creative-designs-Water Reflection Signature

Software: PhotoImpact   10 - X3

Title:   Signature with Water Animation

Author: Maureen Eves-Lavis

Level:   Beginner/Intermediate

Tools:   Text, Colour Replacement, Transform Tool & Animation

Materials:  Fills, Textures, and Reflet which can be downloaded here: Reflet 2.6

When you arrive at PhotoFiltre website, click on English. On the left side panel select Downloads and under Freeware is the link to download Reflet. Create a folder on your hard drive or desktop and unzip Reflet and install in that folder. When ready to use just click on the Reflet.exe and the window will open.

Description: Create an animated water reflection signature in PhotoImpact and a little program called Reflet. Reflet makes an image animate quickly and simply giving your finished project a beautiful animated water reflection.

MODES and WORKSPACES

Versions 12 and X3 has the ability for customised workspace modes, choose your own personal settings or Full Edit providing you have all tools available for this tutorial.
Version 11 has five work modes. You will see them listed in the My Workshop Menu. For the purpose of this tutorial, ensure you are working in "Advanced Mode" in order for all tools to be available to you.
Version 10 has two work modes, Basic and Standard. Basic Mode features a simplified workspace with larger buttons and the most common functions, whereas,the Standard Mode displays all of the functions. We will be using the Standard Mode in this tutorial.If you see Standard Mode faded out as shown, then this is the mode you are using. If you change from standard to basic you will lose any presets you may have saved.

Remember to save often

Please read through the entire tutorial and download and install into a folder on your desktop or a dedicated folder on your hard drive.

Instructions
1.	Create a new canvas size 500 x 300 pixels.
2.	Choose Font style MisterEarl BT size 130 [you will have to enter this number manually] - Bold and Italics.
3.	Type your name on the canvas in 2D object mode. The colour of your text does not matter at this stage.
4.	Duplicate your name by right clicking, duplicate, or from the Menu bar, Object, Duplicate. You should have an image like the one below here
5.	Select one text and from the Attribute bar change to 3D Custom. Open your Easy Palette, Material, Texture and choose Cells1.
6.	Select the duplicated text and choose 3D Pipe. From the Easy Palette, Material, Texture Cells2.
7.	Place the 3D Custom text behind the 3D Pipe text. Use the Centre both from the Attribute bar to cenetrally line-up evenly. Right click, Merge As A Single Object. Right click and Add Shadow - 5th one along. Deselect by pressing the Enter key.
8.	From the Easy Palette choose Image Enhancements, Fill, Natural Textures, NT68 and fill the background canvas.
9.	The background is too blue, so you are going to change it to a greeny/turquoise colour. From the Menu bar, Adjust and select Colour Replacement. Click the button with the eyedropper and plus sign. Make these changes to the settings: Similarity: 99, Hue: -15 [that's minus 15], Sat: 0 and Lightness 0. You should now have a greenish/turquoise colour, if not, adjust the sliders a little more until you achieve a similar colour.
10.	Right click and Merge All. The image is a little too large; choose the crop tool and crop. I won't give you a size as it depends on the length of name you have chosen. I'll show you an example of size in the image below. Do crop it relatively close to the bottom edge of the text. Save as a .jpg.
11.	Go to the folder where you unzipped and installed Reflet and click on Reflet.exe. This will open the Reflet window on your desktop. On Reflet's Menu bar there is a yellow folder, click on that and find your saved.jpg.

12.	Click on the Animate button and watch the water ripple reflect your name. Click again to stop the animation.
13.	There's a number of different settings you can choose from. Firstly, Images: the higher the image number the more natural the reflection will look, however, this will make the file quite large. Average is between 5-10. Height: is the height of your image, but also depicts how deep the water reflection will be. Select Perspective or Regular, click either on as a test.
14.	Select Perspective: open Options, Speed medium. Options, Types of Waves: short. Click on the Save button and save as an Animated GIF. Image and Reflection, Colour Count 32 - selecting this number helps keep the file small, especially for uploading or adding to a webpage. Click OK. A dialogue box opens asking if you wish to save as .html, you can choose yes or not to this request. If you choose yes, the animated image will show as a test in your web browser. Now you have a simple, yet effective signature animation. Reflet is great for creating animated water reflections to images. I've selected a few to show you below.

Site created and maintained by Maureen Eves-Lavis

Creative-Designs

Terms of use for this tutorial are simple....What you create using this tutorial is yours to do with as you please. A link back to this tut is appreciated but is not a requirement. The tutorial itself along with the images herein are copyrighted to me and all rights are reserved.

This document may not be translated, duplicated, redistributed or otherwise appropriated without permission.