DRAWING A BASIC DINNER PLATE FROM SCRATCH

This tutorial aims to introduce some of the basic, constantly used features of PSP5.  Dinner plates are not a whole lot of use, but the techniques learned here are.

Note : As with all my other tutorials, heavy compression to assist download time means some of the images here are not as sharp as they are "in real life." 

If you wish, before you begin, jump to notes for this tutorial on :

Alpha Channels
Layers

Drawing the plate

Open a square 500*500 image, with a black background.  Set your colours, for now, to foreground white, background black.

Choose : shapes tool, circle, filled, antialias on.  With your cursor placed at dead centre of your image (X250*Y250) draw a white circle with a radius of 400.

Click on the colour change arrow in the color palette to swop your foreground to black, and draw a black circle, again starting at 250*250, with a radius of say, 375. 

Don't worry about following any of these dimensions exactly -- do your own thing. The main criterion here is to always start exactly in the middle of your image. Whatever they are, write down your dimensions so that you can be accurate as the exercise progresses.

Swop your foreground back to white and draw another white circle, leaving a black band of a width of your choosing. (I have used a radius of 295.)

You should now have an image like Figure 1 below.

Figure 1

Adding a Pattern Fill

Choose and open a pattern or texture fill image of your choice to decorate your plate.  (You could use anything else here too, such as a pattern filter.)

Select the black band with the magic tool, with feather set to 3.

Choose : flood fill tool, set fill style to pattern, and select your pattern/texture in options.

Flood the selected black band with your pattern/texture. (PSP5 -- you can also use any tube to paint in a pattern.)

You should now have something like Fig 2 below.

Figure 2

Adding Depth

Using the circle selection tool : set feather to 3, antialias on and leave tolerance set at the default 10.  Leave this feather and antialias set for the duration of this exercise.

Starting at the 250/250 centre of your image, select a circle exactly the size of the first one you drew.

Select the cutout tool (Image/Effects/Cutout) making sure the fill interior with color option is unchecked.

Note : for this exercise I have used black shadows, but very nice effects can be achieved using different shades of whatever color you fancy, depending on the colors you have chosen for your plate.

Note : you can omit the above step if you like, depending on a number of factors such as how/where/if you add a drop shadow to the finished plate, what background you use, etcetera.

If you like, add some further depth by selecting a circle at the outer perimeter of your pattern band, and giving it a light drop shadow. I have used : opacity 45, blur 6, V and H 1 and -1 then reversed the coordinates for a second drop shadow.

Select the inner white circle using the magic tool, feather still set to 3.

Do a cutout shadow : V and H still set to 1 and -1, opacity to 20-25, blur to 40-45.

Next, do a soft, wide and slightly darker shadow to give the illusion of the plate's curve.

Set : V and H to -10 and 10, opacity to 20-25, blur to 65-70.

You should now have a nice smooth-edged plate that looks something like Figure 3.

Figure 3

Note : All these drop shadows and cutout details are entirely a matter of choice and what works best for your taste.

Final Steps

Select your original outermost circle precisely.

Invert the selection and fill with white, then choose "cut" once or twice from the edit menu. This is so you can be sure you get rid of the black background completely, and achieve a nice edge.

Once you have a smooth, clean edge, fill the selection with any colour/s you want.   Here I have chosen two contrasting colours (right and left clicking with the eye dropper) from my plate's trim pattern, then used a sunburst gradient fill.

Now, reinvert your selection to add a final, subtle drop shadow. Choose (say) 2 and -2, colour black, opacity 25-35, blur 5-10, then a slightly smaller, lighter shadow with the coordinates reversed.

Figure 4

Working with Alpha Channels

It's a Very Good Thing to get into the habit of saving your main selections to an Alpha channel.  (Selection/Save to Alpha Channel.)  Working with Alpha Channels means you don't have to go back and reselect areas you want to work with again, which makes your work not only quicker but more accurate.  The reloaded selections are exactly what you want them to be.  They are also placed precisely where you want them, which takes the guesswork right out of a lot of things.  The other major advantage of Alpha Channels is that PSP saves these channels along with the picture they belong to.  This is extremely useful.  For the purposes of this exercise I am have not used Alpha Channels, but if you are comfortable with the concept or want to practise the technique, please use them.  See the note on layers at the bottom of this page.

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Working with Layers

Again, this tutorial uses PSP 4 techniques, but I almost invariaby work with layers by choice.  Working with layers allows much more margin for error and correction if you do each stage of almost any drawing on a separate layer.   However, you might get a surprise when you perform a cutout when working on a transparent PSP5 layer -- cutout will delete your fill even if you have left the "fill interior with color" option unchecked.  This can actually sometimes be useful, which is why they did it that way, I guess.

To learn more about the use of Layers, follow this Introduction to PSP5 Layers tutorial.

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