Old School Tut - Puzzle Fade

This tutorial was originally written by me back in 2007, this rewrite was written on 08/22/2013 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

Xenofex 2 - Puzzle

Eye Candy 4000 - Gradient Glow

Tube with matching image - I used the artwork of Rachel Anderson.

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

Font of choice - I used Passion Conflict ROB

Open your tube and matching image. Duplicate both and close originals. Copy tube and paste onto your image, resize till it's the same size as the image and align it up so it fits on your image. I had to resize my tube down 78% so it fit just right.

Give your tube a drop shadow of -3, 0, 65, 10. Merge down and then duplicate. Give the duplicate layer a gaussian blur of 5.

Run your Xenofex 2, Puzzle filter with default settings. You should have something like this:

Add a new raster layer and flood fill with a color from your image. Select all, contract by 2 and press delete. Deselect. Give your border some noise at Random, 40% and monochrome checked.

Add a new raster layer again, this time flood fill with black. Select all, contract by 2, delete and deselect. Move this layer under your border with the noise. Give it a gaussian blur of 3.

Activate the top layer in your palette, should be the border with noise. Add your copyright, license and tagger's mark.

Add your name using font of choice, colors from your tube/image. Give it an inner bevel of choice. I used:

Then I gave it a slight gradient glow:

And then a drop shadow of -2, 2, 50, 5.

Copy merged and paste as a new animation into AS.

Now activate the layer that has the puzzle pieces. Run the puzzle filter again but click on the button that says 'Knockout 10% Remaining' 2 times and click on the Lighting tab and change the Groove Darkness to 10.

Copy merged and paste AFTER current frame in AS. Go back to psp, run the filter and click the Knockout button again 2 times. Again, copy merged and paste AFTER current frame.

Repeat these steps until almost all pieces are left. The filter doesn't really remove the last bits, so when you have just a little bit left, then hide that layer and copy merged and paste after current frame.

Now click on your second to last frame. I have 10 frames so I'll click on frame 9. Scroll back to the beginning. Hold down shift and click on frame 2. Now all the frames from 2 to 9 are highlighted. Copy, then go back to your last frame, click on it and paste AFTER current frame again. Then go up, click on Animation and click on Reverse Frames.

Select all, press Alt Enter to bring up the Frame Properties box. Change the speed to 15. Click on your frame with no puzzle pieces so it's the only highlighted frame. Bring up the frame properties box again and change the speed for this frame to 100. Scroll back and click on frame 1, change the speed for this frame to 50.

Save your tag and Congrats, you're done!