Puffy Effect

I thought I would share a little tip tonight on making an object look soft and puffy in Paint Shop Pro.  It is fairly easy to accomplish this in Photoshop because Photoshop has styles.  However, Paint Shop Pro does not.  However, it is easy to give an object or piece of text a bit of puff.

1.  Open up your object or text in Paint Shop Pro. I'm using text at 250 pt in my example.

2.  Select the object.  (Ctrl + A to Select All, Ctrl + F to float the selection, then Ctrl + Shift + F to defloat the selection will select the object and maintain any existing anti-aliasing and transparency).

3.  Create a new raster layer (Layers > New Raster Layer).

4.  Apply the cutout effect (Effects > 3D Effects > Cutout) at 50% opacity and 50 blur.  Make horizontal and vertical any positive number that covers 10-25% of the object's edge.

Vertical = 7
Horizontal =7
Opacity = 50
Blur = 50
Shadow Color = Black
Fill interior with color = Unchecked

5.  Make another raster layer.

6.  Apply the Cutout effect a second time, but make the horizontal and vertical the negative versions of the previous settings.

Vertical = -7
Horizontal =-7
Opacity = 50
Blur = 50
Shadow Color = Black
Fill interior with color = Unchecked

7.  Merge the second cutout layer into the first cutout layer using Merge Down.

8.  If you like the look of the effect you can stop.  If you want the puff to be slight inset, then apply Gaussian Blur to the selection with a radius that is half of the horizontal and vertical values in the Cutout Effect.

Radius = 3.50

9.  Ctrl + D to select none and the puff is complete.