I hope you find the following tutorial helpful. If you do, you might want to
and let me know. (Or share something you've made, which would be fantastic!)
(Or maybe you have an idea for a tutorial you'd like to see me tackle in the future? Let me know...)
Have fun!
-April Diamond
GLOWING IMAGE EFFECT
The GLOWING Image Effect
Here's how I do it...
I started with the picture on the left and ended with the picutre on the right.
Open PSP8.
Open your icon-sized image (100 x 100 pixels).
Make a copy of your image and close the original. (Ctrl+C to copy. Ctrl+V to paste as new image.) It's always best to use a copy to work with so you can save your original. LOL.
Go to Layers-->Duplicate.
Open your Layer palette. (Either go to View-->Palettes-->Layers OR hit the F8 key on your keyboard.
You should see your Background plus a second separate layer that is a copy of the background.
Be sure the new layer/background-copy is active (highlighted) and then go to Adjust-->Blur-->Gaussian Blur... and set the Radius to 2.00
On your layer palette go to the Layer blend mode control (on the right) with this layer active (highlighted) and select Overlay. (Click the black arrow that points to the right to open the blend mode choices.)
On the right side of the layer palette put your cursor on the slider that controls layer opacity and slide it left until you reach around 70 or so.
Now click on the Background again and then go to Layers-->Duplicate.
Be sure the new layer/background-copy is active (highlighted) and then go to Adjust-->Brightness and Contrast-->Brightness/Contrast... (OR hit Shift+B on your keyboard). Make the setting is something like Brightness: 25 %Contrast: 5
You should now see that glowing effect. If you don't like the way things look you can try adjusting the various settings we used.
Here's a second glow version. (The second version is on the left. The original glow version is on the right.) In this one I set the first layer done to 50% opacity (after setting overlay). As you can see, trying different settings gives you slightly different finished effects.
Go to Layers-->Merge-->Merge All (Flatten).
Now you can save.
That's your glow effect. You can now apply a template, add a frame, add text or whatever.
It's a pretty simple effect, really. And very pretty! Anyway, have fun with it.
RECOMMENDED!
Pop-up Blockers:
NoAds Works with most popular
web browsers, including:
Microsoft Internet Explorer
Netscape Navigator
America Online
Opera
