Let's play dominoes!

As always, please be sure to read the TOU before working any of the tutorials. This tutorial assumes you are familiar with your version of PSP and know where your tools are located. Workspaces can differ, therefore the screenshots and directions for the location of the tools used may not be accurate in your workspace, or your version of PSP. If you have problems finding a particular tool, use the program's help file and type the tool name into the "find" window. This image was created in version 9 and will work in version 7 & 8. It looks long, but it is pretty simple really. I use many screenshot so that PSP newbies have as much info as I can provide.

Note that this tutorial isn't for the animation of the above domino image. It is to teach you how to use different effects in PSP to achieve the domino tile. If you do something with the tile, please email me. I'd love to see what you've done. :)

 

Let's get started.

Begin by creating a new image 200px X 100px; 72dpi; transparent.

1. Grab your flood fill tool and flood fill the image with black.

2. Go to effects->3D effects->Inner Bevel and use these settings:

3. Next, grab your pen tool. Set your foreground/stroke to color #c0c0c0 (when you right click in your color swatch, it is the light grey one.) Set your background fill to null.

4. Zoom in so you can see good, (turn your ruler on if it isn't already- under view on the menu bar) and hold down the Shift key and start drawing a straight line - lining up your pen tool as close to 100 on the top ruler as much as possible. See screenshot below to see where to start and end the line.


You don't want your line to begin at the very top of the image, start where the light begins, at the yellow hand. Drag down (holding the shift key) to where the red hand is pointing.

5. In the layer palette, right click on the layer called "Vector 1" and choose duplicate. Now, on the layer named "Copy of Vector1" click the + beside it. Double click on the layer inside called "New Path". (Line in v7.) This opens the vector property box. Change the stroke color to #404040.

6. Now, click on your object selection tool . Hold down the Ctrl key and press the right arrow key once. This moves your dark grey line over to the right 1 pixel, just offsetting the light grey line.

Whew, simple to do, but hard to explain :) Now---for the pips...There are several ways of creating the pips. At first I made mine using vector circles. But many people hate vectors, and although I love working with vectors, I have a hard time teaching about them. Soooooo....Here's how to do it using the paintbrush tool.  :)

7. Create a new raster layer and name it pips. Get your paintbrush tool and set your foreground color to white. (This is very important for the pips to turn out correctly -->Pull down on the "Presets" arrow and hit the button with the curled arrow . This resets your brush variance.)Use these settings for your paintbrush tool.


8. Paint  a single "dot" (again zoom in to see up close where your are working) on the left side of the domino. This step is all about using your judgment in painting your dots (pips). Paint as many or as few as you'd like on the LEFT side of the lines we drew earlier. I painted 6 on the left side. I zoomed into about 400% so that I could see the outline of the brush to determine the spacing between pips.

9. Now that we have the pips drawn on the left side only - Go to Selections->Select All. Then go to Selections->Float. (If your big on shortcuts like myself, Hit Ctrl +A, then Ctrl +F)

10. Go to Effects ->3D Effects->Cutout and use these settings:

11. Get your Dodge tool:

And use these settings for 8 & 9 users:


(V7 users - Shape Cirle, Size 5, Hardness 10, Opacity 14, Step 25, Density 100.)

And touch up the light areas of each pip you made. Don't go up into the grey part too much, or you will lose the "sunk-in" illusion of the pip. Do this to all the pips you made.

12. Deselect. (Selections ->Select None)

13. Right click on your pip layer in the layer palette and choose duplicate.

14. Grab your Raster Deform tool. Hold down the Ctrl key and hit your right arrow key until you have your 2nd layer of pips moved to the right side of the domino to your liking. (I didn't use Image/Mirror because of the "lighting" of the pips.)

***TIP ALERT*** Before doing a final save, you can go to Image ->Image Information and click on the "Creator Information" tab. In the description field, add the tutorial url (and other info, such as font used). Then save as a psp file. That information is saved along with the image. The next time you say (to yourself, of course...) "I wish I could remember where that tut is, you will have the information available in the image itself. Cool, huh?

Save your image as a psp file. Now, you can resize and make a tag from it, or whatever your heart so desires. Export as a jpg or gif to you liking.

I hope you've enjoyed this lesson and learned something new about PSP that you didn't know before. :)