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Drag Racing Starting Signals
AKA Christmas Tree
This is what can be made with this tut.

I wrote this using PSP7. You can get a 30 day trial here.

#1 Open a work area 300 X 400 transparent, 16 million colors. If you don't have rulers on your work area put them on by clicking View/Rulers you will need them later. Add a new layer, change the foreground to the color of your choice. I used blue,

  • R-0
  • G-254
  • B-251
flood fill Make it something that's easy on your eyes.

#2 Open new raster layer, name it post. Change your foreground color to a darker blue, I used

  • R-17
  • G-56
  • B-225
Open your draw tool Single line/width 14 antialias checked, Create as Vector unchecked. Draw a vertical line using 30 on your left ruler to govern your starting height and start at 150 on the top ruler to make it centered (you can also look at the figures on the lower left of your workspace they will read 150-30) and draw down to the bottom, hold down the shift key and you will have a perfect vertical line. This should give you a post centered with a little room at the top and right down on the bottom.

#3 Use Magic Wand and click on post image. Work on the post image with the following settings.

#4 Click on image/3D image/innerbevel/metallic, use the default settings click ok. Back to image/3D image/inner bevel/round use the default settings. Deselect--Ctrl D

#5 Now you have the post but it has a bevel at the top and bottom lets remove them so it looks like a plain post. Take your selection tool and make a small rectangle at the top of the post then hit your Delete key and you have a nice flat top post. Deselect and do the same to the bottom, deselect.

#6 Go to Edit/copy or Ctrl C to copy and then Edit/Paste/Paste as new layer or use Ctrl L to paste as new layer. Next, Image/Rotate/Rotate 90 degrees right make sure the box, all layers is unchecked, click OK. Move it almost to top, so you can work easier. Move it to the left so that the bar just touches the left side of the work area. Go to selection tool and make a rectangle starting at 200 on you top ruler and go to the right encompassing that part of the image, hit delete key. Deselect. Now you have a crossbar to work with.

#7 Using your mover tool put the crossbar centered on top of the post. Use the top ruler as a guide to center it. Click on your layers toggle icon this will bring up your layer pallet, highlight the crossbar layer. Activate the pre-set shapes and pick ellipse with antialias and Create as vector both checked, and line width of 2. Make your foreground color black and the background to null. Make a circle anywhere in the work area, size is proportionate to the crossbar. Put your cursor on the little square in the center of the circle and move it to where you think it looks good. With vector you can do this. Make sure the circle layer is highlighted and right click, on the popup click convert to raster layer.

#8 On the layer you just made into a raster layer right click and on the new menu click duplicate, go to image/mirror, position new image at other end of crossbar. Close of all layers except the crossbar and the two circle layers. Merge/Merge visible these three layers. Rename crossbar.

#9 Make a new layer name it guide line. Using the draw tool, line width 1 and holding the shift key down, make a vertical line starting at the left side of the left circle and bring to bottom. This is just a guide line. It will be deleted later. Go back to the layer pallet and make sure that the crossbar layer is active. With the layer pallet open right click on the crossbar layer and on the drop down menu click duplicate. Do this until you have 6 copies. They are all stacked on the original so you can't see them, but they are there.

#10 Now you are ready to space them on the pole. With the mover tool move the top copy down, I used 40 pixels. ( Just a hint the mover has arrows on it, keep it as far left as you can on the crossbar so the arrow will be close to the ruler and count the units carefully). When you are done moving all into place, go to the layer pallet and delete the guide line layer.

#11 Make sure the top crossbar layer is active, use the Magic wand tolerance 0, feather 0, click inside the right circle. Next hold down shift key and click inside the left circle. Both should be selected. Go to selections/modify/expand by 1. Hit OK. Flood fill with red. Deselect (Ctrl+D)

Save as gate1. use the image that remains on the screen for your next image.

#12 Next crossbar, make sure the right one is highlighted, do this by blocking with the glasses and see which one disappears. you will be working on the second one.

I used #FFFF00 for the color of the next 5 crossbars. Same as before, Magic wand, expand by 1,OK. Flood fill with the yellow. Deselect. Save as gate2. Note! Continue all the way to the bottom, the last crossbar flood fill with green. Save all in sequence 1 through 7.

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