Colour Animated Sinedots Tutorial PSP X This tutorial was created for PSP7 July 14th 2002© Copyright Artwork by EssexGirl and was rewritten for PSPX on February 94th 2008© please do not copy it, or put it anywhere else without my written permission. *NOTE* Sometimes the links for filters change, it's difficult (and a lot of work) to keep changing them on individual pages, so I have created a page with links to filters and programs that I have used in my tutorials. That way it is easier for me, because when there are changes I will only have one page to update and hopefully better for you, because I'm less likely to miss a page out when doing the updates :) You will find links to filters/programs used in this tutorial Here the link will open in a new window Filters and programs used in this tutorial :- Paint Shop Pro Dragonfly's Sinedots II Silver...from Flaming Pear's sextet(optional) Materials :- There is a text file included in the zip, if you don't know where to place the items. My sg_sinedots-presets.cfg a zip file is Here it contains some extra presets some images have been made smaller to shorten file size

This tutorial has been rewritten for PSPX, so the results and steps are different to the PSP7 version Step 1. Open a new Image 200 x 300 transparent and flood fill with a dark colour, the colour isn't important as it can be changed before animating if you want to do so. Add a new layer Go to Effects...Plugins...Dragonfly...Sinedots... Open the sg_sinedots-presets.cfg and choose the mauve-checks preset If you are new to sinedots and don't know how to open the .cfg file click HERE for more information Some presets use different 'blend' settings and it is important for this tutorial to make sure that the blend in the sinedots setting is set to 'screen' like this:- This is the sinedots preview In psp the black background is on the layer below the sinedots

Step 2. Go to Layers...Duplicate... Image...Mirror... Image...Flip...

Step 4. Go to Layers...Duplicate... Image...Flip... Layers...Merge...Merge Down... Your image should look like this

Step 5. Go to Layers...Duplicate... Image...Free Rotate... Rotate by 90° any direction, the 'all layers' box should be unticked. Go to Layers...Merge...Merge Down...

Step 6. Duplicate the merged layer, then go to Image...Rotate...this time change the rotation to 45° any direction. Rotating by 45° will make the image on this layer slightly fuzzy, it will need sharpening after the rotation so go to Effects...Sharpen...and Sharpen... No merging this time.

Step 7. I resized my image at this point, before making the frames for the animation. It's up to you whether you do this, it depends how large you want the animation to be. Image...Resize...Tick the 'all layers' box. Resize the image by 75% (or size of your choice) Resample using bicubic

Step 8. If you want to change your background colour, make that layer active and flood fill with your choice. I added my border before making the animation frames so that it would be exactly alike on each one. If you don't want a border around your animation you can omit the rest of this step. Make the background layer active. Go to Selections...Select All...then Selections...Modify...Select Selection Borders... border width=10 pixels, inside, anti-alias= unticked. I applied Flaming Pear's 'Silver' (effects, plugins, Flaming Pear, Silver) I just hit the random dice a few times, until I found s setting that I liked. If you prefer you can use another program like Eye Candy or SuperBladePro, or just flood fill with a colour and add an inner bevel

Step 9. Hold down the shift key and hit D 3 times. You now have 4 identical images, each with a background layer and two sinedots layers. Each of the sinedots layers needs to be coloured seperately, so make one of the sinedots layers active. My current favourite colouring method for sinedots, is to lock the transparency of the layer by clicking the padlock, as shown in the following screenshot, then flood filling with the chosen colour, or gradient. Any transparent areas in the layer are protected from the flood fill. Repeat this for each sinedots layer. The choice of colours is up to you. You can use plain colours, gradients, patterns, or a mixture and you can either stick to a colour scheme (eg reds and yellows) or a variety. Do some experimenting to find combinations that appeal to you. We will save them in psp format, so that the colours can be changed if you don't like the result when we try the animation out in Animation Shop, or if you want to make another one in different colours. When you are happy with your colours, click the padlocks on the layers again to unlock the transparency I think these work best with a dark background colour, but it is possible to use a light background. If you do so you will need to add a drop shadow to each of the sinedots layers. My example at the end of the tutorial has a drop shadow added to each of the sinedots layers using these settings :- horizontal and vertical =1, opacity=75, blur=1, colour= black

Step 10. When you are ready save your images in psp format naming them something like 'frames 1, 2, 3 and 4 They need to be PSP7 compatable for Animation Shop to be able to open them, so on the save dialog box click the Options button, then choose PSP7 compatable file These were my frames

Step 11. Open up Animation shop For this animation the layers need to be merged into single frames, so look under File...Preferences...General Program preferences... On the 'Layered Files' tab use these settings You can change back to your usual preference when you finish this tutorial. Click on the animation wizard in the top left corner These are the options to select on the windows that follow 'same size as the first frame', click next 'transparent', click next 'centred in the frame', and 'canvas colour', click next. Yes to repeat indefinitely and 40 in the time box, (if you want the changes in colour to be faster or slower you can adjust the number lower to make the animation faster and higher to make it slower). Click next. Click on add image and navigate to where you put your four images. Select each one, or hold down the Ctrl key and select them all, but click them in reverse order if you do it this way. click next. Click 'finish' To see the animation working go to View...Animation

Step 12. If you like your result save it using the default settings. If you want the colour change to be faster, or slower Go to Edit...Select All...(Ctrl+A) Animation...Frame Properties... Lower the Display time number to make the changes faster, or raise it to make the changes slower If you want to change the colours you can open your 4 images again in PSP and try some different colour variations.

You can get lots of variations try with a different sinedots preset, or change the settings on the rotating mirror. For the following example I used the 'ribbon' preset (which is included in the .cfg), a light background and added a drop shadow to the sinedots layers.

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. Thankyou to my great testers To see my other tutorials click Here

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