Phong PS 5.5 Lighting Effects Tut replacement for P-P 9, 10 and beyond.
- by David Mutch 10 Aug , 2002

Thanks very much to Niju (http://www.nijumania.com) for the reason for this tutorial. Niju posted a message on Corel’s Photo-Paint 10 newsgroups asking how a PhotoShop lighting effect he saw on Ansen Vogt's Phong web site (http://www.phong.com/tutorials/lightingeffects/) could be undertaken in Photo-Paint.

Well actually there are lots of different ways this can be achieved, including a method very similar to that shown by Phong. However, here is a really easy way to create almost the same effect in Corel Photo-Paint (versions 9+ only) using the amazing Plastic Texture Effect. Thanks Niju.

Note to Photo-Paint 8 and older version users: Sorry Folks! Due to the use of the Plastic Texture Effect, this tutorial can only be done in version 9+.

1. Create a new image:
700 x 700 pixels,
300dpi,
RGB,
background colour = R10, G75, B128.

2. Create a capital ‘O’ letter using the text tool in:

  • Book Antiqua,
  • size 96,
  • colour 2,115,207 (RGB).

Centre this character to the document,
then flip the object horizontally (Object > Flip > Horizontally)

Note about fonts:
If you have Bitstream Font Navigator (BFN) installed, and you should if you use Corel Draw suite, start BFN then choose View > Customize View from BFN's menu. In the Font Name Text section type 'left', then press OK. BFN will now display (in the Font Catalog panel, LHS) only those fonts on your computer which have the text 'left' in their name. Browse through these to find a nice, elegant, curvy, left-hand font and substitute that for the reversed Book Antiqua in these these instructions.

The text at the top of this tutorial was created using Optima To Lefty and Garamond Lefty.
 

3. Apply a Plastic Texture Effect using these parameters:

  • Highlight = 97,
  • Depth = 7,
  • Smoothness = 90,
  • Light Direction = 315,
  • Light Colour = same as image background (use the dropper to select the colour from the image background).

Click OK.

4. Reapply the Plastic Texture Effect using these parameters:

  • Highlight = 90,
  • Depth = 3,
  • Smoothness = 100,
  • Light Direction = 145,
  • Light Colour = cyan (0,255,255).

Click OK.

5. Create a drop shadow for this object:

  • Angle = 320,
  • Offset = 7,
  • Opacity = 100,
  • Feather Direction = inside,
  • Feather edge = Squared

(defaults except for angle and offset!).

6. Create the soft dark background by creating a mask from the text object, removing the hole (Mask > Shape > Remove hole), expanding the mask to about twice its size (click M for the mask transform tool then hold down the SHIFT key while dragging a corner node until it is about double the size, double-click inside it to apply the transformation), then feather the mask (width = 100, Outside, Linear), invert the mask, create a new object, then fill it with 100% black.

 
7. Crop the image so that only some of the dark shaded background is showing.

 

 

FINAL IMAGE:


 


NOTES:

Photo-Paint’s Plastic Texture Effect is extremely powerful and can provide a good range of different bevels and lighting effects.

Play around with the relatively simple settings for the object's shadows and highlights (try using different colours too) and see just how easy it is to make really stunning 3D-like text and objects.
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