Sounds interesting. I'll take a look. Thanks for posting this.

Hi, Judy!

I'm working on tubing this gorgeous mermaid by NoFlutter, Devious Mermaid.  So far I've got the mermaid above the rock tubed and I'm pretty happy with my tubing efforts.  I'm working on the rock and below the water now.  And I also plan to tube some of the individual items like a skull, etc.

You've got to check out NoFlutter's new images.  They are soooo gorgeous! 

That's awesome, timber.  I tried to learn to tube years ago.  I wasn't patient enough.  I may try again after I get back into psp and knock off a little more rust.  I'll check out her new images. 

I looked at most of these tuts and watched the video of how to use the pen tool to do a cutout of an image.( I watched it several times) I tried two or three times to tube a small image and got better each time but, I cannot get the handles on those nodes to do what I want. I kept having to start over. I found a couple of your tubes, timber and your work is wonderful! Hope you don't mind that I downloaded them. Did you use his method or one of your own?

Wow, thanks, Judy!   Did you find the two tubes that I posted in the group Files & Documents of NoFlutter and Sandra Charlet?  I posted them the other day and haven't been in to mention it.

After I "finished" tubing the NoFlutter image I was ready to post it and then I took another look at it and saw some stray pixels that show up when you add a black drop shadow to it.  So it was back to the drawing board again.  Apparently I over estimated the edge of the image, so there's a learning curve there.  I'm still getting the hang of it.

I've learned that after you draw around the image and lift the image away from the background (via selecting the shape and promoting the selection to a layer), you need to view the image/tube on both a white background and black background.  My tube looked fine on a white background but when viewed on a black background there were areas that weren't edged properly.

I'm still getting used to working with the nodes and learning where to place them.  The node type that I used the most is Cusp.  The arms on the Cusp nodes can be moved independently on either side of the node.  If your node is set to Symmetric then the curve on both sides of the node will move when you adjust the arms of the node.  So for the most part I set all my nodes to Cusp.

I need to gather some notes about what I've learned so far and post those in another post.  My mind is getting scattered again because I want to do too many things all at the same time  lol.

Judy, can you tell me what the handles of the nodes are doing that you are having trouble with?

I thought I had my nodes set as cusp.  Some of the handles I could never find!  After the part in his video where he has you select all nodes and make them cusp, I cannot select an individual node again to move the handle.  It moves the node.  I got so frustrated I gave up.  LOL, not sure what I was doing but I will try again.  Your edges looked good to me.  I am not a quitter so I know I will be trying this again.

Yes, I found your tubes on that you uploaded.  I knew you said you were working on the mermaid and I just had to see! 

I think I know what you're refering to.  There have been times when I select a node and I can only see one of the handles.  What I do when that happens is change the node type to Symmetric or Asymmetric.  When I do that both handles of the node become visible.  Then I have to change the node type back to Cusp.  I need to investigate why this happens or what I can do to make the handles visible, because this roundabout process doesn't seem logical to me.

If you ever have an occasion to select all your nodes and then want to select one, I have learned to right-click any of the selected nodes then go to Edit > Select None.  After this you can select one node.  I do this quite a bit, so I'm looking for a shortcut for this.  I'll let you know what shortcuts I find to make these changes faster.

I finished my first tube and while I know it probably needs some work, I uploaded it to Files and Documents.  I would appreciate your taking a look and advising me on what I need to do better.  Thanks