Making Original Corners for Frames
Using Ding Fonts

There are alot of ways to make your own personalized corners and save them to use again and again.
One of my favorite techniques is to use Ding Fonts to make a tube and a brush, so I have them on hand when I want them.  The above examples are done with the same font, one made into a tube and the second made into a brush. 

Materials needed:
Paint Shop Pro - I used PSP 9.  There is a difference in how brushes are exported in earlier versions.  In PSP 7 or older, the image must not be over 350 pixels on the longest side.

Framed image ready for a corner accent.
For practice, you can download mine here. Right click on the image to save it to your harddrive. It is a simple frame so you can see to work with it easily.

Let's get started!

Open a new image - 400 X 400 - transparent background. (Start with a large canvas so you have plenty of work room. You can always resize your work later.)

Select a light foreground color and black for your background color.   If you have an image open that you want to match, use the dropper tool and left click on a light color to set your foreground and right click on a dark color to set your background.  To open the material palette, left click on one of the large squares in the palette.  The top square is the foreground color and the bottom square is the background color.



Set your Text Tool to these settings. I use the Vector selection when I work text because it lets me make changes to style, color, etc. without having to undo and change settings once it's typed.

Create as: Vector
Font: Corners 1
Size: Highlight and delete the standard size and type in 200.
Stroke width: 2
Anti-alias selected - I use Sharp
Line Style: +Solid
You can ignore rest of the settings. They don't effect a single 'ding'.

Click inside your canvas and type a letter. Corners 1 is Upper Case only. I chose "B" for this tut.

Objects > Align > Center in Canvas

If your Layer Palette isn't open, Press F8 to open it. Click on the +sign next to the top, highlighted Vector 1 layer to expand it.

The layer will have the A (text symbol) and the letter you chose behind it.

Double click on it to bring the text box back up with the corner ding highlighted.

You can change any or all the settings you want while this box is open. Click on the curved arrow between your color boxes in the material palette. It reverses foreground and background. If you want to use a gradient or pattern for either selection, click on the Material properties box and choose pattern, select a pattern and click OK. I chose a pattern I made called 006fabric. (If you want to use this pattern, right click on the swatch to save it. You can save it in your PSP files, usually in My Documents\My PSP Files\Patterns or you can open it in PSP, open the Material Properties box by clicking on one of the windows, choose the Pattern Tab and scrolling to the top of the screen until you see the pattern.

 

When you have a look that you like: Duplicate your image and minimise the duplicate. You will use it later to make a custom brush.

Click back to your original image.

Right Click on Vector 1 in the Layer Palette and choose Convert to Raster Layer.
Right click on Raster 1 (the bottom layer) in your layer palette. Delete.

Give your corner a slight bit more of a 3D look with an inner bevel.

Effects > 3D Effects > Inner Bevel using these settings:

Bevel #5 Width: 8 Smoothness: 0 Depth: 4 Ambience: -30 Shininess: 40 Color: White Angle: 315 Intensity: 40 Elevation: 50

Some people like to add a drop shadow to their corners now, but I prefer to add my drop shadow when I place my ding in the corner.

You can colorize your corner easily to make it match any frame you are working with.

Layers > Duplicate

Working on the top layer, go to:
Adjust > Hue and Saturation > Colorize

You can play with the sliders in both boxes until you get a color you like or you can look at the Colorize tut for different color settings.
http://pspuremagicians.com/tut/colorize.html

I made the top layer look like wrought iron by setting Hue and Saturation to 0.

Dupliicate your layer again and play with your sliders until you find a color you like.

You can make as many duplicate layers as you want, with as many different colors as you want.

I stopped at 3 layers. The original, the wrought iron and a bright rose red:
Hue 240  Saturation 217

Use your Selection Tool with these settings to draw a square around the outside of your image. Leave a little space on the outside of the corner. It doesn't matter what layer you're working on.

Image > Crop to Selection.

It's still too big to use as a corner, so resize it at 90% intervals until it's approximately 150 X 150 pixels.  Repeat the resize process until you are close to 150 X 150 pixels.

Image > Resize - using these settings:

Width: 90 Percent Height: 90 Percent Resample using: Bicubic Lock aspect ratio checked Resize All Layers checked

Save your new corner as a PSPimage in a folder where you will be able to find it again later.

To learn how to apply your accent to a frame - Go to "tube accent".

To learn how to make a brush and apply it - Go to "brush accent".