Before we start, you will need to check to see if you have the Edges folder listed under your PSP folders. This File is on your PSP5 CD. If it wasn't automatically installed when you setup PSP, you can copy them from the CD to your PSP folders. There are quite a few interesting masks in this folder which you can play with.

1. Open a New image 400 X 400 and make the background transparent.

*Note* You can create this graphic much smaller and achieve the same effects, but for the purpose of seeing everything that's going on in this tutorial, Bigger Is Better!

2. Go to File | Preferences | General Program Preferences | Rulers and Units and set the grid spacing to Horizontal 100, Vertical 100, and Line Color Red. Click OK.

3. Go to View | Grids and make sure they are checked.

4. Pick the Shape Selection Tool and use selection type Circle | Feather = 0 | Antialias checked.

5.Place your cursor in the center of the image where the lines cross in the middle and draw a big circle.

6. Leave the circle selected and set your Foreground color to #068598 (6/133/152) and your Background color to #000000 (0/0/0).

7. Click on the Flood Fill tool and in the Control Panel select Fill Style=Sunburst Gradient | Match mode=None | Tolerance=200 | Opacity=100. Click on the Options button and make the Blend Mode Normal and both Vertical and Horizontal set to 50%. Left click on the circle to flood fill it. Deselect the circle by either going up to Selections | Select None or (Ctrl + D).

You can go up to View | Grids and turn the Grids off if you like, we just used them to find the center of the image easily.

8. Right click (or Double Click) on Layer1 to bring up the Properties box and name this layer Inner Circle and then click OK.

9. Go to Masks | Load From Disk and select the circle2.msk file that came with PSP and click Open. Cool huh?!

10. Right click on your Inner Circle layer and select Duplicate.

11. Name your duplicate layer Outer Circle by right clicking on the "Copy of Inner ..." layer button and selecting Properties. Type Outer Layer in the Layer Name box.

12. With Outer Circle still the Active layer, go back up to Masks and click on Invert.

13. Click on the New Layer button, (the little box in the bottom left hand corner that looks like files next to the little garbage can) and name this one BG for background, leave the rest of the boxes alone and click OK. Now drag the new layer down to the bottom of the layers pallet.

14. With the BG the Active layer, go to the Flood Fill tool again and leave the settings just as there were. Click on BG using the right mouse button. When you do this your masks disappear from view, but don't worry....they are still there.

15. Go up to the Inner Circle layer and set the drop down box to Difference.

16. Now you can play around with the different layers, and settings to get whatever other effects you would like. You can add drop shadows, mess with the opacity settings, filters colors whatever. Some effects will work differently than normal due to the masks on the layers, so you just have to try different things.*Grin*

Here's a zipped version of this tutorial if you would like to download it and work at your leisure.