Corner stationery

In the corner (How to make corner stationery) Please sign my guestbook. It would mean so much to me to know what you thought of my pages. If you are just beginning with Photo Impact, please do the tuts in the order listed here before attempting to do this tut.

Because this tut makes extensive use of presets, I have included a zip file with the presets used. If you are using the demo, you will need to download the presets in order to do the tut. Even if you are not using the demo, It will be easier if you download the preset kit. Follow the directions in the readme file included in the zip to install.
Download the presets.
	Open a new file, 1050 X 890. Down in the right hand side of your screen you will see 4 icons. Click on the second one, the unit or ruler icon. In the menu that pops up, click on grid. Click again and click on snap to grid. Click one last time, and click on ruler.
	Change to the selection tool. Make sure your settings are set to rectangle, with no check mark beside fixed size, and with 0 soft edge. Using the ruler and grid to guide you, go over 150 pixels and down 150 pixels. Where the two lines meet on the grid, click and drag over and down diagonally until you get all the way to the bottom right hand corner of the canvas.
	Press Ctrl F at the same time to open the fill dialog box. Choose a color for your canvas. I have chosen a light aqua with an RGB of R 198 G 243 B 255 In the fill dialog box you can set yours to match as shown at left. If you prefer another color, use the windows color picker or the ulead color picker to choose a nice light one. If you plan to use a floral or other pattern for the corner part, now would be a good time to open it, so you can choose a color from it with the eyedropper tool. Set your foreground color to it and then in the fill dialog box, you can right click on the color box to set the fill color to the foreground color. Note: We are using a solid color for the background because corner stationeries deal with a large canvas size, and we want to keep the size down as much as possible.
	Right click on the canvas, and click again on invert. Now only the corner part is selected. Now we want to turn the selection into a path object. This if very important, and will help you when dealing with path objects. Any time you want to change a selection or image object into a path object so you can apply presets to it, these are the steps you must follow. If you do not do this, but instead try to use object convert object/from image to path, you will get a rectangle when trying to apply presets instead of your shape. Click on Edit, Trace, Selection Marquee. Accept the default settings, and press ok.
	This will automatically change your tool to the path tool, and the mode in the attribute toolbar will be set to horizontal deform. You will want to change this from horizontal deform to 2d object. Changing the settings from 2D to 3D will take quite some time, so we want to do most of the changes at once. I have chosen to make all of my changes from the material box.
	If you chose to download the presets for this tutorial double click Teal 2. Otherwise, click on the material button. In the color/texture tab, I have chosen a teal color with an RGB of R 30, G 79, and B 119. You can set yours to match by clicking on the color box and in the ulead color picker entering the numbers in the RGB settings. These are located under the new and Current color boxes. You can erase the numbers there and set yours to the ones I have chosen, or follow your own color scheme. In the bevel tab, choose either 3D round or 3D custom. Click on the border/Depth tab, and set the border to 30, and the depth to 30. In the shading tab, set the shading to metallic. In the bump tab, Click on file, and browse to your material folder, and choose paper001.jpg. In the reflection tab, choose Re006.jpg. Press ok. You can also use the Easy palette to choose your bump, reflection and shading, but be aware that every change you make will take a long time because you are dealing with a very large path object.
	Now that we have a corner, we want a little trim around the inside edges. With the corner object still selected, right click on the canvas and click again on duplicate. In the attribute tool bar under mode, click on Selection. Right click on the canvas, and click on border. Set the width to 10, outward. This adds a 10 pixel border around the inside of your canvas.
	Now change the selection to a path using the edit/trace selection marquee command as explained above. Change the mode to 2D object. If you have the presets, double click gold. Otherwise, open the material box. In the color tab, click on the color box to open the ulead color picker. Choose an RGB of R 185, G 134, and B of 58. Under the reflection tab, choose Re001g3.jpg. Under the shading tab, select metallic, Copper, with a shininess of 22 % and a strength of 41 %. Under the border/depth tab, set the border at 30 and the depth to 18. In the light tab, sleet one light and an ambient percentage of 64. Click on the bump tab and unclick the bump option. Click ok. You now have a narrow gold border around your corner.
	Now it is time to add a decoration to the top left corner. If you don't already have it, download the shapes set from my objects page 4 made by Diane Partner or use the egg shape included in the zip with the presets. I used the egg shape from this set to make the ovals in this decorative piece. If you have the presets installed, double click petal. Otherwise, click again on your teal corner piece, to get the settings back to the teal preset. Now click on the light aqua background. Click on the material button in the attributes toolbar. Change to 3d custom, and click the first button below to choose the bevel type. Click on the Border Depth tab and set the border to 12 pixels. Click the reflection tab and click on the file tab to change the reflection to Re001g3.jpg. Or use the petal preset if you've downloaded the presets for this tut.
	Change the shape to the egg shape. Click on the rectangle and choose custom shape to do this. Now on a background area of your canvas, click and drag an oval shape about 2 and a half grids long. This will make your petal about 150 pixels long. Now change to the transformer tool, and make the petal thinner so that it is about 125 pixels wide.
	In the attributes toolbar, under "rotate by degree" type in 125 and rotate the petal counterclockwise. Hold down Ctrl, click on the petal and drag. This will make a duplicate of your petal. Rotate this petal by 25 degrees, make another duplicate, and rotate this one be 25 degrees too. Arrange these 3 petals so that their points almost touch.
	Select all of them by clicking on each one while holding down control. When all are selected, duplicate the group of petals by holding down ctrl while dragging. Click on the Rotate & flip button in the transformer tool attributes toolbar and click again on rotate 180. Now use rotate by degree to rotate them 25% counterclockwise, and arrange them beside the first group of petals.
	Press the space bar to select the background, and click on just one of the petals. Duplicate it, and use the transformer tool to make it longer so that it sticks out longer than the rest. Position it over the top of the petal groups and change to the pick tool. In the attributes toolbar, click the down arrow 5 times.
	Now in the galleries section of the easy palette, double click the word filter, and then light. Double click L04 to apply it to the petal. Now double click L14 to apply it to the petal also. Do this with each of the petals.
	Click on the corner piece, and apply only L04 to it. Press the space bar to select the background. Now, after arranging your petals like you want them to be, hold down the ctrl key while clicking on each of them. Right click and group, and drag the group to the upper left hand corner.
	Now change back to the path tool, and change the shape to circle. Click on the gold border to change back to the gold preset. Press the space bar to select the background. Draw a circle about 85 by 85. Duplicate this circle, and make it a little smaller with the transformer tool. Change the color of this circle to white. Slide the depth slider bar all the way up.
	Change to the material section of the Easy palette, and then click "shading". Double click gold 1. If you chose to download the preset kit, simply double click pearl in lieu of these steps.
	Drag this circle on top of the gold circle, and center it in the middle with the arrow keys. Select both of the circles, and group. Drag this group on top of the petals group. Select both the petals group and the circle group and right click to group. Position them with the arrow keys.
	Ok. Almost done. I purposely told you to make the canvas a little large so you would be able to get rid of the edges on the bottom and right side or your piece easily. Click on the gold trim. Change to the pick tool, and send the gold trim to the back by clicking on the underlined down arrow. In the layer manager, select all objects on your canvas. Right click and group them. Now press the space bar.
	Press Ctrl G to open the dimensions dialog box. Set the unit to Pixels, uncheck keep aspect ratio, and set the width to 1035 and the height to 875. Press ok. Merge all and make very sure to use the image optimizer to save this, as it will otherwise be very large.