DISigners using PhotoImpact?? Help!

[Moeluv4u7]

Any of you who use this to design...
I am totally lost- I have never tried this before but would really love to- I have searched tutorials and keep finding things that just explain effects etc-
How Do I Start!!????
I open a new file...
I grabbed a pic (disney image) from my pictures-
Now what?? I have "played" but have no idea what I am doing...
Should I work from "2" screens at once?
Say if I want to ... Oh, let's say take a "piece" of the image out and soften the edges and make it circular and have a different color shadowed behind the image and maybe make it glow and then have a name or year etc at the top of the image but overlapping the circle...
I know, I know, It seems I may as well just have you all make these great designs for me, huh?? I feel completely inept and if any of you can point me to a step by step beginners tutorial for image design or whatever it would be called... If I can get started I can probably figure out the rest- I just don't know "what" should be done before "what"

Such as above... do I make my circle first and shadow it etc and then "import" the piece of the image I want into it or do I do it the way I described above...
I know I should be looking for "Designing for Dummies" Hoping someone here can help me to start up though & I can fumble my way through the rest...

 

[chaoscent]

I am not good at writing directions, but if I remember correctly there were some PI tutorials in one of the stickies at the top of this thread. If that doesn't work, PM me. Penny

 

[Moeluv4u7]

Chaos,
I sent ya a PM and I appreciate any insight- Thx!

 

[chaoscent]

starting over

 

[chaoscent]

The Making of Marie

Autograph Card

Here how I did an autograph card in Photo Impact.

• Top of page, left hand side, hit the file drop down box, choose new image.
• New Image Box comes up. Now you got choices as to what you want to do. If you are going to be adding clip art that has white behind it, hit the white button (I don’t know what the data type buttons are for, but DOM13 was trying to tell me so I will probably work on that soon).
• You can use a custom color, I did that for some designs, but mostly I use the transparent button.
• Preview – do you want it Landscape or Portrait. For my autograph cards I want it portrait.
• Go to image size. Now, for some odd reason they have 4x6 cards as an option but it comes up on my computer looking like a portrait size. So instead of standard, I use user defined. I make the margins width 6 (make sure it’s in inches) and the height is 4. I don’t know how to copy screens or I would do that and paste the screen here?
• Now I have a checkboard box that comes up in my work space.
• Now I need a background. You have two options. You can insert a background or cut and paste a background. Make sure the background is big enough. I try and use wallpapers. If they aren’t big enough, it will come out blurry when you print it. If you have any doubt, look at in print preview before spending hours working on it.
• I am cutting and pasting because I am picking big backgrounds that aren’t 4x6 and won’t fit in the 4x6 space.
• So now I am going to open a 2nd file. I click file, open and pick the background file I want to use.
• Now that it is open in PI, I hit the crop button. Now the way mine came up the crop button is on the left. If it isn’t click around on the tool bars and click on the toolbox tool bar. It is the 6th one down and when you roll your mouse over it, it says crop.
• Crop it to the size you want it. I haven’t figured out how to make it 4x6 so this takes me a while of trial and error. I can pretty while eyeball it by now (or at least pretty close)
• the go to the edit drop down and hit crop.
• then hit the box under the crop tool. It is called the transform tool.
• then you can copy the cropped image from this background image. (I use control button & C for copy or you can right click it)
• then I paste it in my first project, the blank document with the transparent background.
• Now this one I was lucky on and it is the size I wanted. But if it wasn’t, I would go back to the original document, hit the edit drop down, hit undo before, hit the crop tool again and it will bring me to where the crop recently was. That way I know if I have to make the crop it bigger/smaller. I make the adjustments and hit the file drop down, crop button again. Then I copy and paste again.
• once you have it the size you want and it is pasted in the file with the transparent back, drag the corners out. Leave a little bit of space around all 4 sides. The way I do it is to right click and hit align, center both.
• Now, I want to lighten it up so an autograph can be signed on the card. This is a step you would skip if you were doing a t-shirt, unless you wanted to play around with the quality of the picture.
• to lighten the picture, go to the drop down box at the top and hit photo, then color, then hue & saturation. I move it to about 80% on the lightness line (bottom one). You can still see it, but it is pretty light. I don’t touch the others as I haven’t figured out what they do. LOL
• Now I want a frame. Well let me tell you, when I bought the new version of PI, I couldn’t find the frame button for the life of me. So if you have the new version, go to the “share” drop down box at the top of the page and hit photo frame.
• now there are many different types of photo frames to use. I like the simpler ones as I am going to be putting the t-shirts on dark transfers, because I don’t wear white shirts. It is easier to cut out a simpler frame. I always use a frame as otherwise I would have to cut around everything and that isn’t easy for me.
• So I check these buttons. First check frame, then check style to Photo Frame 3D. Then check “do not merge frame” (you want to be able to play around with the color, bump, etc. and if you merge it, you can’t make any changes to it.
• then pick a frame you like. You can also change the color in here if you want or wait until after the frame has been picked. I don’t normally mess with the inner shape/outer shape. However, I sometimes will pick a frame I want & change the inner shape/outer shape for a new look. This is something you need to play with.
• I click ok, my frame cuts away the outside of the picture I have. I then click on another button, just to get out of the mode I am in and then click the path drawing tool. That will allow me to change the attributes of the frame. Then go to Galleries (on the right), then to Text/Path Effects, then to Material Attribute Gallery, then go into Bevels and pick a bevel that will make your frame pop so it looks 3 D. I used B-27 on the Marie autograph card. You can also change the color by looking in the top left and see the color there. Right click on it and see the many options you have. If you are doing a t-shirt and you want to match a color in the shirt you can do that. If you want to go a little lighter right click and pick windows color picker and move the slider up or down. This & fonts is where I spend most of my time. Everything I am telling you about frames is also applicable to fonts.
• Don’t forget to save…… Save as an UFO. Very important, if you save as a jpg, it all goes together and you can’t change anything.
• I now am adding a picture of Marie to the card. I hit object, insert image object and then hit “from file”. I go to my Aristocats file folder and find a gif of Marie that I like. You will find many gifs here http://www.disneyclips.com/
• you can make your own gifs, I did send you the directions for that in another folder, but they can be a pain to do. J
• So I find a picture I like and figure out if I am going to make it bigger, smaller, flip it and where I am going to place it. (You are now working on a new layer btw).
• once the object is copied into your project, hit the transform button on the left so you can play with the object. I am flipping it horizontally (button at the top) and making it a little bigger, using the corner of the box arrows. I am also going to add the Aristocats Logo to the project, so I follow the same steps.
• I decide I don’t like the first logo I put in so I delete it. I then put another one in and go to move it. By mistake (this happens a lot when I am not paying attention or in a hurry, which is why I am adding it to the directions) I move the bottom layer. Just hit the edit drop down button and hit undo before, move object.
• I then put the logo where I want it.
• Now comes the font. You need to know I am OCD about the fonts. So I have quite a few fonts saved and I constantly troll for new ones. Now I kind of want it to match the logo. So I spend time doing that & realize I don’t have a font that I like that will match it. SO Now I open Word and go into my 27 page font listing and use Find/Replace and put Marie in replacing something else I had in there. I come up with 4 or 5 fonts I like so I play with them in PI.
• Start with hitting text (above the crop button). Type in what you want. Then right click it until it has the box around it and hit “edit attributes”. Now go to your attribute toolbar. Mine is at the top of my screen. Right click color. I made the color the color of Marie’s bow by hitting eyedropper, then taking the eye dropper to her bow. Then I right clicked on the font, went to the drop down box and picked the font I wanted. I settled on Black Chancery as I have been on this project off/on since this morning and I want to finish it today. LOL
• I then change the font size. I settle for 222 as it looks ok at that size.
• then I hit border and right click the color next to where it says border. I hit the eye dropper and go back to Marie’s bow. I then go back, right click color again and hit “Windows Color Picker”. It brings up the color in a bar on the right. I slide it down to make it darker so it is outlined by a darker shade of the font color. I outline it by 7. then I hit the shadow button.
• Now you can go to the shadows in the material attribute gallery and play around with them. If you want to change them, right click and hit properties and you can change them, but that’s another lesson.
• You can also play with the “bump” in the materials attribute. There are many different looks you can get by playing around in here.
• also play with the bevel button. As mentioned before, this is where you can make your wording POP. If you use a bevel, your wording won’t look flat.
• Now when you are all done, save it again to make sure you got the UFO file saved. That way you can go back, check the text, change the color of the font and the frame, add or take away clip art, etc.
• then save as a jpg. That way you can upload it. Go here to see the final project, http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=1954409&page=3
• hope this was helpful

If you want a copy of this in word email me at chaoscent@verizon.net

Here's the finished project if you want to follow along.

Penny