Glass Dome

Deb's Photo Impact tutorials and more

Under glass: Add a glass dome to showcase your images

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Under glass

This tutorial assumes you have a beginning knowledge of Photo Impact, and know how to use the transform tool, and make a stationery strip. If you are just beginning, please do the other tutorials first, particularly Quick and Easy Stationery using the magic wand and clip art.

	Open a new file by pressing ctrl n at the same time. Set both the height and width to 300 pixels.
	Click on arrow in the corner of the bucket fill tool, and click on linear fill tool.
	In the attribute bar for the linear fill tool, Make sure Two-color is selected, and choose a light color and a dark color to make up your linear gradient.
	Click in the lower left corner of the workspace, and while holding down the mouse button, draw a diagonal line to the top right corner. This will fill the workspace with your gradient.
	Right click on your canvas, and click all. Right click again, and click border. Set the border width to 5, Direction, inward, Shape Box, and Soft edge 0.
	Click edit/trace/selection marquee. Accept the defaults, and click ok. This will automatically change the tool to the path tool. The mode will be set on orizontal deform. Change it to 3d round. Change the color to the dark color in your gradient, and the border to 5.
	Now click on the materials box and click on the shading tab. Set the shading to metallic.
	Your image should now look something like this. If you would like, you can change the light direction by clicking on the light bulb in the attribute bar, and clicking on your border in the direction from which you would like the light to come .
	Click on the path tool and set it to circle. Set the color to the light color in your gradient, and the mode to 3d round. Your border should be set to 30 or higher. You can use the slider to set it, or you can click the material button, and then on the border/depth tab to change this. If the highest your border will go is lower than 30, click the material button, and then the border/depth tab, and change the maximum border width to 30 or higher. Draw a circle inside your workspace that will be large enough to contain your object that you will be using.
	Now position your object that you chose in the center of the circle by dragging it from the easy palette. Add leaves or other decorative items as you wish. I have chosen the rose and leaves from my flowers page 1. You will need to re-size the rose and leaves with the transform tool as explained in previous tutorials. This rose has a little cosmetic flaw which we will fix. The edges show a little white around the edges. This is partially due to the soft edge. Right click on the rose, and click on properties. Remove the check mark from the soft edge box.
	Now click on your paintbrush tool, and set the color to a dark maroon color. Set the size to 2, and the transparency to 0.
	Click on effect, paint on edges. This will get rid of the white edges.
	Right click on the circle rose, and leaves, and add a shadow to each one. You can arrange one object behind another by selecting it, and then clicking on object, arrange, send backward. Use the transform tool to rotate the leaves to a pleasing display. I like to use rotate by degree, and set it to 15 degrees and try different angles until I find one that looks pleasing to me.
	Now click on the circle underneath your display to select it. Right click and click again on duplicate. Change the color to the dark color in your gradient. Leaving your duplicate circle selected, click on the materials box, and set the bevel to 3D Round, the border/depth to 30, the transparency to 100, and the shading to phong. Click on the shadow tab to remove the shadow. In the right side of the materials box, you can click in the circle where you want the light shine to show. This is helpful when the shine is too far to the middle, thus obscuring an important part of your displayed object. Now click ok, and using the arrow keys, carefully align your glass piece over top of the first circle. If you accidentally deselect the glass piece, you can select it again by clicking on one of the shine areas, as you cannot select a transparent path object. The shine is not transparent, so you can use it to select the piece.
	Now duplicate the glass piece, and go back to the materials box, click on the transparency tab, and unclick the transparency option. Click the bevel tab set the bevel to 3D pipe. Click the border/depth tab and set the border/depth to 3, and the shading tab to set it to metallic. This makes the duplicated circle into a border just the right size to outline your piece. Again, using the arrow keys, carefully align this border over top of your circle.
	You now hopefully have your piece the way you want it, so click on the pick tool, and while holding down the ctrl key, click on each piece of the circle, including the flower pieces, but not the square outline around the outside of your gradient filled square. If you are sure your piece is the way you want it, after you have selected all of the pieces of the display at once, right click and click again on combine as a single object. Once you do this, you will not be able to edit anything about your display.
	Now click web, trim object and then click on center both in the pick tool's Attribute toolbar. After you have centered your display piece, right click and merge all.
	Ctrl C at the same time will copy your piece allowing you to paste it on your strip. You now have a piece ready to make into stationery or display however you wish. If you are using this for stationery, remember to allow a little extra room to the left so that the square is not right against the left side of the strip. Make your strip at least 15 pixels higher than the square also. So click ctrl N to open a new image, set the width to 1152, and the height to 315. Paste your piece on the strip, using the arrow keys to slide it away from the left side a little. After you have pasted your piece on your strip, it adds a little more interest if you add a drop shadow to it. Choose a background color to compliment your color scheme.
	Remember to use the object optimizer on your completed piece as explained in my previous tutorial.