Side Border

Glow Tube side borders can be very elegant. I don't particularly like dark backgrounds, but since so many people do like them, I am including this tutorial for their benefit. Once you have created a glow tube, you can resize it without effecting the colors. To create glowing text, just increase the size of the glow tube to be large enough for your text.

To create the "glow tube" for the sidebar (PSP 5):

  1. Create a new graphic 30 x 100.
  2. Set foreground color to white and background color to a very dark version of what you want your glow tube to be.
  3. Make a selection from the midpoint in the graphic 15,0 to the right border from top to bottom.
  4. Flood fill with a linear gradient set to 90 degrees.
  5. Reverse the foreground and background colors and invert your selection. Flood fill again. You should how have a "glow tube".
  6. Add a layer called "Pattern" if you want a pattern on your tube. Flood fill this layer with your pattern.
  7. Adjust the opacity sliders on the Pattern layer until the tube looks the way you want it to look.
  8. Resize the layered graphic to 12x50. Save as a PSP file as a template for future use.
You can create a glow tube the same way in PSP 6 as you can in PSP 5, but I am demonstrating how to do it in PSP 6 using the new gradient features:

  1. Create a new graphic 30 x 100.
  2. Download my GlowTube Gradient Preset by clicking here.
  3. Unzip the preset in your Paint Shop Pro 6 Gradients folder.
  4. Set the Flood Fill tool to Linear Gradient | 90 degrees.
  5. Choose the GlowTube preset from the Gradient drop down list.
  6. Click on the "Edit Button".
    • Click on the "thumb" (#1 in example below).
    • Click on the custom color box (#2 in the example below).
    • Choose a very dark version of the color you want your glowtube to be from the Color Picker.
    • Click on the "thumb" on the right side of the gradient and set to the same color.


  7. Flood fill the graphic with the GlowTube preset.
  8. Follow directions 6, 7 and 8 above.

For this glow border, I made a copy of my template and merged all the layers. I then added a left border of 100 and a right border of 1,000 with the background color set to black. I then zoomed in on the graphic 2 x and carefully selected the glow tube, made a copy, pasted the copy as a new selection and moved the copy next to the other glow tube.

Horizontal Bar

The horizontal bar on this page is the 12x50 glow tube graphic rotated 90 degrees then saved as "bar.gif". When I placed the bar on the page, I made the width 550. This stretches the bar, but does not distort the image.

Header Text

The header text on this page was created from a horizontal tube I created and colored the same as the side bar tube. I then resized it to fit the text, added a new layer, placed the text (floating unchecked), inverted the selection and flood filled with black. I then copied the graphic (Shift D), cropped the copy and saved as a gif. I saved the original graphic as a "psp" file (thereby preserving the layers) for future use.

Decorations

        

A glow tube will allow you to make great looking decorations for your page. To create the above decorations:

  1. Create a new graphic with two layers. Flood fill the first layer with black.
  2. On the second layer, create a horizontal glow tube.
  3. On this layer, place a dingbat font, floating unchecked.
  4. Choose Selections|Promote to Layer (you will now have a new layer with just the glow-tube dingbat.
  5. Turn off the glow tube layer (this will allow the black background to take over).
  6. Save as a gif or jpg.
  7. Save the graphic as a "psp" file for future use.