Making a Jewel tute

[barbieq25]

Making a Jewel - a tute from me at last! If there is anything that needs to be changed please let me know.

Plugins:
Align Object
Drop Shadow
Fast FX or Glow and Soften Portrait
Bevel Selection
Gaussian Blur
Circle text
Radial Blur Deluxe
Zoom Blur Deluxe

Flag image: Flag
FONT:AEROFOIL

This is what you should end up with (or at least close to it):



Make sure you have all the plugins & font downloaded before you start. (The font goes into WINDOWS FONT folder.)

1. Start with a 3200 x 2400 canvas.

2. Make the background black.

3. New layer

4. Select yellow for the primary colour. Select Circle Text and Aerofoilput at capital A in the text box 40 times and the remainder settings as shown below:




5. Select Magic Wand at default, set the flood mode to global and click outside the circle. Press Ctrl + I to invert the selection.

6. Bevel selection at the following settings as shown below: (Depth @ 10, Highlight colour 225, 227, 107 Shadow colour 147, 126, 7)



7. Run Curves at the setting shown below:



8. Gaussian Blur @ 2.

9. Duplicate layer and set to Overlay mode. Save your work if you haven’t already done so. If you run out of memory, the program will crash and you’ll lose the lot.

10. On the layer beneath the Overlay mode, use Fast FX Glow – Radius: 6, Brightness -32, Contrast 48.

11. On this same layer run Soften Portrait. Mostly for this one I use the opposite to what we do here but each gold wire is slightly different and you should experiment. For this one we will leave the Softness @ 5, Lighting @ 20, Warmth @ 0.

12. Merge the 2 gold layers down.

13. New layer. Select brush width to 20. With yellow create a circle (hold down the Shift key) until it looks like it will cover the inner circle of the gold. You may have to use the rectangle select to position it. Avoid using the MWand to select and move as it will leave a single pixel line that will be hard to remove later. See below:



14. Repeat steps 5 to 12. Save.

15. Create a new layer above the black background.

16. Add an image of your choice. I chose the Australian Flag.

17. As an alternative, you can use an existing image. Open the image in Paint.NET, Ctrl + A then CTRL + C then Ctrl + V.

18. If you are using the flag image, Align Object and centre it.

19. Go to Layers and Rotate/Zoom to 2.00. Copy the layer and hide it (untick the layer). Got to layer below the one you just hid.

20. Radial Blur Deluxe @ 0 Steps and maximum amount or whatever you like.

21. Go to the hidden layer and unhide. Radial Blur Deluxe at the settings below:



22. Go to Render, Shape 3D, turn off the lighting and set to Half Sphere Map, everything else stays at default, as shown below:



23. Go to Layers and Rotate/Zoom at the settings below:



24. Select Magic Wand and set Flood mode to Contiguous. Select the layer with the plain gold circle, click inside the circle. Ctrl + I and go to the layer we just zoomed up and press delete.

25. Go back to the golden circle layer. Select the inner circle. Create a new layer just below the layer with our coloured circle. Change your primary colour to black and fill the selected circle with black. Select the coloured circle layer and merged these two layers down.

26. Deselect all. Go to golden circle layer and Drop Shadow at the settings below:




27. Select the golden circle text layer and Press Ctrl + F to repeat the Drop Shadow at the same settings.

28. There are a few edges showing through from the Drop Shadow on the wire frame, so go to the golden circle, select the inside of the circle, go to the Wire frame and press delete.

29. I used Helen’s Galaxy Ball Tute for the ball highlight: forums.getpaint.net/index.php?/topic/15707-glossy-galaxy-ball-tutorial/page__p__265529__hl__glossy%20galaxy%20orbs__fromsearch__1&#entry265529

30. I duplicated the blurred flag layer and ran Zoom blur at maximum and high quality on the underneath flag layer. On the topmost flag layer I ran Drop shadow at maximum width and blur, twice. I merged all of the jewel layers except for the highlight, and then Drop Shadowed @ 1 with blur at max.

31. Save your image as a .PDN That way you can re-use parts of the image or make any changes. Then save it as a .PNG, resize your image to 25% and save again before posting.

I am looking forward to see how interpret the tute.

[blackpenny]

I love this tutorial! These are the first two I completed. There are others in progress, and I might get back to them someday.

[barbieq25]

Both of them are very good! I like what you did with the green one esp. Offsetting the background works so well to give the wonderful jewel even more punch.

The first one has a lovely soft coloured gem. Very smooth!

[chrisco97]

I have always loved this tutorial since you posted it. Very well written with a fantastic result.

[blackpenny]

Thanks barbieq. I wasn't crazy about the pink one at first, but I looked at it again and thought it's not so bad. *lol* I got some neat shapes with the Radial Blur.

[lancemcknight]

Thanks for this tutorial, Barbie!

[barbieq25]

Lance! That is just gorgeous! I love the gem, so glowy & shiny. The background is so ornate. A really lovely image.

[PeterPawn]

I played around with the jewel making segment of this tut (including the Australian flag) and came up with a new way to make an orb. I'm really pleased with this. Thanks Barbie.

[barbieq25]

That is a very interesting outcome although the highlight needs to end closer to the bottom right hand edge perhaps? Definitely a great way to make an orb. This one in particular is very pretty with the reds & blues.

[lancemcknight]

Barbieq25, I'll like to add optional steps. It doesn't include using Soften Portrait or Glow plug-ins.

After running Curves and Gaussian blurring, run Brightness/Contrast setting it to near 25, 60 respectively, and repeating, lowering the brightness and contrast. I think it gives a much stronger gold appearance than a yellow gold appearance.

Another tip, to create a jewel pattern, you could always run Inside Out. It gives a rather interesting outcome. That's what I did with "Purple."

[barbieq25]

Hmmm...must try that. I know that I did that with the spanner of Welshy's & it gave me a much, much better chrome. Thanks for the tip. Inside out is cool.

[venicet]

I tried this tut when I first downloaded paint.net and got sidetracked into figuring out how to add plug-ins and checking out all the toys available LOL

I tried it again a couple weeks later and got sidetracked into downloading fonts from various free font sites. Over 1,000 fonts added later, I spent a bit of time organizing and installing the fonts.

Then I tried couple weeks later again and got as far as the gold setting, got lost with the zoom blur and couldn't find things or figure them out.

Finally.... today I made it through "most" of the tutorial. I stopped before the highlights but I'm happy with the result LOL



can you guess that I have ADHD??

[barbieq25]

Getting side-tracked is something most of us do so don't feel bad. You learnt a lot along the way.

You did a fabulous job with the tute. The gold is great & the background is very fitting. I like how you added the starting image too. A lovely outcome.