Two Tiled Painting Tutorial

This tutorial is done using PaintShop Pro 7, but can be done with versions 5 and 6. I have chosen to do the Retro painting from Livin Large becaues of it's size. Much easier to do a tutorial like this with a large painting. These steps will work on all size paintings and even the three tiles paintings with just a little modification when you are cutting and pasting back together again. If you are new to PSP, please familiarize yourself with it a little, you can also check out THIS PAGE which gives basics of the tools I use in this tutorial.
The main tools I use for this tutorial are the Magic Wand and the Mover .

OK first we need an image to use. I have chosen Van Gogh's Terrasse de Cafe because I have the same picture hanging in my living room, lol. So get your image ready, just try to make sure it is around the same shape as the picture you cloned. You don't want to try a landscape rectangular scene on a long painting, just doesn't look good.

We have our image ready, we will set that aside for now. Now open a new image File/New and make it 300 by 300 Transparent background.

Now let's get our sprites ready. Grab both front views, we don't need to touch the back views at all.

First change your colors from 256 to 24 bits. Now take your Magic Wand and select the yellow part of both sprites. Go to Selections/Invert for both so that only the picture is selected.

Do the following for each sprite, select the sprite image and then go to Edit/Copy. Now go to your new transparent image and paste the sprite you just copied by making sure your transparent image is selected, then go to Edit/ Paste/ As New Layer. Very important to paste as new layer! Once both pieces of the sprite are pasted, move them togehter to make one image. Once perfectly lined up go to Layers/Merge/Merge Visible. Do Not merge all! Your transparent image should now look like this:

Now we must unskew this painting so that we can get the dimensions we need for our new painting. Go to Effects/ Geometric Effects / Skew and set the Vertical to -27 like this:

Now your painting should look like this:

Using your selection tool, draw a rectangle around the picture BUT do not select the sides, you only want the main picture so that you can get as close to the actual size of the picture as possible. When you have selected the image go to Edit/ Copy then Edit / Paste / As A New Image. Do not close the first transparent image with the maxis painting that you just skewed, you will need that later.

Now with your new image selected, which is the main picture of the cloned painting, look at the bottom right hand corner of PSP. See where it says image? You need to write down or remember those numbers. Those are the dimensions of the painting and you need them to resize the image you are using to create a new painting. Mine ended up being 106 x 199, yours may be different by a few pixels which is normal.

Now go to your image that you will be using, in my case it is my Van Gogh painting. With that image selected, go to Image/ Resize. Make sure the ratio box is unchecked at the bottom and using the pixel size, type in the dimensions that were on the bottom right corner that I told you to remember or write down. This is what mine looked like when I did it:

OK, my Van Gogh is around the right size! So now we will Copy the Van Gogh painting and Paste As A New Layer on the Maxis painting that is unskewed in our transparent image. LIke this:

Now we have Van Gogh on top of that retro woman, lol! So using your Mover tool, move Van Gogh around until he is lined up with the painting, remember you don't want your picture covering up the sides of the original painting unless that is really what you want.

Ok, we have the old painting covered up by our new painting. Before we skew it, we must merge all the layers to make one painting. Go to Layers/Merge/Visible. Now it is time to skew it back to shape. Go to Effects/ Geometric Effects / Skew and change the Vertical to 27 like this:

Now our painting should look like this:

OK we are now ready to take it apart!

There are several ways to take it apart. One way I showed you in the bed tutorial. This time I am going to do it different to familiarize some of you with some of the different ways to do things in PSP.

Make sure you have your Layer Palette floating and ready.

Now go to one of your sprites, the piece of Maxis art should be selected, if not select the yellow and invert to select it. Copy that and paste as new layer on your new picture.Now using your Mover tool, line that piece up with the new painting.

This is how it looks when I was doing the second piece:

OK, we have our piece lined up. Now go to your floating Layer Palette. There you should have two layers. Layer 1 is the painting you just did and Layer 2 is the piece of Maxis painting you just placed on your new image. Your Layer Palette should look like this:

Now make sure Layer 2 is selected (calque is french for layer). Go to Selections/ Select All. Go back to Selections/Float (near the bottom of the Selections window). Your piece of painting you just pasted should now be selected with dancing ants around it. Now go back to your floating Layer Palette and select layer 1.

With layer 1 selected, go to your new image and Copy. Now go to the sprite you copied from and Paste/ As A New Layer. You will see that you just pasted a piece of the new painting onto the Maxis piece, using your Mover tool, line it up with the original. Like this:

Now do the same thing with your other sprite and it should look like this when done:

OK! The sprites are done and your new image that was once Van Gogh should look like this with the Maxis painting over it:

Now just import your sprites back into tmog and my finished painting looked like this:

Any question? Did I make a mistake or miss a step? A little confused? Don't hesitate to contact me, I will help any way you need it :) If you would like to download this painting go to STPCarly's objects/ Deco to find it :)




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