Reminder: Effects can be applied to masks

[photodrawken]

This really doesn't qualify as a tutorial, rather it's a reminder that various effects (including distortions) can be applied to masks to achieve interesting results.

Take this somewhat boring publicity photo, for example:

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1. Make an elliptical selection, re-position it as necessary, and feather it by 20px.
2. Create a mask from that selection:

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3. Apply Effects...Texture Effects...Polished Stone to the mask with these settings:

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4. Apply Effects...Distortion Effects...Ripple to the mask with these settings:

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The final image:

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The combination of the polished stone and ripple effects works nicely here, since the final effect is similar to the loose strands of her hair style.

I used the KPT Collection's KPT Noize effect to create a nebulous background and added a yellow-to-blue gradient layer above it (set to "Multiply" mode); and a bevel layer style to the text, reducing the kerning after the capital J's to -50. I also applied the Smart Photo Fix to the original photo, reducing the brightness slightly.

The layers look like this:

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Have fun!

[Kathy_9]

That was fun!!

[photodrawken]

Hi Kathy,
Glad you liked it. I can imagine masking a fireworks shot and using the "Stitches" effect on the mask, or applying the "Wind" effect to a mask of someone running across a field, or....

Thanks for posting your image -- I hadn't done a text effect like that before, so I had to work at it to get something similar. Ran into beaucoup problems, but trial-and-error got me there.

Then I found a problem with PSPX5: If I apply a "Drop Shadow" effect to a text layer and then resize the image down (to about 35%), the distance between the drop shadow and the text increases. There's no way to adjust for that, so the only way to create the drop shadow is to make a selection from the text and fill the selection with black on a raster layer, offset that layer, and blur it. Bummer!

Anyway, I'm glad you posted your image because I learned something.

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[LeviFiction]

How did you apply the Drop Shadow? Layer Style or actual Effect?

[Kathy_9]

Ken - I did my drop shadow by using the Layer Styles -> Drop Shadow. You can re-size and your shadow stays in place.

If you use the Effects -> 3D Effects -> Drop Shadow you run into the issue you mentioned.

[photodrawken]

Hey guys,
I used the Layer Style for the drop shadow. Will post examples in a little while, right now PSP is in a crashing frenzy....

[photodrawken]

OK, after running CCleaner, clearing out the Temp directory and PSP's cache directory, and re-setting the Preferences, PSP will run long enough to generate a couple of examples.

1. Create a new image, 6in wide x 4in high, at a resolution of 300px/in, with a transparent raster background.
2. Set the foreground colour to transparent and the background colour to white.
3. Select the text tool:
Font: Adobe Caslon Pro
Size: 72pt.
Style: Bold
Alignment: Centered
Create on: Vector
Anti-alias: Sharp
Stroke width: 0
Leading: -0.500
Auto kern checked

4. Apply a drop shadow layer style with a size of "5" at x="-0.01" y="0.01"

The image is displayed at 56% (fit to screen) in the program, here's a screen capture at that displayed size:

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5. Resized the image to 56%, displayed it at full size and did a screen capture:

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Not only is the shadow significantly softer, it's also displaced down and to the right.

[LeviFiction]

With Layer Styles it makes sense. It's too bad the Layer Style settings can't resize with the rest of the image.

[photodrawken]

With Layer Styles it makes sense. It's too bad the Layer Style settings can't resize with the rest of the image.

Explain, please. I'm coming from Photoshop Elements, and I seem to recall that somewhere in its settings was one for "Scale effects with image". I don't remember having this obvious a change with image resizing in PSE....

[LeviFiction]

You don't want to compare poorly copied elements in PSP to those in PSE. Layer styles are one such feature. They could be so much more but have languished greatly since their initial introduction in PSPX2. I mean, X5 was the first time we got any decent control over the values of Layer Styles.

PSP doesn't resize the layer style values to match the newly sized image. And since these values are relative to the current size, they look different when applied to smaller layers. Position, I believe, is percentage based. So .01 is larger on a smaller image than on larger image creating the effect you're seeing.

[Kathy_9]

Okay, I see what you are saying now. I wasn't re-sizing the entire image; only the text layer by dragging on the bounding box to make it the size I wanted. I didn't see any increase in the distance between the text and shadow. The only distortion I noticed was if I made the text a lot smaller, the drop shadow looked a little fuzzy.

In the example below I created the text; added drop shadow; duplicated the text layer twice. The top layer is the original the middle layer is where I dragged the bounding box to make the text larger and the bottom layer is where I dragged the bounding box to make the text smaller.

Click image to make larger.

[photodrawken]

You don't want to compare poorly copied elements in PSP to those in PSE. Layer styles are one such feature. They could be so much more but have languished greatly since their initial introduction in PSPX2. I mean, X5 was the first time we got any decent control over the values of Layer Styles.

OK, then this is an area where PSP needs improvement. To my thinking, a "layer style" is an algorithm that is applied to the layer and the resulting effect should look the same regardless of any subsequent changes to the layer, including re-sizing. IOW, a "layer style" (by definition) is not something that creates a permanent set of unchanging pixels.

(I tried first hiding the layer style before downsizing the image and re-enabling the layer style on the smaller image, but that didn't work.)

Where's the best place to request improvements to PSP? Is the "Wish List" discussion on this forum monitored by Corel, or is there another "official" way to make Corel aware of this?

Position, I believe, is percentage based. So .01 is larger on a smaller image than on larger image creating the effect you're seeing.

Uh, no. If an effect is percentage-based, then the effect will automatically be scaled.

[photodrawken]

Okay, I see what you are saying now. I wasn't re-sizing the entire image; only the text layer by dragging on the bounding box to make it the size I wanted. I didn't see any increase in the distance between the text and shadow. The only distortion I noticed was if I made the text a lot smaller, the drop shadow looked a little fuzzy.

Yes, that's my point -- if the layer style is scaled when only the text bounding box is dragged, the same should be true if the entire image is re-sized.

[LeviFiction]

I apologize, you're right. I was working off of the assertion that there was more to it than simply adjusting for the value, as perception of pixels also changes with size. 1 pixel seems to traverse more distance on a smaller image than on a larger one, especially when zoomed.

However, it seems that Layer Styles don't adjust properly after resizing. If you take the exact same image and duplicate it, the layer style adjusts to your expectations. So it seems like the Layer Style is basing its values on the original image even after resizing. Or at least something similar to that. I found that out when I duplicated my image and the one that had been resized looked different from the duplicated one.

So, saving and reopening, duplicating, or using the actual Drop Shadow effect instead of Layer Style will help you adjust for this flaw in the rendering. I have submitted a bug report on beta forum. Don't know if that's still being monitored.

[Kathy_9]

Yes, that's my point -- if the layer style is scaled when only the text bounding box is dragged, the same should be true if the entire image is re-sized.

Yep, I agree.