Combining the use of brushes, and the cutout effect is easy in PSP 7. The fun part, is that you can change the color very easily, and by saving your image in PSP file format while it is still in layers you can use it over and over, changing the color.
If you need to install custom brushes, please refer to your PSP handbook, that you received with your product, as we will not cover that within this tutorial. For this tutorial I am using one of Destiny's Custom Brushes that I have had for a long time. She is no longer offering her brushes on her site, but there are tons of sites that offer some wonderful brushes you can use. Please do not write and ask me to send you Destiny's brushes, as I am NOT able to re-distribute something that someone else created.
The first thing we need to do is open up a new image, on a transparent background
Now add a new RASTER layer, as shown below
Click on your BUCKET FILL tool
At this point, you can choose to fill with a solid color, texture, or gradient. Just for fun I decided to use a gradient fill. (The pink highlighted area on the following image, indicates a solid color. The purple highlighted area, indicates the Gradient option)
If you are doing the gradient fill, set your foreground and background colors to the colors you want. Otherwise you can choose the foreground solid fill color you desire. If you are doing a Solid Fill, you can skip the next 2 steps
Now click right in the middle of your Styles button, and it should bring
up a screen like this
Click on the EDIT tab, and make sure you have the type set to FOREGROUND TO BACKGROUND
Still making sure your Flood Fill / Bucket Tool is active, Flood Fill your image
Now Add Another RASTER Layer
Now click on your PAINTBRUSH Tool
On your Tools Options box, click on the Brush Types button (highlighted in purple in the following image)
Now click on CUSTOM
A box will pop up that looks like this. Click on the dropdown button (shown in purple)
Now you will see all of the brushes you have installed in PSP. Choose one that you like
You will see the brush you picked, in a box as shown below. Click OK
Take your mouse and click on your image. The brush will be applied (NOTE: The reason we have used layers, is to give you the capability of moving the brush image around, to place it where you want it on your image. Brushes are not appled as "selections" and if we had applied it to the initial background, you would not be able to move it at all) If you need to move your brush image you applied, you can do so with your MOVER tool.
Now click on EFFECTS / 3D EFFECTS / CUTOUT
And apply the Cutout with the following settings ~ Opacity 100, Blur 6, Vertical and Horizontal Offset 3, Shadow color BLACK, and Fill interior NOT checked
Now go back to EFFECTS / 3D EFFECTS / DROP SHADOW
And apply a drop shadow with the following settings ~ Opacity 100, Blur 1, Offset and Horizontal Offset 1, Color WHITE (Note: Failure to have your shadow color set to white, will prevent you from colorizing the brush, and this technique will not work)
Now you'll see that you have a cutout looking image, but doing the cutout process removes the color, so what we will do next is change that color, by using the COLORIZE function. Also, at this point, you might want to do a SHIFT/D to duplicate this image, and save it in layers, in PSP file format. That way you can use it again, and colorize your brush in many different colors.
Go to COLORS / COLORIZE
And make the color whatever you want, by changing the Hue and Saturation. For this tutorial I decided to make our example purple/lavender, so I used a Hue of 200 and a Saturation of 100
Now you have your cutout effect in a color, as shown below
It looks a little bit faded,
so what I did next was simply sharpen the image as shown below. It is
hard to see the difference in these examples, but you'll be able to
see a difference when you apply the sharpening effect (see image below,
after sharpening, and you should be able to tell a difference)
Now you can Merge your layers
Trim down your image as desired, and you're done !
Here are two other examples of the brush, colorized to a different color
Click on the E-Book button below, to download and work on this tutorial offline
Happy Creating !