Triangle Glass Globe - Corel Paint Shop Pro Tutorial

Donnamarie J. Walker 1 Open a new image 400 x 400>Transparent. We can crop it later but this gives us plenty of room to work. We are going to make the template for the triangle shape so set your foreground color to white, and using your Preset Shapes Triangle>Filled>Anti-alias and Create as Vector checked, set your cursor to the upper left and pull to the right down to the 200 line. Go to the Layer Palette and right click on Layer 2 and Convert to Raster. Using your Move Tool, move the triangle shape to the center of your image. Copy and paste as a new layer. Flip and move triangle to match edges as in image below. 2 Turn off visibility on Layer 1. Making sure Layer 2 or 3 is the active one, go Layers>Merge>Merge Visible. Select all and using your Selection Tool, click on the white triangle. You should have marching "ants" surrounding your shape.   3 Add a new layer. Go to Image>Effects>Cutout and use these settings: Color: Black Opacity: 100% Blur: 39 Horizontal: 6 Vertical: 6 Add a new layer and using Cutout again with these settings: Color: Black Opacity: 75% Blur: 39 Horizontal: -4 Vertical: -4   4 Now this looks pretty good and you can stop here but let's really make this globe stand out. Add a new layer and use the Cutout again with these settings: Color: Black Opacity: 50% Blur: 8 Horizontal: -4 Vertical: -4 Go to Image>Blur>Gaussian Blur>3. This softens the cutout we've just applied. One more Cutout Layer to add now. Use the Cutout at the same settings as above except change the Horizontal and Vertical to 6. Apply Gaussian Blur once more.   5 Turning off visibility on Layer 1 and the Template Layer, and making sure another Layer is the active one, go to Layers>Merge>Merge Visible. We've just merged all the cutout layers.   6 Now we are going to add our highlight. Click on your Draw Tool and with your foreground color white use these settings: Type: Single Line Style: Filled Width: 5 Anti-alias and Create as Vector checked. Draw a line down the left side of your globe as pictured below. Go to the Layer Palette and right click on Layer 7 and Convert to Raster. 7 Image>Blur>Gaussian Blur>3. Repeat Step 12 for the lower right edge of your globe as shown below. Repeat Convert to Raster and Gaussian Blur. Once again turning off visibility on Layer 1 and the Template Layer, Merge Visible. 8 At this point you can delete Layer 1 and the Template layer, or you can copy and paste the template as a new image and save in PSP format and use it for other globes. Merge all Layers Visible, Crop and save in PSP format, or, export as a tube.   9 Tips and Tricks: When making shapes for your globes, use vector. You will always get a nice, clean globe shape with no jagged edges, even when reducing your finished globe in size. After you've finished a new glass globe shape and are ready to save, use Shift D to duplicate and resize by 75% or 50%. You'll now have two new glass globes shapes, one regular size and one in miniature. When adding an image to your globe, try reducing the size and placing it on a layer below your glass globe instead of "filling" your globe with the image. If you can "see" through the "glass", then your globe will look much more realistic. Use a Perspective Shadow after Merging all of your globe and layers, but before merging the background. Select all then use your Selection Tool to select the globe and base, add a new layer and apply a Perspective Shadow. Once again, a Perspective Shadow looks more realistic than a Drop Shadow, however, I do use Drop Shadows while working inside the globe. Try not to make your globes overly large or too heavy on the animation. They take forever to download. And if you are adding globes to your web pages, try placing just a few on each page, varying animation with non-animated globes to help in downloading time. No one wants to wait forever to view your globes, no matter how lovely they may be. If you do make a large globe, try showcasing it on a page of its own. That way it doesn't have to compete with other globes downloading at the same time. Remember that animation is in frames, so each frame has to download in order to be viewed. Most of all, enjoy what you are creating!   Copyright 2001, Donnamarie J. Walker, All Rights Reserved