-->3D-->Cutout
and apply the following settings.
Deselect (Ctrl+D) and save.
We are just about done. As you may have noticed, I only put
text on the lower half of the plaque. I wanted to save some
room for adding a tube. Of course, you can do your plaque
anyway you choose. *grin* If you do choose to add a tube,
I suggest you add a new layer. I had an anchor tube that I
used for this particular award plaque. On my other plaque
below, I had a goblet tube that I used. After I applied the
tube I added a drop shadow of Offsets=3; Opacity=75; Blur=16.5.
When you have your Award Plaque the way you
want it, go to Layers-->Merge-->Merge All and Save as
a .jpg.
Here's one that I did changing the plate
to slate in Manual Color Correction. The possibilities are
endless for you.
I hope you have enjoyed this tutorial as
much as I did creating it for you.
If you have any problems, comments or questions
please do not hesitate to E-mail
me.
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If you would like to use this tutorial for
group settings, please contact me. Just click on the above
mail slot *S*
Tutorial written and created by Patti
Wavinak for Moon's Designs. These Tutorials are copyrighted
by law. You may LINK to them only. You may not remove any
of the graphics, zip files or html within these pages to reproduce
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Creations made from these tutorials are your creations.
Moon's Designs holds the copyright to all selections, original
tubes and original images that I have created and provided
for use within my tutorials. Page backgrounds and images are
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If you would like to use any of my tutorials for group lessons
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