A SIMPLE ENGRAVING

You may have a picture you are just not sure what to do with - here's a possible solution.  If you don't have such a picture, please feel free to use mine for the purposes of this tutorial. These are very basic techniques but to the person who just might be learning all the wonderful creations that are available to them with Photo Impact, perhaps this one will get you started.

To see images full-size, just click on the thumbnail. 

  pi-eng-tut1.jpg (32362 bytes)  pi-eng-tut2.jpg (45351 bytes)

 

 If you would like to use the image shown here, please copy it to your hard drive. 


Open Photo Impact and open a new file, white background, 500 x 500.  I also make use of the Ruler which you will find under View/Ruler

With the Path Drawing Tool, 3D, grey, Ellipse,Border 9, draw a large oval.  

Go to Easy Pallette, Materials, Realistic, Marble2 and select it by double-clicking.  Now go to the Materials Icon on the Tool Bar and select the tab marked Bump.  Browse your hard drive until you find where you saved the picture above which is entitled tutorialface1.jpg.  When you find it, select it, and then change the density to 100% and press OK. Your picture should now be in the marble oval.

While the oval image is still highlighted, select the Path Drawing Tool, then right click on the image to select it and choose Duplicate.  Change from 3D Round to 3D Pipe and reduce the border to about 10 or less. You should now have a frame around your oval.  With the frame still selected, go to Materials on the Tool Bar and select the tab called Shading.  Change from Phong to Metallic and choose the settings shown below.  For this tutorial, I also changed the picture oval to metallic settings below. You may choose to have the picture phong and the frame metallic

 
With the Pick Tool, Select the picture oval (if you are not sure which one is selected, go to the Easy Pallette and click on Layer Manager (3rd icon from the left at the top).

Now select PaintBrush Tool, and change the settings on the Tool Panel to Brush round, Size 30, Colour Black, Soft Edge 50 then go to Effects and choose Paint On Edges.  This gives you a border around your picture.

For this tutorial, I darkened the frame by selecting Material, Light, and bringing the Ambient down to 30.
  That's about all there is to it but you can see that this gives you endless possibilities using different materials   Hope you've enjoyed this tutorial!

Here's another one, using Silver4 as the Material