Interpreting PS for PSP Users: Inner Glow

There are lots of digital scrapping tutorials on the web, but the majority of them are for Photoshop or Photoshop Elements. If you know Paint Shop Pro well, it is fairly easy to figure out how to create the same results in PSP.

But there are a few styles mentioned in the tutorials that are very subtle. I could never figure them out from looking at the pictures in the tutorials. Now that I have Photoshop, I easily see how these styles can be created in PSP. So I am writing some tutorials that will explain these PS styles and how they can be reproduced using the effects in PSP.

This is the second of a series of three tutorials on the “inner” styles or effects.

There is no effect in Paint Shop Pro called inner glow. However, we can use the cutout effect to create the same results. Cutout is one of the 3D effects in the dropdown menu with the drop shadow. If you are not familiar with the cutout effect, you can read about it in more detail in Part 1 – Inner Shadow.

The basic difference in creating an inner glow instead of an inner shadow is the color you use for your shadow/glow. The default color for the inner glow in Photoshop is a pale yellow (#ffffbe) with the screen blend mode.




Making an Inner Glow in PSP

• First, create your image. This image can have a texture or pattern if you want.


• Next, duplicate the image. (Layers, Duplicate or right-click on the layer and choose Duplicate.)
  
  


• Then, link the two layers so that if you move one layer, the other layer will go with it. Do this by clicking on the area circled in red on one layer to change it to a number. Then activate the other layer (s) to be linked and change “None” to the same number. You must use the move tool to move the layers. The pick tool (deform tool in earlier versions) will move them separately. The chain link will show beside layers that are linked. (See below.)

• With the copied layer as the active layer, apply the cutout effect.


• Be sure the “Fill interior with color” is unchecked.


• The color in this image is the same pale yellow that is used in Photoshop.


• Both offsets are set to zero which makes the glow go all around the hexagon.


• You can change the blend mode and opacity of the glow because it is on its own layer. Here I used the screen blend mode because it is the one used in Photoshop.


• If you are satisfied with the glow, activate the glow layer and merge down to join the two layers.


• To create a wider glow, alter the blur setting. You may also want to change the opacity.


• The blend mode of the glow layer was changed to screen in this example.

Experiment with changing the glow color and using different blend modes. Changing the offset settings will determine the location of the glow.

Other Kinds of Inner Glow

The inner glow styles that were used above are creating the glow from the edge of the image. The Photoshop inner glow style also allows you to create the glow from the center. It also has contours that you can use to change the glow. This can create some interesting effects. They are a bit more difficult to recreate in Paint Shop Pro, but not impossible.

I have worked up a few examples of what the center setting and added contours can create in Photoshop and how I recreated a similar image in Paint Shop Pro. The recreated images are not exact, but close.




I did not spend a lot of time on these and might have done better, especially on the star. But I think you can see that it is possible to create just about anything you can do in Photoshop in Paint Shop Pro.

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