Sirens Song

YOU WILL NEED:

* Paint Shop Pro and Animation Shop or similar. I used PSPX but you should be able to make this tag in earlier versions.

* Image of choice (with a fairly uncluttered background). I am using the artwork of Abranda Icle Sisson. You need a license to use her artwork. Tubes, images and lots of other goodies can be purchased from Muddvision Studios

* Font of choice. I used Arial in the first example and Beautiful ES in the second.

* Tramages Pool Shadow Filter HERE (click on Graphisme Photoshop then on the next page Filtres then Tramages).

* Black and White Scrapkit by Fee from Scrappy Dayz. You can download it HERE.


LETS START!

1. Open your supplies in PSP. Open your font (by double clicking on it in Windows Explorer) and minimise to use later.

2. Open a new image 500 x 500 with a white background.

3. Resize your tube/image to 80% and copy and paste to your canvas. Sharpen if necessary. If your tube is small it may not be necessary to resize. Select - select all - float - defloat.

4. Add a new raster layer. Floodfill with black or a dark colour from your tube. Select none. Apply Gaussian Blur at the following settings -

5. Apply the Blinds effect to this layer at the following settings. Repeat the effect and untick the Horizontal box.

6. Copy the beads layer from the scrapkit and resize to 80%. Position at the edge of image and duplicate. Mirror the duplicate. Duplicate the layer again and Image - Free Rotate 90 degrees (duplicate this layer after you have erased some of the beads to make it fit, if required.). Carefully erase some of the beads and make a frame from the bead layers. When you are satisfied with the position of the beads, merge the four bead layers together.

7. Activate your blur layer. Copy and paste the black flourish to your canvas. Position it at the top right hand corner so that it shows from under the image. Duplicate, mirror, reposition if necessary and merge to the other flourish layer. Duplicate, flip image, reposition if necessary and merge to the other flourish layer.

8. Activate your tube/image layer and duplicate twice. Close off two of the layers. Use your magic wand on the following settings to select the parts of the background you want to animate. Once selected, apply Tramages Pool Shadow at the setting given below. Change the Diagonal and Centre by 20 for each of the other layers.

9. I added some accents from my tube/image to fill out the side of the frame.

10. Merge your white background layer, black blur layer, black flourish layer and accent layer (if used) together. Duplicate twice. Merge a pool shadow layer to each background layer.

11. Activate your frame layer layer and add copyright information and watermark. Merge these layers together and duplicate twice. Merge a frame to each backgroud layer.

12. Activate your text tool and select a complimentary colour for your text. Type your title or message at the following settings. Promote selection to layer and position your text. Repeat process with your name. NOTE We are going to apply pool shadow to the text so don't use black or white as your text colour. I used #808080.

13. Merge your text layers together and duplicate twice. Apply Pool Shadow at the settings previously used to your text layer. Merge a text layer to each of your background layers. Save as an Animation Shop .psp file.

14. Open your file in Animation Shop. Edit - Select All. Animation - Frame Properties - change to 40.

15. Save as a .gif and you are done. I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. Here is an example of the technique used on a coloured image