Golden KPT Heart Tutorial by Angie

I used this technique to make a Golden Anniversary card for my parents recently.  I hope you enjoy it :)

For this tutorial, you'll need:

PSP7, KPT5

My zip which contains my golden heart preset and the cool kitchen environment for shapeshifter.  Unzip them into your kpt5/shapeshifter/environment folder.  I will also include my PSP heart shape, in case you'd rather not try the vectors... D/L it here.

  1. Open new transparent image, 400 X 400.    

  2. **NOTE: If you intend to print this out as a card, make your image at least 150 dpi resolution, depending on the abilities of your printer.  I made the heart first, then copy/pasted it into a 150dpi, 860X680 image.  Then I added a bottom layer, added my background and borders.  I  printed it out on photo paper, then glued it onto my 1/2 fold landscape orientation card.**                  Okay,  onto the tutorial :)

  3. Using the shape tool, filled and outlined white, vector and antialias checked, draw a white circle by holding down shift while drawing an elipse,  in the middle of your canvas.  (When you draw things on a vector, it will automatically create a new layer for you.)
  4. Click on your object selector tool, and choose node edit in the tool options box.  Now, drag the bottom node downward, and move the arrows upward on each side.  If you want a unique shaped heart, (I call it HeartNouveau),  make the sides irregular.  Move the side nodes outwards and up also.
  5. Now, add a node on each top side of the elipse, and node edit as we did in the step above.  You can try all sorts of shapes, by redoing your nodes and moving the sides around.  When it is the way you like, right click and choose "quit node edit".
  6. You can now save your heart as a shape, if you wish, so you can use it again in PSP.  Click on the + symbol in the layer palette of layer 2.  It will open a new line for the vector, with the word "elipse".  Click on this and rename it to "heartnouveau", press enter.  While it is still hilited, go to File/Export/shape/heartnouveau.  Your new heart is now in your shape library of PSP.  Since we used white to draw it, the image doesn't show up in the tool options box, but the word "heart nouveau" will show you where it is.
  7. Now we can right click on the layer 2, and convert it to a raster.
  8. Selections/select all, float to get it selected.   Modify/expand by 1.
  9. Now we can apply the KPT gold :)  Choose KPT5 Shapeshifter/load the golden egg preset by clicking on the bottom left button.  It should appear under golden heart.
  10. If you don't have the shiny cool kitchen environment appearing, click on the environ. window and find your presets/cool kitchen map to load.

    To Create a Mask Image:  For my parents picture, I opened a new white image 500X500 and copied an elipse photo onto the center, and  added a drop shadow.  This worked perfect as a mask in shapeshifter.  You can use any image you like for embossing.  Tubes work very well also.  Place the tube in the center of the 500X500 image. Save as a .jpg.   (If you use a smaller size mask image, you may get the square edges showing up in shapeshifter with your embossing.)

    Don't they look wonderful? 

    To get the image embossed on your heart, just click on the mask window, and browse for your mask image you've just made.  You can move it around to where you want using the shift/move mouse trick :)  Try out different emboss scales and heights till you get the look you like.  

  11. You can experiment with the settings of the bevel, mix environment and lighting for different effects.  I used a bevel scale of 9%, bevel height of 25%; for environment - tinting colour at 46%, mix environment at 55%, other items stayed same.
  12. A very important step is softening the edges.  It makes it look so much smoother and cleaner.  Use your magnify tool, working on the golden heart layer,  and use these settings to gently soften out the edges all around the heart and embossing.

      You should test out different settings for the soften tool, just to lightly touch the edges and smooth out the gold.

  13. Once you're satisfied with your heart, apply a drop shadow.  I used Eye Candy perspective shadow..

     

    If you are making it into a card, merge all visible layers, copy/paste onto your larger image (860X680 150 dpi).  Now add a new layer, move it to the bottom, and flood fill with a colour or pattern of your choice.  I used Fantastic Machines paint engine on mine, and framed with cutouts.  

    And here's another card I've made:

 

That's it!  I hope you had fun and learned more about KPT and the power it has :)
Thanks for trying out my tutorial.

Please feel free to email me if you have any comments or questions :)

ŠAngie's Art, August 2001

 
 

 

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ŠAngie's Art 2000-2008

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