Paint Shop Pro v7 » Cool picture effects

The fairy tale effect

Oki, here are some pretty cool effect I use my self all the time. You know, sometimes your horse pictures looks a bit... plain? Oh heaven, you can change that.

I will start with a blank sheet, so go to File in the top menu, and choose New. Choose a 60 x 60 cm big sheet. I will use this background picture, so paste it as a new layer on to the blank sheet. Do the same with the horse picture. I've already cut the horse out of the background:

We have 3 layers:

Duplicate the horse layer by opening the layer palette (click L on your key board) right click on the horse layer and choose Duplicate.

Add a Gaussian blur to layer 3, by choosing Effects in the top tool bar, Blur then Gaussian blur.

You will get a box up, that looks like this

I usually set the blur to 2,0 - 3,0 depending on how soft you want the final picture to look, and how big the image is.

Now it looks like this

In the layer palette, choose "hard light" on the 4th layer, the layer with the un-blurred horse on:

The picture now looks like this:

Some other examples:

Darken

Same procedure, except instead of choosing "hard light" choose "darken":

Multiply

Same procedure, except instead of choosing "hard light" choose "multiply":

Soft light

Same procedure, except instead of choosing "hard light" choose "soft light":

Burn

Same procedure, except instead of choosing "hard light" choose "burn":

This effect would look good on the text on the picture, like the name. Here, on Fantasia's pic, I've made a new layer, wrote the name on the new layer in a medium light blue, then set the layer to "burn". Choose different colors to see what looks better on your picture. The darker color, the blacker the text will look. If you set the text color to white, it won't show at all.

Luminance

This will make the picture "black and white", only you can choose the colors you want instead of white. Same procedure as the others, except instead of choosing "hard light" choose "luminance". Also, color the layer 1 (the empty bottom one) with the color you want instead of white. I choose hl purple. Then I choose luminance on the layer I want "black and hl purple":

The picture will look like this:

I have chosen luminance on both layers.