Cue Creations - Paintshop Pro Sparkles

GO HOME!!

Tutorial: Sparkle
SPARKLE
Here's a simple little sparkle anyone can make with PSP6 to give their graphics some life.
STEP ONE
Lets start with our 'canvas'. I'm using black as my background color to work with (obviously) but use what you feel like at the moment - but white wouldnt be too good for highlights tho would it? :).
STEP TWO
Now select the 'Preset Shapes' tool, located at the bottom left of the program window (on the 'tool pallette). If the tool palette isn't showing, click on the small 'spanner' () at the top of the screen, or choose [View]>[Toolbars], then make sure 'Tool Palette' is checked.

Choose Hexagon from the 'shape type' dropdown menu, Filled from the 'style' menu and a line width of 1. I find for best results, choose 'antialias' (gives a feathered touch).
STEP THREE
With a foreground color of white (or any other pale color of your choice), left-click and drag from point 'a' to point 'b' (aprox :) ).
STEP FOUR
Select the 'magic wand' () from the tool palette and left-click anywhere on the 'canvas', excluding the white line. Then [selections]>[Invert], and you should now have the white line selected (white lines moving constantly around the line you created). Now follow these points (I will use shortcut keys here, you can always substitute them for an option on the menu bar)

[CTRL]+[C] to copy to the clipboard.
[CTRL]+[E] to paste to the image.
[CTRL]+[R] to rotate - choose 90degrees.

Place cursor over the line, a red 'crosshair' should appear.
Now click and hold on the line and place apropriately.
Select [Selections]>[defloat]
STEP FIVE
Now simply put two more lines on the image. Use the [CTRL]+[E] to paste (the line is still in the clipboard as your last copied item), then [CTRL]+[R] to rotate (use 45degrees this time).
STEP SIX
Next I selected the 'paintbrush tool' with properties of size:80, Hardness:20 and Opacity:20. I put a single click of white onto the image. Next do a couple more clicks of color with smaller varying sizes (I used 55, 35, 25 and 10 (coupla more clicks on 10).


And there we are, a spiffy looking sparkle, made by you without the use of a tube.
Try varying your highlights with the brush.
And try different sized diagonal lines, just make them smaller.

You can make your own tube for a sparkle by following these steps above
just put it all on a layer above a black background, when the top layer (with the sparkle)
is active, [ctrl]+[c] to copy, [ctrl]+[v] paste as new image, then [File]>[Export]>[Picture Tube].

Hope you enjoyed your first sparkle!


Top of page
ABOUT | PORTFOLIO | GALLERY | FREESTUFF | AWARDS | LINKS | GUESTBOOK
Back to Tutorials menu
All Graphics and Content
© Copyright Quentin King 2000-2001