Paint Shop Pro v7 » Style up your picture
How many times have we seen those pictures that are nice, but don’t really look… pro… So I’m going to post some tips on how to make your picture get that little extra.
First, this is the picture I’m going to style up. You can see that it has some… issues, but perhaps they are not as obvious to many, or perhaps you can’t see how to make it better.
Ok, let’s see what’s “wrong” with the picture
The horse is badly cut out. When you cut, make sure you remove ALL the white spots. They ruin the quality. Spend a lot of time on the cutting. There are no easy ways out, and people will see the white spots, so don’t fool your self ;)
The horse picture is of good quality, but the horse looks so washed out. We can change that by adding some hard light + Gaussian blur effect. If you don’t know how to do that, check the tutorial called “cool pic effects”.
Now, that background picture… it’s nice and all, but it’s to “flashy” and the flowers are way to big compared to the horse. So I’ll find another background picture.
If the horse touches the ground, fade it’s hoofs a bid so it looks like he is on the ground, not just float on it. If you can’t find a background picture that makes it look like the horse run on the ground, don’t place the horse “in the air” – it makes it looks like it flies… A horse can’t fly :P Rather put it outside the picture or walking on the border we will add later.
Now, the name… The color is often used by new designers. It doesn’t look good, face it. Try to pick a color that matches the picture. Use the eye dropper and picture a color from the background picture. If you don’t know how to use the eye dropper, check the “hl purple and blue”-tutorial for tips. I’ll use light beige that matches the picture. And I don’t really like the font either, so I’ll pick a font I like better. I will also write it a more suited place, and that is not covering the horse's neck.
I have written the font on a new raster layer, in case I want to change the font, name or color later.
Now, it’ll look better with a 1 pixel black border around the picture. It almost always does. Use the preset shapes tool, at the bottom of the left tool bar. Make it a vector so you can change the with and height if you place it wrong. Then go to Layers in the top tool bar and click on “convert to raster layer”.
Now, the last thing. Make sure the purple matches. It’s nothing worse than a purple that doesn’t match. The hl purple hex code is #BB88BB. But you do not need to go around remembering that. You can press print screen on your key board when you are visiting a random horse, than paste the shot in PSP. Then use the eye dropper on the purple. All this is explained in the “hl purple and blue” tutorial. If you are lazy like me, you can paste the hex color in the color set for a tool you never use.
It looks a lot better huh? Don’t forget to write the horse’s id on and your copyright on – BIG, or the noobs will steal it. It’s weird they think it’ll make their horses look pro, and all it does it making them selves look noobish.