Treehouse Treasures

This tut will show you how to make a twinkle exactly where you want it on your image, using Xenofex 2 Constellation.

You can put one twinkle on your tag or you can make a multi-layered, animated twinkle to add to your images. It just requires a few extra steps.

To control the placement of a single twinkle (non-animated) on your image, make a small selection with your selection tool where you want the twinkle.

It works best to use a circular selection about 5 pixels in size.

With your selection, apply Xenofex 2 Constellation with these settings:

Star Size: 20 (can adjust this up or down for larger or smaller twinkle)
Size Variation: 0 (far left)
Edge Star Density: 1 (far left)
Overall Star Density: 100 (far right)
Overdrive: 100 (far right)
Twinkle Amount: 100 (far right)
Twinkle Rotation: 34
Background Fill: Keep Original Image

Now all you have to do is add credits and save your tag.
These are the settings that I used for the header above.

Create Animated Twinkle

To make an animated twinkle that you can add to your images, open a 60 by 60 pixel image in PSP with a transparent background.

Select your paintbrush tool with these settings:

Set your foreground to white. Now draw one square with your paintbrush in the center of your canvas by left clicking where you want it.

Next you need to go to selections and select all, float and defloat.

Duplicate this layer 3 times, for a total of 4 layers.
Be sure to keep them selected.

Name your layers 1, 2, 3, and 4. Then close off all but layer 1 and highlight layer 1 to select it.

Go to your Xenofex 2 Constellation Plugin and use these settings.

Hide layer 1, unhide and select layer 2 and repeat constellation settings except change the star size to 6.00.

Repeat this process with layers 3 and 4 using star size 8.00 for layer 3 and star size 10.00 for layer 4.

Now you can deselect.

Save this twinkle animation as file type ".pspimage" and open it in Animation Shop.

In Animation Shop, select the first three layers, copy and paste them after layer 4.

With these 3 layers still selected, go to Animation>Reverse Frames.

Go to Animation>Insert Frames>Empty.
When a new box opens select, "number of frames 1" and "insert before frame 1" and tick "blank to canvas color". Move the empty layer to the end (frame 8).

You should now have a total of 8 frames.
Set all frame delays to 10 except the empty frame to 250.

Here I saved this animation with file type ".mng" to preserve the transparency.

To apply this animation on a tag, open both the .mng file and your tag in Animation Shop.

Duplicate your tag to 8 frames. Select all frames of your tag and your animation.

Copy the animation frames and paste them into your tag frames where you want the twinkle to appear. I used it on my witches hat.

Now you just need to optimize and save your tag as a ".gif".

I hope you have enjoyed this tut, and I'd love to see your results!
You can post them with the other member results
HERE

This original tutorial was written by justjam on August 8, 2018.
Any similarity to any other tutorial is coincidental.
Please do not claim it as your own, pass it around in groups or post to any other location.
You may print out a version for your own use.