Created March 16, 2004© 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 in and for PSP8.10 and assumes you have a working knowledge of PSP at a Beginner level.

YOU WILL NEED:
JASC's PSP8 (30 day free trial) - You can get it HERE

This tutorial is written by request, and I would like to thank Greg for suggesting this. While I do have a cutout tutorial for PSP7, you can find it HERE, this one for PSP8 is written a little bit differently. The cutout effect works well with text and ding fonts, as you can see above. I put this cutout on a grainy texture, however it does work well with other backgrounds.

Screenshots are optimized for faster loading. Remember to SAVE often.

Step 1:
Open a new image 400x300, raster layer, transparent.

Step 2:
Flood fill with a color of your choice. I used #C0C0FF. To make your background grainy go to Adjust/Add/Remove Noise/Add Noise. Check the Gaussian radio button, 10% noise and check the Monochrome radio button. Click OK.

Step 3:
Add a new raster layer, name it text. Set you background color to a darker shade of your foreground color. On your background Materials swatch choose gradient. In the Gradient drop down choose Foregeround-background.

On your gradient styles choose Linear, which is the first style, and check Invert.

Step 3:
Activate your text tool. On your tools option palette choose floating for create as, the font of your choice, I used a size of 72, 0 for stroke width and anti-alias checked.

Click on your canvas and your text entry box will appear. Type your text in your box.

Click Apply and keep your text selected.

Step 4:
Go to Selections/Defloat. This is VERY important. If you do not defloat your text the cutout is not going to come out correctly. Go to Effects/3D Effects/Cutout. Apply the following settings.

Keep your text selected and don't forget to SAVE.

Step 5:
Add a new layer name it dropshadow. Go to Effects/3D Effects/Drop Shadow. Apply the following settings and make sure you change your color to white!

Go to Selections/Select None. SAVE.

Step 6:
On your layer palette reduce the opacity of your text layer to about 85 and reduce the opacity of your drop shadow to about 50.

You now have your cutout text. The only thing left to do now is go to Layers-->Merge-->Merge All (Flatten) and save your image. This method works for anything you want to have that carved, cutout or pressed look. Experiment with these techniques, you might discover other effects that are as interesting as this one.

I sure hope you have enjoyed this tutorial as much as I have creating it for you. If you have any problems, comments or questions please do not hesitate to E-mail me.

To PSP7 Tutorials Index

To PSP8 Tutorials Index

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 these Tutorials, without the expressed permission of Moon's Designs. These pages may not be removed from this website and sent via e-mail, nor saved, stored or archived in files in YahooGroups or other mailing list sites, nor may they be translated and placed on another site.
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 created exclusively for this website and may not be downloaded or used without written permission.
If you would like to use any of my tutorials for group lessons please contact me.

Established April, 2001
© Copyright 2001-2004 Moon's Designs "All rights reserved"
No portion of this site may be duplicated or distributed