Welcome to the Odds N Ends Simply Gold Tutorial for PSP5

This is the original Simply Gold technique that I developed over a year ago. I have upgraded this tutorial for use with PSP version 5. This is still the easiest way I have found to get good looking 3D text for your webpages.You will also find this technique in the book "Creating Paint Shop Pro Web Graphics 2nd", but the name was changed to "Gold Text" for the book. You can still order the book from me if you haven't already gotten a copy. Just drop me an email.

Please be patient for the download...there are a bunch of screenshots on the page.

Open a new image in PSP. I always open images in 16.7 million colors and can decrease color depth from there if I need too. I've chosen black for the background. After you have your new image background, make sure that your foreground color is white. Choose the Text tool and open the text window by clicking on our image. I choose to check floating and anti-alias. Anti-alias makes the edges of the diagonal and curved lines smoother by painting nearby pixels slightly to avoid the "stair step" look. When you have typed your text into the text box of the window, click ok to make it appear on your image. Leave the text selected. Now go to Image|Effects|Cutout to open up the Cutout window. For the cutout effect, I've chosen white for the Interior color and black for the Shadow, Opacity at 40 and Blur at 4. Both Vertical and Horizontal Offsets are 3. Click OK. After applying the Cutout, leave the text selected and go to Colors|Colorize. For the classic Simply Gold in PSP5 make the settings Hue 30, Saturation 204. You can of course experiment from here and come up with a variety of cool colors to use on your images. When you get the color you like, click OK. Ok thats it! You can play with some basic filters to tweek the image some. I like to use combinations of Soften (Image|Blur|Soften) and Sharpen (Image|Sharpen) to get the look I want. Sharpen is good for defining the edges of the cutout but sometimes leaves the edges of the text looking jaggy. This is when I use a Soften filter often followed by more Sharpens to brighten and bring the text back to the state I want. Have fun playing! Here is one that I did a little different. I used a different set of Cutout variables for this one. I used 75 for the Opacity, Blur 3 and -4 for both Offsets. You can see how dark this made the image in the preview window. After the Cutout was applied, I went through a series of Sharpen and Soften filters to get the image brightened up some. Here is the Undo History from the point of applying the Cutout effect. Also notice that by using these steps, the text has more of an authentic metal look to it. Thanks for stopping by and come back soon! Brad