Glitter, Baby
So you would like to know how to make glitters! Well, follow my advice below and you will be making your own in no time. Everyone has their own method to making glitters, although all follow the basic rules outlined below. Do what works best for you and have fun. :)
Also, if you are interested in viewing the glitters I have made, visit HERE.
Step 1
First you need to find a picture you would like to glitter! I'll keep this Neopets-related and use a simple picture of a blue blumaroo!
Next, open this picture in Paint Shop Pro (PSP). If it is not saved you can just copy the picture and paste it into the program. You will need three copies of said picture. Here is the blumaroo in PSP:
Note: You can get a free trial of it by searching google. In this tutorial I will be using a free trial of PSP X. Once you've opened it we can start!
Step 2
Once you have opened the picture, choose tool magic wand in the selection tool menu.
Make sure the mode is Add (Shift), this makes it so you can select more than one area in the picture to glitter at a time.
Click on the picture wherever you want the glitter to be. Once you have done that the highlighted area will have perforated lines around it.
For reference, I am going to glitter the pink on the blumaroo's nose and ears.
Note: You can also change the tolerance of the selection. This changes how sensitive the selection tool is. The lower the tolerance setting is, the smaller the selected area. The higher the tolerance setting is, the more area will be selected.
Step 3
Now we get to add the noise (the glitters). On the toolbar in PSP go to Adjust --- Add/Remove Noise --- Add Noise.
In the Add Noise menu choose gaussian. If you would like to have your glitters stay the same shades as the selected area, choose the option "monochrome". If you would like the glitters more colorful, then leave the "monochrome" option unchecked. You can set the noise percentage to the level you want.
Note:The larger the noise percentage is, the bigger the glitters will be. The smaller the percentage, the fuzzier and less noticeable they will be. When you have selected the percentage and other options you want, click the OK button.
Step 4
Repeat steps 2-3 two more times so that in total you have three glittered images of the same picture. Save them all and close them. Make sure you save them as .gif! They need to be .gif so they can be animated and be transparent! Reopen them all. You need to increase the color depth because saving them as .gif decreases it. To do this, go to Image---Increase Color Depth---16 Bits/Channel.
You need to floodfill the background a color that is not in the picture. The background will end up being transparent.
Once you have done this, go to Image --- Palette --- Set Palate Transparency.
Under there select "Set transparency value to current background color". Save all three images.
Now we can add the sparkles. :)~
Select the picture tube tool on the selection menu. On the picture tube toolbar you can select which type of sparkle you want. To change the size use the drop-down menu. The higher the scale, the bigger the image. The lower the scale, the smaller the image. Glitter each of the images, making sure that they are put only on the image and aren't accidentally partially off of it. Don't add too many sparkles or it'll look weird. Remember, it's supposed to glitter in the end!
Step 5
Once all the images are glittered, sparkled, and saved, now you will animate them! I use Microsoft GIF Animator (I'll call it MGA). You can get a free download (not a trial, for permanent use!) off of google. This is what I use.
Once you have MGA open you can set up the glitter. Click the Open icon (Ctrl + C) and choose the first picture. After that go Insert icon (Ctrl + I) for the next two pictures. Now you are ready to animate them!
Go to the animation tab in MGA. Under there select Looping, and then check "Repeat Forever." Now the image will glitter until your internet breaks. :D
Then you are going to choose how fast you want each picture in the glitter to move. Under Image Duration choose the duration (or how long each image will appear.) It is in 10ths of a second, so 100 would be 1 second.
NOW, your going to save it! Go to Save As (Ctrl + S) to save glitter. It is the icon that looks like a stack of diskettes. Choose the name you want. Make sure the extension is .gif (which it should already be set at).
Hopefully everything went all right and the image is glittering away!
Troubleshooting
If it flashes or doesn't glitter at all, something went wrong. If it isn't glittering it was a problem when you animated it. Go back in the MGA and make sure every frame is showing for the same amount of seconds and that you chose repeat forever under looping. If the image skips or flashes, try doing the animation over, frame by frame. If that doesn't solve the problem then there may be something wrong with the image itself. When this happens you need to open and check every frame in PSP and make sure that they are saved correctly and that the background for all are transparent.
If the glitter blurs, like the frames stay in the background instead of changing you will need to change to method to Restore Background in each of the images frames. This will make it so each image shows separately.
Showing off your glitter!
Once the image is just the way you want it, it's time to show it off! Create an account at photobucket.com or imageshack.us and upload the image. Choose the direct image link and put it on your pet page, lookup, shop, whatever! Go HERE to learn more about posting images. It links to Neopets' own html help.
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