Award Badge Paint Shop Pro Tutorial

First, make a new image. Go to File | New, and enter 150 pixels high and 150 pixels wide, with a white background. Look at the screenshot for more settings.

In the toolbar, select the ellipse tool (or just press "Q"). Under tool options, make sure "Mode:" is set to "Draw Circle". Now look at the "Materials" pallete. Make sure that the forground color (the upper left block of color) is set to None (under the block of color, click the far right button - a circle with a diagional line through it). Look at the screenshot for more information. Now click on the background color (lower right block), and when a new screen pops up, in the text box next to "HTML:", type in "#2f588f". This is the HTML hex code that describes a color. There are other ways to describe colors, but this one is usually used for the web. Click ok.

With the ellipse tool still selected, click in the upper left corner of the image, and drag to the bottom right to draw a blue circle. Now press "O" to select the selection tool. You can now move the circle by clicking and holding on the box in the center of the selection box. Try to make the cirlce look like the screenshot.

Right click on the circle, and at the bottom of the menu, click on "Create Raster Selection". Now click on Layer | New Raster Layer, name it "circle drop shadow", and click OK. Now go to Effects | 3d Effects | Drop Shadow, and enter the settings in the screenshot to the left. Drop shadows are great for adding depth and realism to an image.

With the raster selection still active (marching ants), go to Layer | New Raster Layer, and name it "inner cutout". Now contract the selection by going to Selections | Modify | Contract, and enter 1. This will create a 1 pixel border as we will see later. Now go to Effects | 3d Effects | Cutout. Enter the settings in the screenshot and press enter.

Now select the "Freehand select tool" (look at the screenshot for help). Then go to Layer | New Raster Layer, and name it "highlight". Now expand the selection by going to Selections | Modify | Expand and enter 1. This entire time, your selection should be active. If you ever accidently lose it, press Ctrl-Z to go back. Ctrl-Alt-Z will make you go forward again.

Now select the "Freehand select tool" (look at the screenshot for help). Then go to Layer | New Raster Layer, and name it "highlight". Now expand the selection by going to Selections | Modify | Expand and enter 1. This entire time, your selection should be active. If you ever accidently lose it, press Ctrl-Z to go back. Ctrl-Alt-Z will make you go forward again. Hold down Ctrl (this will cause the select tool to remove the selection instead of replacing it), and try to trace out the same path as the red path in the screenshot. Make sure you finish at the same place you started. Zoom in a lot to make the selection as smooth as possible. You might have to do it a lot of times until you get it to look right. Now you should only have a selection on the top half.

Now select the fill tool (or press F). Make white your foregorund color (just like you made the background color blue) by clicking on the block of color, and entering #ffffff next to "HTML:". Now click in the selection to fill it with white. Last, change the opacity of the layer in the Layer Pallete to 10 by moving the slider next to the "highlight layer".