Spazzy Neon Sign
Tutorial by Whisper

This tutorial was created and put on this site on March 1, 2003.
It is property of and ©2001-2003 to Whisper's Web Works.
Please do not copy or place this tutorial or any of the graphics on any site,
email or elist without written permission directly from me. If you would like to share the url for this tutorial, you may do so without writing for permission, but I always welcome a "who, where" email.  Thank you.

For this tutorial you will need:
Paint Shop Pro  ~ download a trial version.

Open a new image:
600 x 300 pixels
Transparent
16.7 Million colors

Open your color palette.

We will be working with basically four colors all with the same hue and saturation but different light settings.  You can easily see those groups listed in rows under Basic Colors.  We will work with the reds.

(Click for larger view.)

Set your foreground color to the darkest red - #400000 and your background color to the medium red - #C00000.  Set both style boxes to solid fill.

Select your text tool and in your Tool Options box set the width to 2 and the line style to solid.

Click on your image and your Text Entry box will open.  Choose a nice wide and rounded text to work with.

I have chosen Comic Sans MS set at:
Size 140
Bold
Vector & Antialias selected.

Type OPEN.

(Click for larger view.)

Objects > Align > Center in canvas.

Activate your Object Selector tool. Right click on your text and create raster selection.

Selections > Save to Alpha channel > ok > (name if you wish) ok.

In your layer palette right click on the vector layer and convert to raster.

Leave your marching ants!

Set your foreground to a red in between the two you used for the text.  I am using the third one from the left in the red row - #800000.

Set your background to a very light red, almost to white.  You can do this by changing the Light number to about 245 in your color palette.  This color comes out to #FFEBEB.

Add a new raster layer.

Selections > Modify > Contract > 2 > ok.

Flood fill your selection with the darker of the two colors you have set right now.

Selections > Modify > Contract > 4 > ok.

Hit your delete key.

Selections > Load from Alpha Channel > ok.

Effects > Blur > Guassian Blur > 3.00 > ok.

Turn off your background layer if you have one.

Right click on either the text or shadow layer and Merge > Merge visible.  Rename this layer text.

Your text should still be selected!

(Click for larger view.)

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