Swirl background

Deb's Photo Impact tutorials and more

Please sign my guestbook. It would mean so much to me to know what you thought of my pages.

Swirl background tutorial
for version 6
(can also be done in version 5.)

	1. Open the picture you want to use, and press ctrl d or edit/ duplicate.
	2. Working from the duplicate of your picture, click effect/blur and sharpen/Gaussian blur. 3. A window will open. If your window that opens shows 6 small thumbnails of the image, click the options button. Change the variance to 15. Click ok.
	4. Click effect/2d/whirlpool. Again, click the options button if you have 6 thumbnails. In the new window, change the twist degrees to 245.
	5. Click web/shift image. Look at the height of your image. Divide by two. Enter that amount into the box beside Vertical. You can tell the height of your image by looking at the image dimensions. Click ok.
	6. Repeat step 4. 7. Click format/dimensions. Set the unit to pixels, and unclick "Keep aspect ratio". Resize the image to 1024 by the height of your image plus about 20 to 40 pixels. Since the height of this image is 208, my dimensions will be 1024 X 248, since I chose to add 40 pixels. You now have a strip.
	8. Apply a texture with the texturizer. Click effect/texture/texturizer. I used my psd named 13X100.psd. You may download it here. See my tutorial Step one the strip for more on the texturizer and using psd files with it.
	9. Now click edit/fill, and in the color tab, set the color to a light pink from the image. If you right click in the color box, you can choose "Color on screen". This will make your cursor look like an eyedropper. Click on the light pink in the flower. If you are using version 5, you don't have the color on screen option. You will have to use the eyedropper tool.
	10. Don't press ok yet. Down at the bottom of the fill box, there is a setting for how transparent the fill color should be. Set this to 30%. For different images you may want to use a different setting. At 30%, this will allow just a part of the original image to show through, causing the image to be muted. If you are using a different image, use the preview button to see the strip as it would be with the fill applied. If you don't like the look, or it is too muted for your image, use a different setting here. Colors that contrast less than those we are using here will need a higher amount of transparency. When you are satisfied, press ok.
	11. At this point, since I was not entirely pleased with the color of the strip, I used the quick color controls on the right side of my screen to change it. I clicked the + beside blue one time. Be sure to make good use of these controls as you work with images. I have found them to be very valuable. Any time I don't like the colors I am getting, I click one or more of these buttons, experimenting to find a look I like. At this point, my strip was done. Click here to see what it looked like.
	12. Going back to the original image, right click, click all, and right click, convert to object. Go to format/frame and shadow. Click the down arrow beside style, and click magic frame.
	13. Beside effect, click the down arrow, and click ripple.
	14. Set the border color to a pink from the flower. Leave all other settings default. Click ok.
	15. Click format/frame and shadow again. Leave everything the same, but change the border color to white, and the inner edge to 0. Click ok. If you have the background color set to the default white, you won't be able to see your new frame on the image. Don't worry, it's there.
	16. Click format/frame and shadow. This time, click the small square next to gradient, right under color.
	17. Click the edit button, and click on ramp number 08. The ramps are circles filled with the different gradients, and can be found on the right side of the new box. Click ok in each of the boxes that we opened.
	18. Right click on the object, and click shadow. click in the square beside shadow to place a shadow on your framed image.
	19. Click on your image and drag it to the first canvas with the strip on it. You will find that your framed image needs to be resized. Use the transform tool to do so. Don't forget to optimize before using your strip for stationery or a web border.