Outlining

Actually, this is about the easiest thing to do out of all the tricks in my hat. So we'll start off with it. If you haven't read the Layers tutorial yet and aren't familiar with layers, GO DO IT NOW.

When I first started painting cars in Paint Shop Pro 3, I got REALLY clever with the 'Hot Wax Coating' effect that comes with PSP. That was a good thing, actually. It forced me to learn about negative imaging and color adjustments (more about them in another tutorial <G>). Then I got my grubby little paws on the Eye Candy set of filters, and used the 'glow' filter. It worked better, but still not quite right. Then I got Paint Shop Pro 5 and discovered layers, 'defloating', and the 'modify-expand' option in the selections menu& the rest is precision outlining history.

Take this number; my favorite number, 7. It's white with a red outline, then another black outline. Pretty standard stuff. ;) Except that its actually three layers deep. The top layer has the normal white #7, which I created using the Text Tool. The next layer down has the exact same thing, but the selection has been
expanded in each direction by several pixels, and filled with red. The layer below that has been further expanded and filled with black. You're not actually outlining, you're making larger versions below the normal sized text on top. When they're stacked below the main number, they appear to 'outline' the original text or number. See, look at the contents of the separate layers side-by-side:

  



Theoretically, you could have as many outlines as you want, you just need to have one layer for each extra outline you want to include. After you get so many pixels from the original selection, it tends to lose shape, so I don't recommend going beyond 3 or 4 outlines on anything. Any more than that is really gawdy anyway.

You're probably wondering what the heck 'defloating' is and what it has to do with outlining numbers. Well, it's a little complicated, but it's very important, so I'll do my best to explain. ;)

    Defloating and Expanding Selections

There are two kinds of selection areas; a floating selection, and a non-floating selection. When you create text using the Text tool, it automatically places it in a new layer called, not surprisingly, 'floating selection'. Try activating another layer and filling the selection area with another color& doesn't work, does it? That's because the text and it's selection area are 'floating between or above' the layers.

Now, if you defloat the selection ('defloat' is located in the 'selections' menu, but I added a button for this on my toolbar because I use it so much.), it will place your text on the layer directly below where your 'floating selection' layer was. Now if you try to fill the selection area with another color, PSP will let you do that. (you'll have to do it in a layer above, or you won't see it because your original text is in the way.) Basically, defloating the selection allows you to edit the selection area on any or all of the other layers.

Now let's take what we've learned one step further.

Create a 600x100 image with 5 layers (a few extra layers never hurts <G>). Activate the top layer, and throw some black text on it. Let's use your name for this one. Do it fairly large, say 36 point, and choose a relatively fat font. If you have Cooper, that's a good one to use.


Now, don't right-click on anything, because you want to keep the little marching ants. Center your text, and defloat the selection (through the selections menu). You'll notice when you do that, the 'floating selection' layer disappears. PSP laid your text in the layer right below where the 'floating selection' layer was, which is Layer5.

Now activate the next layer down (Layer4), and choose red as one of your colors. Now go up to the selections menu again, and go to 'modify-expand'. Let's use 7 as the number of pixels we want to expand. Click OK and-HOLY LORD, IT'S GROWING!! The selection area has expanded by 7 pixels. Now fill that area with red (make sure you're on the next layer down from the black text). Ohhhh boy. How do ya like that? You just got a perfect outline in about 4 steps.


Once you climb off the floor and back in to your office chair <G>, activate the next layer down and expand it again. This time choose 10 pixels and then fill the area with yellow. Slicker'n snot on a doorknob, huh? ;)


Here's the beauty of this. Not only can you do the outlines, you can even do outlines of different widths like we did in the demonstration. Guess what else? If you don't like the color of one of the outlines, you can CHANGE it by either adjusting the hue/saturation/lightness of that layer, or by using the 're-selecting' trick and filling it with a different color.

Ok, so now you've got this cool-looking, outlined text or number, but it's in three layers. Well, if it's already the size you need, you can link those three layers together (check out the Layers tutorial for instructions on linking layers) and move them together with the move layer tool to wherever you need them. A better way to do it (although you can't go back and change the colors this way) is to make all the other layers invisible and then 'merge visible' on just the layers that make up the outlined number or text. Then you have them all smashed into one layer.

Hopefully you played along with the demonstration. If you did, you probably already realize how easy outlining is. For people who wonder how I make my numbers. THIS IS HOW I MAKE MY NUMBERS. I may run a bevel filter on the original number before defloating it, but the outlining procedure is always the same.

There are a few tricks you can do with this. One of them is to move the outlines off-center a few pixels, and that creates this kind of effect:


All I did was use the Move Layer tool to drag each of the two outlining layers down and to the right a few pixels. It's a real easy thing to do, and it's a very sharp and eye-catching effect. You can also run beveling filters on the outlines themselves, I use that trick from time to time, and it usually turns out very nice on a silver or white outline. ;)

This is how I create my numbers and text logos. So, once you've got your base scheme done, you're going to really put this technique to use. Here's a tip, create the number VERY big, and save it out... then you can copy and paste it for each spot the number goes on the car. That will allow you to resize, deform, rotate, and tweak the number for each place it appears on the car. So now you know how to do numbers! Pretty cool. huh?

After you repeat the process a few times, it'll become second nature and you'll be outlining things in a few seconds. If you didn't play along, GO DO IT. If you did, well done.

Now I'm going to teach you how to take another image of a company logo and import it onto your car.Click Here to move on. ;)
E-MAIL RPS