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Paint Shop Pro Tutorials -- Steel Plate and Screws

Creating a Steel Plate and Screws with Paint Shop Pro

This is an idea that I came up with and implemented in Photoshop. I was recently asked to create some interfaces for a project and, with my well-known love for metallics, I created a metal plate with screws in it. I'll demonstrate a cut-down version here to show you that many images can be created with PSP as effectively as they can with Photoshop.

Seeing this image in the cut-down version may give you an idea for some buttons. In fact, one of the readers of the Photoshop tutorials created buttons for his pages using the technique as described in the Photoshop version of this tutorial.

Open a new 300x100x16.7 million color image.

Choose Image, Special Filters, Add Noise. Set the %Noise to 90 and select the Random method. This will fill the image with random colored pixels.

Choose Colors, Grey Scale and then Colors, Increase Color Depth, 16 Million Colors (24 bit). Having done this the image will now be filled with pixels of various shades of grey. Make sure that you bump the color depth back up, though, so that the other filters you'll be applying will work.

Choose Image, Deformations, Motion Blur. Set the Direction to 135 degrees and the Intensity to 15 pixels.

Set the background color to white. This can be done by right-clicking on a white area in the color swatch palette.

Choose Image, Special Effects, Buttonize. Set the Edge Size (%) to 6 and select the Transparent Edge option.

You should now have a metallic-looking plate with bevelled edges as shown in figure 18.1.

figure 18.1

As an alternative you could use a mask to bevel the metal plate (see the "Magic of Masks" tutorials).

Choose Masks, New, Empty.

Choose Masks, Edit to turn on the mask. You should see your image turn completely black. Don't panic... this is the mask.

Select the Selection tool and set the options to:

Selection Type: Circle
Feather: 5

Place the mouse pointer in the upper-left corner of the mask and watch the lower corner of the main window (see figure 18.2). This is where the coordinates of the mouse are displayed. Move the mouse until the coordinates read (20, 20).

figure 18.2

Click-and-drag the mouse until the coordinates show you that you have a 60x60 pixel circular selection. The first set of numbers show you the beginning point, the second set show the ending point, and the third set of numbers show you the dimensions of your selection (see figure 18.2).

Set the foreground color to a dark grey (the background color should still be white).

Select the Flood Fill tool and set the options as follows:

Match Mode: None
Tolerance: 0
Fill Style: Linear Gradient

Click the Options button to bring up the Gradient Fill Direction dialog box.

Enter 135 degrees for the direction.

Click OK and then click anywhere inside the selection to fill it with the gradient.

Select the selection tool, again. This time draw a 60x60 circular selection starting at (280, 20). Fill it with the same gradient as above. You should now have a mask that resembles figure 18.3.

figure 18.3

Choose Masks, Edit to return to the image.

Choose Colors, Adjust, Brightness/Contrast and set the %Brightness to 20 and the %Contrast to 0.

Choose Masks, Edit to turn the mask back on.

TIP: Choose Image, Flip and then Image, Mirror. This will reverse the gradients in the mask without you having to redo the selections and the Flood Fill because the image is symmetrical.

Choose Masks, Edit to turn the mask off.

Choose Colors, Adjust, Brightness/Contrast and set the %Brightness to -25 and the %Contrast to 0.

You'll now have two circular indents in the metal plate (see figure 18.4).

figure 18.4

To finish off the image you'll add a couple of screws. To accomplish this you'll do something that many people never think of doing when creating an image... you'll open another couple of new images so that you can create the screws and add them to the metal plate.

Choose File, New and open a new file that's 50x50x16.7 million colors.

Select the selection tool and set the Selection Type to Circle and the Feather to 0.

Select a circular area that's 25x25 pixels.

Left-click on the small, bent, two-headed arrow below the foreground/background color swatches to swap the foreground and background colors.

Select the Flood Fill tool. Set the Fill Style to Sunburst Gradient and click the Options button.

In the Gradient Fill Origin dialog box, set the Vertical to 67 and the Horizontal to 30. Click OK.

Click anywhere in the selected area to fill it with the gradient.

Choose Edit, Copy. Click in the title bar of the main image and choose Edit, Paste, Paste as New Selection to paste the screw onto the metal plate. Center the screw over one of the indents and click the mouse to drop it into place. Choose Edit, Paste, Paste as New Selection a second time and center the second screw over the other indent (see figure 18.5).

figure 18.5

Open another 50x50x16.7 million color image.

Select the selection tool and set the Selection Type to Rectangle.

Draw a 22x5 rectangular selection.

Left-click on the small, bent, two-headed arrow below the foreground/background color swatches to swap the foreground and background colors.

Select the Flood Fill tool and set the Fill Style to Linear Gradient. Click the Options button and, in the Gradient Fill Direction dialog box, set the Direction to 0 degrees. Click OK and click anywhere inside the selected area to fill it with the gradient.

Choose Image, Rotate and, in the Rotate dialog box, select Free and 135 degrees. Click OK to rotate the selection.

You may want to zoom-in to finish up...

Choose Edit, Copy. Click the title bar of the main image and choose Edit, Paste, Paste as New Selection. Position the screw slit into place over one of the screws.

Choose Edit, Paste, Paste as New Selection a second time and position the second screw slit into place over the other screw (see figure 18.6).

figure 18.6

You can add text or, if you made a larger plate, buttons or even embed some clip-art into the interface. Have some fun with this one and see what you can come up with. Figure 18.7 shows the plate with one of GrafX Design's logos embedded in it.

figure 18.7

Good luck and have fun.

That's it.... Be sure to check out some of our other Paint Shop Pro tutorials.

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