EASY~PEASY RAINBOW

Paint Shop Pro Tutorials by Karen

This rainbow over my horse isn`t real, I made it myself with P.S.P! I first made a rainbow by following other tutorials I found on the web, but I wasn`t entirely happy with the results- to me the colours were too bold for the rainbow to look real. So I did some experimenting, made some adjustments, and came up with a rainbow which I think is much more realistic... Here`s how to make my version, which you can tube for future use...

First start a new image as in fig 1

Next open your styles pallette and choose gradient fill. Double click the pallette and select "Fading Spectrum". Make the settings as fig 2, but don`t close the dialogue box yet.

Now click on "Edit" and make the settings as fig 3, then close the dialogue box.

Go to the drawing tool, right click the icon and select "Tool options", set as fig 4.

Close the dialogue box then drag your pointer across the canvas, just over half way up, drawing a line all the way across. It will look like an empty box until you release the mouse button, you should then see a rainbow coloured line.(fig 5)

The reason for so much empty canvas is so that when you make the rainbow arch, it will have room to make a more realistic shape. At the moment there is too much red and lilac, it will make your rainbow an odd shape with too much colour if left like this. We need to remove a few pixels from the top and bottom edges. Go to the selection tool, right click the icon and select "tool options", set as fig 6.

Close the dialogue box, then drag the pointer to draw across the top edge to select one or two pixels of red, the feathering will spread and make a nicer edge. (fig 7)

Keeping the selection click the cutting tool (scissors) 3 times then deselect. Repeat the last step at the bottom (lilac) edge. Next go to effects/geometric effects/warp and set as fig 8 You should now have a rainbow shape (fig 9)

Now go to edit/copy/edit/paste as new image then blur/motion blur, set as fig 10. Click OK to close the dialogue box.

You should now have a realistic looking rainbow (fig 11) which you can tube or save for future use!... Have fun

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial which was written for P.S.P V7 but should easily adapt for other versions.

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