Laura's Addiction ~ PhotoImpact Stamps

Coded for and best viewed with Internet Explorer 6 ~ Screen resolution 1024 x 768

Using PhotoImpact's Stamp Tool

I've done this tutorial in version 10, but you should be fine with any other version.

Use my feather to mark your place in the tutorial. Just click and drag.

You have these things called stamps in your PhotoImpact, but how do you use them?

Stamps are simply objects on a transparent background, usually in a collection or used as a collection.

Go ahead and activate your Stamp Tool and I'll show you what I mean:

Click on the Stamp Menu and take a look at all the goodies in there.
(Use the scroll bar to see all the stamp icons.)

There's quite a lot in there, but the Menu is a little deceiving.
There are actually a lot more stamps than what you're seeing!
Click on that yummy looking Cherry, then click on the View icon:

See what I mean? There's more than just a cherry!

There are 5 different fruits in the collection, all at 3 different angles.
(If you can't see the whole view, left-click and drag the lower right corner of the window.)

Check out the other stamp icons in the same way and see what the collections are made of.

Some are just the one object arranged at different angles or with different shadows and highlights
Some are the same object in various colors
Some have lots of different objects within the same collection, such as the cherry
Some have just one single object, such as the silver ball

Open a new image to play with your stamps.

With the Stamp Tool activated, select a stamp and stamp away!

Single click, click and drag....play around and see what happens.

Now let's take a look at the Attribute bar:

Here's what we have and what we can do with it:

Stamp Menu - Select your stamp
View Menu - See all objects within that collection
Trans - Change transparency of the stamp
Scale - Change the size (scale) of the stamp
Spacing - Change the distance of one stamp from the last
Order -

Random

Sequential (in the order that you see in the View Menu)

Angular (object type will change only if you drag in a different direction)

Placement

Single (Stamps only one object)

Trail (Stamps a trail of objects)

Object

Separate (Stamps will be separate objects, whether clicked or dragged)

Single (Each click of the mouse will create one object)

Lines - Drag Freehand, with Straight lines, or Connected lines

Using the Snow Stamp:

...here are some examples of how changing those settings will affect your result:

Transparency 0; Scale 100; Spacing 100; Order Sequential; Placement Trail; Object Single; Lines Freehand:
Stamp Sample

Now see what happens when you change...
Transparency to 50 and the Scale to 50 but leave the Spacing at 100:
Stamp Sample

Lower the Spacing to 50 and view the difference:
Stamp Sample

Transparency back to 0; Spacing increased to 75; Order Random; Lines Straight lines:
Stamp Sample

Ok, so all of that makes sense, but what about that Angular setting in the Order attribute?
In that setting, the first stamp of the collection that appears, will repeat as long as you stay in a straight line. If you change direction, the stamp will change.
Here's an example:

The white line represents the direction I dragged the mouse. Each time I changed angle, the next stamps in the collection appeared. As I continued on a straight line, the current stamp repeated.

So what about the stamps that have only one object in the 'collection', such as the silver ball?
Those types of stamps work wonderfully well for the Paint on Edges effect.

I wrote my initials with the Line and Arrow Path Tool, then set my Stamps Tool up like this:

Silver ball / Trans 0 / Scale 50 / Spacing 80 / Order Random or Sequential would have worked / Placement Trail / Object Single / Lines Freehand

Paint On Edges can be found in Effect > Creative > Paint on Edges, or accessed with keyboard shortcut Shift+P.

One last thing...what if you only want to use ONE of the stamps out of the whole collection? For instance, that bright green lime in the cherry stamp collection looks good and would be perfect for something you're creating.

Set your Stamp Tool attributes to the Transparency and Scale you'd like, set Order to Sequential and set Placement to Stamp.

Now stamp and undo until you get the lime you want. By setting Order to Sequential you'll see each stamp only once, helping you find the desired one more quickly.

Now that you know how to use Stamps, try something on your own, or use the PhotoImpact Tutorial Search below for tutorials that use Stamps. Just enter stamps in the empty field & click Find:

I hope you enjoyed this and learned something new.
~ Laura