Photofiltre Tutorials

If you’ve been wondering how to put stars onto your pictures or text using Photofiltre, then your prayers have been answered. Thankfully Photofiltre’s Photomasque function(Filter –> Photomasque) makes this job very easy and with excellent results.

Where are Photomasques in Photofiltre?

If you’re not familiar with the Photomasque function then take a look under the Filter menu..then Photomasque.

Find the Photomasque function here.

There are quite a few different masks available in the standard set which are included when you install Photofiltre. Included are various designs and styles of border,edging and frames, which look nice but in my opinion are not really that interesting or useful to the needs of many Photofiltre users…sigh.

Photofiltre masks. Many border and edges to choose from…in french.

 

Plenty of borders and edges, but dude, where are the stars????

The free version of Photofiltre (version 6.x.x) does not include the stars in the standard set of of masks. However, star masks are included in Photofiltre Studio 30 day trial which can be downloaded from the Photofiltre website and the big news is that masks from PFStudio are compatible with the free version of Photofiltre… which means you can simply download and install Photofiltre Studio and use the masks from that version. YAY!

 

Download Photofiltre Studio

Once you’ve installed Photofiltre Studio you’ll have two versions of Photofiltre-: Photofiltre Free and Photofiltre Studio (30 day trial).

Photofiltre Studio star masks. Here are the star masks you want in the Photofiltre Studio directory.

To use the star masks, open up the Photomasque tool and then select the Photofiltre Studio masks directory as your source of masks.

C:\Program Files\PhotoFiltre Studio\Masks

An easier way to get star masks…

If you don’t want to goto the trouble of downloading and installing Photofiltre Studio, then download the four star masks I’ve made available here:

starmasks.zip

Unzip these four files to your Photofiltre masks directory. (C:\Program Files\PhotoFiltre\Masks)

The four new star masks.

 

How to insert stars using the Photomasque

With the star masks installed, we can now get down to the serious business of putting stars into images.

1. Positioning the star

Select the rectangle tool and hold down the shift key(to make a perfect square) and draw a square over the position you want place the star. Use the pointer in the centre of the square to get the position exactly where you want.

Photo credit: Daddy Woofer

The size of the square determines the star size, so big square=big star, little square=little star. You’ll probably have to experiment with the square size a little to get it just right. The undo button is your friend in this case. Alter the square size by grabbing the corner of the square whilst keeping the shift key pressed down. You can also right mouse click and select Manual Settings to set the box size. Try something like 75 x 75px to start off with.

 

2. Open up the Photomasque tool

Menu: Filter >> Photomasque

 

3. Select the style of star.

There are four styles of star to choose from, you can preview each of them in the mask selection box.

 

 Choose your star style…

4. Preview and click OK

After, you’ve chosen the star mask, click on Preview to see how the finished result looks like…and when your satisfied, click OK.

A star is born!

If you want to create more stars, move the selection square around to a new position, resizing the square as required(the larger the square the larger the star etc).

Use Filter >> Repeat Photomasque(or ctrl-k) to repeat adding more stars.

Extra Bling.

 

Add stars to text.

Adding stars to text is another great way to enhance the look of text. The procedure is exactly the same, use the square to position the star and adjust box size to adjust star size. I’d recommend adding stars at the edges of the text, and use stars sparingly as too many stars may tend to look weird. The white stars look particularly effective on a black background. Generally, choose white as the colour for the stars, but with some text it’s well worth experimenting with other colours, such as yellow, shades of light blue or even a light pink.

 

“Alberta” Created with Elephant font. On the Text Tool effects tabs I used drop shadow(white) and selected outer bevel. Reflection was created and then the stars added last.

 

Coloured stars.

 

Hope this helps Photofiltre users. Cheers…Jeffagogo.

 

Related Post: How to create reflective text with Photofiltre.

 

 

Tags: masks, photofiltre tutorial, photomasque, stars, text