Mirror Tutorial (MSPaint + Word)

MSPaint – Mirrors Tutorial

NOTE: About half of this was typed up months ago, and the other half I finished today, so some of it might not flow/connect well. Just lemme know if anything is unclear.


Well, seeing as my Paint class is moving again, I’ve actually had to start working with the program again. One of my students is now working with Vista, so I had to explore on there for a while, which got me really excited about Paint again. While my Vista student was playing around with word, she came up with this.

http://i52.photobucket.com/albums/g1...r1ZarahSig.png

I saw it of course. And I knew it was just a quick little click and see what happens sort of thing done through a menu in Word 07. But looking at it I realized that it could be done in Paint just as easily. Well, not quite as easily, but it can be done! Of course, it also requires Word to do just because of how it’s done, but the version of word can be older, therefore opening up opportunities for those lucky enough to not have Vista.

Difficulty - *** Yeah, it’s harder, but it’s all done through patterns, so it’s not too difficult. It just takes a while.

If you’re going to try this, please try working through the scanlines tutorial first. It’s a very simple introduction to patterns and using word and such, so it’d help you when doing this one as well.

Starting off:

My very unorganized first workspace: http://i52.photobucket.com/albums/g1...unk/Mirror.png

End of Tutorial:

Yeah, and you can get better quality then that, it all depends on how patient you’re willing to be.

Mirror

1. Check your programs and search your brain.

To start off, well, first of all, make sure you have everything you need. Make sure you’ve flipped through the scanlines tutorial I made, because that uses what is needed to do this. Make sure you have Paint on your computer. And some basic knowledge will be incredibly helpful because I’m too lazy to type out absolutely everything. Also, make sure you have a version of Word on your computer. For this I was using 2003, so if you’re on the 2007 version it’ll be slightly different, but still work. Also, on that note, if you have 2007 Word then you can do this through a few quick clicks on a menu. Oh well.

2. Find what you wanna start with.

Alrighty, so start out with whatever it is you want to mirror. When you’re creating it, it’s probably a good idea to pick a nice size, something easily divisible. So start out with your picture. Like, 100 / 10 = 10. 237 pixel pictures are much harder to split up evenly.

http://i52.photobucket.com/albums/g1...k/Overlay7.jpg

^ I’m starting out with the picture from the overlaying tutorial, which is also great fun to learn. So have your picture in Paint. Keep it towards the top left corner of the canvas. Oh yeah. This picture should be whatever you want mirrored. Don’t wait and try to add something to them later. It’ll be harder.

3. Resize and recolor the window.

So now we have the basics. Time to start playing. Make your paint window big. Full screen mode. That way it’s easier to see. Now, make your canvas (the thing you’re allowed to draw on) bigger as well. Now, because for the mirroring we’re going to have white behind it in the end, we’re going to make it easier for later when we have images with a lot of white in them. Right click lime green or your other favorite bright and contrasting preset color on the color toolbar. Then, click the paint can tool. Paint the big white canvas green. Or whatever color you chose. I’m just gonna call that color green.



4. Find the height of your image. Remember that number.

Okay, so now we’re all set up. Let’s actually do something now! Alrighty, so what we’re gonna do is take our hand dandy tape measurer and see how tall our thing to mirror is. So to do this, unless you already figured it out, open a new paint window. Copy/paste or open the file or do something to get just the signature image in there. Make sure there’s absolutely no white around the edges, unless you gave it a white border. Now, click Image > Attributes and see how many pixels tall your image happens to be. Remember that number. And go ahead and leave that window up.

5. Figure out your pattern numbers.

So, as I think I mentioned earlier, this deals with patterns. So, write down your number. Write it in Paint if you wish. For me, it was 100. Find a number that goes evenly into your number. The smaller the number, the more work it’ll take, and the better it’ll look. So, because I’m lazy, I picked 10. 10/100 = 10. So, that means I’ll have 10 colors in my pattern and each strip of color will be 10 pixels tall. Now go and find the width of your pattern, the same way you found the height. For me, it was another nice and even number. 300. Write down your number. Or remember it. That’s how wide your pattern shall be.

6. Draw the pattern.

Pattern time! Okay, I’ll probably lose half of you here. Oh well! ^^ Alrighty, so you have those little numbers. How tall are each of your colors to be? Use the smaller number that you found the height to be divisible by. So now, draw a vertical line (up and down). Make it be whatever number you just decided. Use the paintbrush tool, or the line tool, or whatever other tool you choose. It doesn’t matter, as long as you get a however many pixel line over on the side. Now, somewhere else, draw a line as long as your signature. The width. So now, for me, I have a 10 pixel vertical line and a 300 pixel horizontal line. Make sure it’s straight. Oh yeah. To check the length of your line when using the line tool, look to the corner for the two numbers telling you as you drag the end of the line along.



Now, copy the short vertical line and paste it… somewhere. Now, copy the long horizontal line and paste it. Now be very careful. Drag your nice long line along. What you must now do is line up the exact end pixel of the long line so that it is ontop of one of the end pixels on the other line. It can’t be one pixel above, and it can’t be one pixel below or else it’ll mess up the pattern. So, zoom in and check your work. Does it line up evenly? If not, fix it. Now copy one of the lines a second time. Go and place it. We’re working on making a box, so place it correctly. Then copy the other line and put it in place. Now, take the paint can and fill in the box you just drew. So now you should have one great big box of a preset color. So it should look similar to what’s next to the number 4 on the picture up that way. Now, Copy that box.

Paste the box somewhere else. Make the canvas bigger if you have to. It’ll take a lot of space to work this one out, so just keep making the work space be bigger and bigger. No need to cram it in. Anyways, paste you little colored rectangle somewhere else on the canvas. Now, paste another. And another. What was your number for dividing by? For me it was 10 and 10, so I need to have 10 boxes pasted. Whatever you had, make sure your numbers line up. One number should be the height of your box. The other number should be the number of boxes. So start copy pasting until you have the right number.

Now, take your favorite preset color and the paintcan. Color in the first box. Go to the next one and paint it a different color. And the next one has to be a third color. And the one after that an entirely different color. And do that til all your boxes are different colors. Got it? Great. Questions? Start complaining.

So now you have however many equally sized boxes of different colors. (6 on the pictures above) Now, take the select tool. Do you still have your right click color set to be the background one? Good. Click the select tool. Then click the option to make the background-ish color be transparent. Select the second box. Slide it up so that it’s right under the first box. No gaps, no overlapping, and make sure that the edges line up. Then move the third block under the second one. And continue until all your boxes are lined up. So now you have your pattern block, hopefully. Let’s check! Copy the block. Paste it. Slide it overtop of your picture that you want to mirror. Do the edges of the pattern line up with the edges of the picture? If they don’t, repeat this step and do it better.

NOTE: Don’t drop the pattern ontop of the signature. You want to simply delete the copy when you are done with it.



^ Pattern should look similar to that. Hopefully yours has more colors and shorter blocks because it’ll make the colors flow better. Much better. I’m just lazy.

7. Recolor the picture to apply the pattern.

Right. This one is fun. Select the Select tool. Be very careful and go right up against the edge of your original picture. Select it. Make sure you have all of the picture and only the picture. Paste it into Word.

For 03 – See the picture toolbar? Great. If not, right click the picture and tell it to “Show Picture Toolbar”

For Vista – Yeah, it’s icky.
VistaWord.png - Image - Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting
^ Follow that as your picture toolbar.
(Actually, if you have vista it doesn’t make sense to follow this because it’s faster to just go through a few option tabs and click the thing that mirrors it.)

Alrighty, so hopefully we can all find everything. Now paste the picture in. Paste it again. And again. And again. And again. Make sure that there’s some white in between theme to make it easier to separate later. So keep pasting. Don’t put more then you can see in one window at a time. Work your way over to the side as well. And keep pasting. Screen full? Great. Now go back to the first picture.

Click the first one. Click Brightness up one time. Now go to the second picture. Click brightness up two times. Now on the third you brighten it three times. And keep going. Run out of pictures? Well, unfortunately you might not be done. If you run out of pictures, hit the Print Screen button on your computer. Now go back to paint and Paste. Hopefully it’ll paste in the window that looks like whatever you were viewing when you hit the key. So make sure that it doesn’t cover up anything else and paste it in. Make your work space in Paint bigger if you need to.


^Word should look something like that.

Now go back to word. And start brightening again. You have enough brightened when it gets to the point of being pure white. For me it took about 16 pictures. So keep brightening. When you have them all, use the print screen key to get the rest into paint as well. Don’t let anything overlap. If it doesn’t fit, make your canvas longer.

8. Organize the window.

Lost yet? Great! So now you should have oodles of copies of pictures. Make sure that you have at least as many lightened versions as you have colors in the pattern from earlier. Take your pictures from word and rearrange them in some logical fashion. Mine went from dark to light going down the page, which, by the time I finished arranging things, was 3000 pixels long. Make sure that when you’re dragging things about that it doesn’t leave holes in the middle of any pictures. Keep the original picture in the top corner of the workspace. Always.

9. Pick pictures.

So now that we have this incredibly huge arrangement, we are going to go back to our pattern. Count the number of colors in your pattern. Mine was 10. Go back to your list of pictures, and if you have more picture then the number of colors in your pattern, figure out which ones you can skip to still have a nice gradual effect. So, just make a mental note of this.

10. You should probably save now.

Because it’s a lot to copy and paste, now is probably a good time to save incase you mess up.

11. Apply the pattern.

Yup, now you actually get to use that colorful block from the beginning. Copy it. Set the secondary color (left click) to the color of the workspace, lime green if you pay attention to me. Why? Because I said so. Tell it to make the secondary color transparent. Use this to line up the edges perfectly with the first picture on the list. Now, set the secondary color to the LAST color in the pattern. The bottom line. That stripe should disappear. Did it? Good. Set down the picture. Now, pick up that picture that you just put the pattern on. Repeat this step, now using the second to last color and leaving it on the second picture. Continue like that until all the stripes are colored.



^ It should look something like this about halfway through.


12. Flip.



Flip the image over. Select it using the select tool. Right click and go to Rotate/Flip. Tell it to flip vertical.

13. Paste.

Copy the newly flipped image. Scroll back up to the top of your workspace where you should still have the original image in the upper left corner. Find it? Great. Paste the new one, and line it up with the bottom of the first one, to wherever it is that you get the desired effect. Now, resize your workspace to isolate the image so that it’s actually a normal-ish size and all the extra canvas is gone. Voila! You’ve officially mirrored a signature.

Final Product:





Questions? Comments? Concerns? Start complaining. ^_^






EDIT: Alrighty, for all of you complaining about the fact that I was lazy and did a bad quality job, here it is, now revamped to pretty much the best it can look. (For this effect, at least.)



I shall leave the pictures in the tutorial alone though simply because it is much harder to follow along with how that one is made due to incredibly small changes.

Even though I'm not a big fan of the product, this is genius. Good job, you deserve an award .

Even though I'm not a big fan of the product, this is genius. Good job, you deserve an award.

I can garuntee that that product could've been 10 times better quality. The only problem is that it would've taken 10 times as long. As for an award, it's not likely. Not my best tutorial.

And... Blah, this took a while to type, so I suppose I'm really just bumping this thread in hopes of getting more then 30 views.

It could be done much easier in The Gimp, without all of the light lines.

It could be done much easier in The Gimp, without all of the light lines.

There are alot of things that are easier to do in Gimp. Unfortunately, Gimp takes up more memory then paint, is slower then paint, and is much more likely to kill a computer then paint. All my tutorials so far are things that are easier done with a different program, but changed about so that they may be done in simpler programs. But yes, I know that Gimp does more then paint.

Originally Posted by Dog Dog 123

There are alot of things that are easier to do in Gimp. Unfortunately, Gimp takes up more memory then paint, is slower then paint, and is much more likely to kill a computer then paint. All my tutorials so far are things that are easier done with a different program, but changed about so that they may be done in simpler programs. But yes, I know that Gimp does more then paint.

"More memory"

My version of GIMP only takes up 8MB of space. While paint, takes 12MB.


"Slower than paint"

What do you mean by that? Longer time to load? For the features you're getting, it's no problem.


"Much more likely to kill a computer than paint"

WTF? GIMP is not a virus.

Wrong. Wrong. And... I'll explain. Time to compare the three biggest names in computer graphics...

"My version of GIMP only takes up 8MB of space. While paint, takes 12MB."

All files included...

Paint: 36,878 bytes
Gimp: 33,152,121 bytes
Photoshop: 183,437,862 bytes

"What do you mean by that? Longer time to load? For the features you're getting, it's no problem."

Mem Usage, according to task manager. Paint and Gimp both with a 400x150 document.

Paint: 8,720 K
Gimp: 34,916 K
Photoshop: 18,108 K

By the way, after I had all three of those going at once, my internet window froze.

"WTF? GIMP is not a virus."

Obviously you've never tried to run a big program on a bad computer. It drives the machine crazy. It freezes it alot. The lag is terrible. It causes programs to overall just freak out.

http://i52.photobucket.com/albums/g1...yPhotoshop.png
^ That's a screenshot of when photoshop went wacky a few days ago for me and would only show me tool boxes. Stuff like that happened every five minutes when we had big programs going on our 10 year old computer. (By with way, Sims 2 and Diablo don't work well with Windows 98.)


Basically, Paint is the best. You cannot run Gimp and Photoshop on old computers. Heck, I can hardly run Photoshop on this computer, and it's still pretty new. A ten year old computer cannot handle a higher level editor. It can, however, run Paint and Word, which are both fairly standard programs for a person to have. So stop arguing with false facts. Paint runs on old computers, Gimp does not.

GIMP and Photoshop are much easier to use for things like this. They HAVE an invert feature, and a lighting feature. They turn a 13 step process into a 3 step one. Paint is not the best just because it is the most compatible. You try and do half the stuff you can do in Gimp in Paint, you'll get bad results, or fail completely.

You try and do half the stuff you can do in Gimp in Paint, you'll get bad results, or fail completely.

Wrong. Scanlines and chaning the opacity work perfectly. This one would work just as well if I weren't lazy. Actually, I think I'll stop being lazy and fix up the product to better quality just so that people stop complaining.

Paint is not the best just because it is the most compatible.

Paint is the best because of simplicity. Well, best for simplicity at least. I know it's not the best, but it's the most fun and works on just about every computer. I know it takes longer, and I know it's not the best program, but I don't care. I teach it, and people are capable of learning it. Also, the only thing that can be said to be absolutely impossible when combining paint and word is transparency. Everything else IS possible. Not easily, but it is.

GIMP and Photoshop are much easier to use for things like this. They HAVE an invert feature, and a lighting feature. They turn a 13 step process into a 3 step one.

For the millionth time, yes, I know. Of course, for things that easy to do in Photoshop and Gimp, you don't need a tutorial to show you how to do it. What's the point it writing out instructions for something that is that incredibly simple? By the way, I could've have easily made this into a three step process.

1. Draw a pattern.
2. Create light and dark copies.
3. Apply the pattern.

See? Number of steps means nothing.

And why do you insist on arguing over something like this? I know what you're saying. Gimp and Photoshop are better then paint. That's a fact. But paint is not a bad program. Well, if you pair it with word it isn't a bad program. The only thing that paint can't do is resize a picture well. That's it.