Old School Forum Tag - Rain Rain, Go Away

This tutorial was written on 08/31/2013 and assumes you have working knowledge of PSP. Any simularities to other tuts is purely coincidental and not done on purpose.

For this tutorial you will need:

PSP - I use X3 but most versions will do

Animation Shop

Mura Meister Copies

Xenofex 2 Fluffy Little Clouds

Eye Candy 4000 Gradient Glow

Tube of choice, I used the art of Anna Liwanag.

You can purchase this tube at CDO. Do not use without purchasing a license first.

Wordart by me and rain animation here

Font of choice, I used Beatrice

Open a new image 600 x 250. Copy your tube and paste as a new layer. Apply Mura Meister Copies, Wallpaper Rotate. If your canvas isn't completely covered, undo and apply again until it's all covered.

Apply a radial blur with Zoom ticked, strength at 50 and Elliptical checked. All other options at 0. Go to Image, Flip.

Add a new raster layer, rename this layer Clouds. Apply Xenofex 2, Fluffly Little Clouds. Click on Settings and click on Factory Default and click ok. Then click on Cloud Mode and change to Fluffy.

Change the blend mode of Overlay and lower the opacity to 50%.

Open your rain image. Copy the Rain 1 layer and paste as a new layer on your tag. Repeat with rain 2 and rain 3. Rename the rain layers from the bottom rain 1, rain 2 and rain 3. Hide layer 2 and 3 for now. *Note, I mirrored all 3 layers of rain so they were going in the same direction of my tube's umbrella, but this is optional*

Now with rain 3 active, copy your tube and paste as a new layer. I moved her so she was slighly off center so she covers the point of the zoom. Give her a drop shadow of -3, 3, 70, 10. Repeat the drop shadow 1, -2, 50, 5.

Add a new raster layer. Select all and flood fill with black or a dark color from your tube. Contract by 1, add a new raster layer and flood fill with a contrasting color. I chose the red from my tube's lips. Contract by 3, add a new raster layer again and flood fill with black again. Contract by 1 and press delete on all 3 layers. You may now deselect.

Activate the middle colored layer. Give it some noise at Random, 20%, monochrome checked. Now activate the top layer and merge down twice. Rename this layer border.

Apply Eye Candy 4000, Gradient Glow. Change the Glow Width on the Basic tab to 3, Then on the Color tab click on Thin and change the color to black.

Add wordart or text of choice to the larger size of the tag. I used Beautiful ES and Beautiful Caps ES to make mine. Arrange where desired.

Add your copyright info, license and tagger's mark.

Add your name using font of choice. Since my tag is so dark I used white for both foreground and background with the stroke width at 0.5. Give it a bit of noise at the same settings as your border but change the number to 40. Give it the same gradient glow as you did the frame, but move the top slider over about to where the little dropper icon sits. Then give your name a drop shadow, I used -2, 2, 50, 5.

To Animate:

The rain 2 and rain 3 layers should still be hidden. Copy merged and paste as a new animation in AS. Back to PSP, hide rain 1 and unhide rain 2. Copy merged and paste AFTER current frame. Back to PSP, hide rain 2 and unhide rain 3. Copy merged and again past AFTER current frame.

Save your tag and Congrats, you're done!