TCP Panel (part 1)

The panel above without the river and tree image insert was one of the first things I created after buying a copy of Blade Pro. It reminded me of the huge artwork anodized metal panels that you might find in executive office suites. But this one is a whole lot cheaper and easier to make.

This tutorial shows how to recreate the panel in Paint Shop Pro using BladePro and deals with everything except the insert. Part 2 shows how that was created. If you use Photoshop or other paint program, you should be able to follow allong and make adjustments as needed.

1) Start out by creating a new image, 500x250, white background, 16 million colors.
2) Select the Shapes tool and set it to rectangle, Shape=Rectangle, Style=Outline, Width=2, Antialias=unchecked. Set forground color to black, background=white. Draw a rectangle 20 pixels from the edge (20,20 to 479,229.
3) The insert picture (see Tutorial 2) is 165x135. Create a border for it using the same settings in step 2. Since the line is 2 pixels wide, add 4 to the image size: (ie, make the box 169x139).
4) With the background color set to white, use the Magic Wand to select the outer boarder, then hold down Shift and click on the inner one. Press the Del key. With the borders still selected, apply the Gold, Basic Blade Pro preset.
5) Add the letters with forground color set to white. The font I used was Flexture which comes with Microsoft Publisher. If you don't have Flexture, use a fairly thick font.
6) With the characters still selected, apply my tcp006 preset. I know this doesn't look quite the same as the gold preset used on the letters in the original, but I didn't save the settingsI used when I created it way back when.
7) Select the Magic Wand tool and with the settings from step 5, click on a white portion of the image. Selections/Modify/Select Similar selects all the backgound. Hold down Shift and click in the insert box to deselct it.
8) Apply my tcp001 preset. FYI, this is the standard Midnight Amber preset with the texture set to the fourth from the bottom.
9) After completing Tutorial 2 (TCP Panel Part 2), copy the image created there into the insert box frame.