Paper Snowflake
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The kids at school are already getting ready for the holidays. One of the neighbor kids brought home a snowflake and that got me to thinking about PSP (like everything else lol). Well, this is what I came up with. Of course, since no two snowflakes are alike yours will be different...lol.
Resources- PSP 8 or 9.
- An image of a protractor HERE. The image was found at Lighthousepubl.com. Unzip it and open in PSP.
Let's get started
*Please note: If you install this tutorial as a quick guide you may get a script error when trying to view the images, just click "yes" at the prompt and the images will show properly. Don't know how to install quick guides? then check out the tutorial found HERE.- Open a new image 600px x600px, raster layer, 72 res, some color other than white
- Open the image of the proctractor and copy (ctrl+c) then paste as a new layer (ctrl+l). Add a new raster layer.
- Get the rectangular selection tool
and make a rectanglur selection shown highlighted below
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- Flood fill
[rgb value, tolerance 20, sample merged unchecked, normal, 100] with white. Select none. Lower the opacity of the layer so you can see the protractor below, around 50%. - Get the lasso tool
[point to point, add mode, feather 0, smoothing 1, anti-alias checked] and make a selection as shown highlighted below (this will be a 30 degree angle)
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- Copy the selection (ctrl+C). Select none. Now paste the selection as a new layer (ctrl+L).
- You should now have 3 layers plus the background. Delete layers 1 and 2 so that you have only the background layer and layer 3 (the one you just copied and pasted).
- Ok, this piece is a little too big so let's reduce it. Go to Image->resize and use the following settings:
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- Get the lasso tool with the same settings as before and make lots of little selections. Once you have as many as you want hit the delete key. Then select none.
- Duplicate the layer. The go to Image-Mirror (crtl+M)
- Get the mover tool
and move the piece into place as shown below. DO NOT overlap the edges.
- Go to Layers->Merge-Merge down. Now move the piece to about the center of the canvas. If at any time you find that the pieces are sitting to close to the edge to allow further pieces to fit, just click on the chainlink of each layer (except the background) in the layer palette then move them all together.
- Duplicate the layer. Go to Image->Rotate->Free Rotate (Ctrl+R) and rotate to the right 60 degrees UNcheck all layers and UNcheck rotate single layer around canvas center. Move the pieces into place as shown below. At this point you may need to sharpen the look of the piece if it looks fuzzy. Do this by going to Adjust->Sharpness->Sharpen.
- Repeat step 13 until you complete the snowflake
- Once you have all the pieces into place, turn visibility off to the background layer and merge visible.
And that's it, you're finished. You can export it as a tube, reduce it and make a background, or any number of things.
I hope you have enjoyed this tutorial and found it easy to follow. If you have any comments or questions please feel free to .
