Spooky Tree on hill with ghost, bat and tombstone.

Spooky Tree PSP 7 Tutorial

Hello, I was inspired again. Since the weather here is finally cooling down, I'm thinking about fall and Halloween. When I saw this image from Diana Todd's site, I thought it would make a perfect spooky tree. Many thanks to her for her gracious permission to use her tree image.

-- Download the dmsk0258.zip file which contains the dmsk0258.msk file.

The mask is a copyrighted image by Diana Todd and is distributed as part of this tutorial with her permission. The mask is for personal use only, no further redistribution is permitted.

The mask file may not work as you and I expected it to. The work around is: File->Open and open the dmsk0258.msk file that you just unzipped. Now do 'Mask->Save to Disk' and overwrite the file that you just opened. Now close the dmsk0258.msk file and start the tutorial.

--

Animation below obtained from Animation Factory

animated arm hitting laptop keyboard with keys flying.Prevent Computer Violence!!!animated arm hitting laptop keyboard with keys flying. Save save icon your work often!!!

  1. Open a new 400 x 400 transparent 16.7 million color image and add a new layer named Tree.
  2. Go to Masks->Load from Disk and load the dmsk0258.msk from wherever you put it after downloading it.
  3. Now, duplicate the Tree layer and move the Copy below your Tree layer. The Copy will be a solid color later and show through the Tree layer.
  4. Set your foreground color to Dark Brown-- I used #974E07 -- and your foreground texture to Tree Bark. Flood Fill flood fill tool the entire Tree layer. (Definitely try other colors for this!)  

    tree after filling with brown

  5. Flood fill flood fill tool your Copy layer with black and no texture.

    tree after filling

  6. On Tree layer, go to Mask->Delete Mask->Yes. Repeat for the Copy layer.
  7. Apply Effects->3D->Inner Bevel to brown Tree layer. Here are my settings, but feel free to experiment here for an old, weathered, original-looking tree.

    7Bevelshot.jpg 7done

  8. Merge Visible the Tree and Copy layers. You can rename it Tree if you wish.
  9. Save your spooky tree as a tube or .psp file for future use.
  10. For the ones who like trying new things, consider removing some branches for storm damage and trying the different inner bevels for variety. You can also experiment with different tree colors.
--

My completed image, different tree color

In my image above, headstones are from a tutorial by Jane Braz. The trick or treater lesson is by Char. Haunted house is from Original Ronni's tutorial. Ghosts are from the vector ghost tutorial from PSP Toybox. Many thanks to all these authors for teaching me! Ghost eyes are from Monster Masher dingbat font and text in title image uses Bloody font.

--

Valid CSS!   Valid HTML 4.01!