Cube It!
tutorial by Whisper

This tutorial was created and put on this site on February 3, 2004.
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 8  ~ download a trial version.

Open an image of choice.  This technique works best with an image with a lot of color in it.
You are welcome to use the image that I am using for this tutorial by clicking here and copying it into PSP.

If you wish to resize or crop your image do that now.

In the layer palette right click on the background layer and promote background layer.

Right click again on the layer and duplicate and rename to main.

Effects > Distortion effects > Pixelate > width & height 10 > ok.

Effects > Edge effects > Enhance.

Set your selection tool to:
rectangle
feather 0
anti-alias UNchecked

Try and visualize what you want your end result to be.
Draw a selection where/however you like.

I drew mine down the right side - almost thinking it as an anchor piece.

Making sure your main layer is active, hit the delete key.

Add a new raster layer.
(You may want to name your layers as you go along.
I do not normally name my layers but with this one there will be quite a few layers that are very similar.)

Effects > 3D effects > Cutout > these settings:
Horizontal & Vertical 0
Opacity 100
Blur 15.0
Color black
Fill UNchecked

The blur amount will vary depending on the size of the selection you are applying it to.

Add a new raster layer.

Effects > 3D effects > Drop shadow > these settings:
Horizontal & Vertical 1
Opacity 100
Blur 1
Color a bright color from the image, I am using #FEAAE7.

Selections > select none.

Activate the main layer.

Draw your next selection and delete.

Add a new raster layer.

Effects > 3D effects > Cutout > same settings, except change the blur to match the size of the selection.

Add a new raster layer.

Effects > 3D effects > Drop shadow > same settings.

Selections > select none.

I repeated these steps again to get my third piece.  Then I decided to add my text.

Select your text tool.

Set as a vector.  Color does not matter.

I used:
font Broadway
size 48
stroke 0
right justify
anti-alias checked

Using your object selector tool, position your text.

Right click inside the bounding box and create raster selection.

In the layer palette right click on the vector layer and delete.

Activate the main layer and hit the delete key.

Add a new raster layer.

Effects > 3D effects > Cutout > same settings, except change the blur to match the size of the selection.

Add a new raster layer.

Effects > 3D effects > Drop shadow > same settings.

Selections > select none.

Continue with the selection - delete - cutout - drop shadow combination until you like your image.

You can see that I added two more in the upper left corner.

Activate the main layer.

Adjust > Hue and Saturation > Colorize > set both to 0 > ok.

In the layer palette lower the opacity of the main layer to between 80-90.

Right click on any of the layers and Merge > Merge visible.

Selections > Select all.

Selections > Modify > Contract > 3 > ok.

Selections > Invert.

Add a new raster layer.

Effects > 3D effects > Cutout > same settings, except change the blur to 3.

Effects > 3D effects > Drop shadow > same settings.

Selections > select none.

All done!

Try playing with different selection shapes and blend modes for the cutout and shadow layers.

Have fun!

Page 2 for the examples made by my testers.

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