Making beveled text in Paint Shop Pro

Paint Shop Pro tips (Version 5 and above)

Paint Shop Pro doesn't ship with many plugins as Photoshop. So you end up tweaking with what is available to get the desired results.

Here I show you how to make beveled text using this wonderful (and cheap!) program.

Step 1
Open a 300 X 150 pixel image with transparent background and 16.7 million color depth.

Step 2
Using the fill tool , change the background to white. (R=255, G=255, B=255 or #FFFFFF)

Step 3
Change the foreground color to dark blue (R=0, G=0, B= 128 or #000080)

Step 4
Select the Text tool and click on the image. Now pick a nice bold font. I like Arial Black with 72 point size and bold settings.

Step 5
Place the text in the center of the image. Remember: do not click outside the text. Use Edit - Undo if you lose the selection around the text.

Step 6
Click Image - Effects and select Cutout... from the menu.

Step 7
Uncheck "Fill interior with color".
Select Black a shadow color.
Drag the Opacity slider to 100.
Blur should be 3.
In the offset settings, use -2 for both vertical and horizontal and click on "OK".

Step 8
Select Cutout... once again (Image - Effects - Cutout).
Set the shadow color to white.
Put 2 for both vertical and horizontal offset settings and click "OK".

Step 9
Your text is now beveled. To add a little more realism, we'll apply the Drop shadow... filter. Here is how you do it:
Click Image - Effects - Drop Shadow
In Attributes, set the Color to black, Opacity to 40 and Blur to 4.
Use 3 for both horizontal and versitcal Offset settings. Click on "OK".

Step 10
Deselect the text by clicking outside it or alternatively use the Control-D key combination.
Here is how your text should look