USING A TEMPLATE ON AN IMAGE
Note: Whatever type of base picture you begin with (a photo of people, a drawing, primarily text, a landscape), you apply your template in the same way.
- Open PSP8.
- Open your base image (the icon you want to apply the template to.)
NOTE: Obviously icon size and template size should be the same. If your template is 100 x 100 pixels, your base icon should be the same size.
- Right-click on and Copy the template. (Or make the template active and press Ctrl + C.)
- Click on your base image and Paste the template as a New Layer (or make the base active and press Ctrl + L).
- Select the Magic Wand tool from your tool palette. Click the area of your template where you want the base to display! Then press the Delete key (on your keyboard). The area of template you selected will now disappear. Then you can right-click to deselect/defloat. (Or go to Selections-->Select None.)
Note: If you have several areas on the template where you want the base image to show through then repeat these steps, continuing to delete the white of the template until you've got what you want.)
- When you're done with the above step it's time to merge your layers. Go to Layers-->Merge--> Merge All (Flatten).
Finally, you want to apply TRANSPARENCY to your image . . .
- Go to your Materials Palette and select some bright color (like lime green -- HTML code: #40FF40 or orange -- HTML code: #FFA000) for the Foreground.
- Select the Flood Fill Tool and fill in the areas of your merged template/base that you want to turn transparent.
IMPORTANT NOTE: You need to select a color that does not appear anywhere in your image. If you've got a lot of white, for example, you wouldn't want to use white. Or if your image has lots of shades of green, you wouldn't want to risk using green.
Also, if you want the black lines to display, you obviously wouldn't use black.
The trick is to select a color that doesn't appear anywhere in the image.
- This will be your image -- with the color you just added displaying as transparent. Now we SAVE.
- To do this, go to File-->Export-->GIF Optimizer.
- When the GIF Optimizer window opens, use the following settings (by clicking each tab):
Transparency (tab):
Areas that match this color (click it and then place the dropper/cursor over your image -- this is how you select the exact color you used above)
Tolerence: 0
Partial Transparency (tab):
Use a 50% dither pattern
No, use the existing image color at 100% opacity
Colors (tab):
How many colors do you want? 256
How much dithering do you want? 0
What method of color selection do you want to use? Optimized Octree
Format and Download Times don't matter, by the way.
You'll see your image displayed left and right at the top of the window (uncompressed and compressed).
NOTE: You know you're ready to actually save when you see the right-hand image without color -- and the transparency checkerboard in place of the color. Click OK.
- You'll be given the opportunity to select where to save your image (on your hard drive) and what to name it. Do this and click the Save button.
Once you've finished that, you can simply close your image without saving. (The export process replaces the standard save.)
Of course, if there are areas on the template you'd prefer to add color to, you can simply select any color from your Materials palette (or a gradient or pattern) and then use the Flood Fill Tool to fill in those white portions of the template with color!
Or you can add a Raster layer with text on top.
The options are only limited by your imagination and creativity!
So go use templates and have fun!
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