Create a Jewel 2

After posting the last tutorial for making a gem or jewel, I spent some time trying to figure out how to make it look more like a faceted cut gem.  This tutorial and the sample shown in the image above is the result.  It's still not 100% photo-realistic, but it's a bit closer than the last tutorial which is below this post.

This tutorial was written 20 February 2012 in PSP 9 but should work in other versions of the program.  There are some optional basic vector editing steps at the very end of this tutorial so this one may be of interest for that reason even if making a jewel is not.


Filter needed: Eye Candy 3.1 > HSB Noise
The HSB Noise filter is also available in Eye Candy 4000, and again in Eye Candy 5 Textures > Texture Noise.

1.  To begin, open a new transparent canvas 400 x 400 pixels.  (The size your choose for your canvas is up to you.  I tend to make the canvas about twice as large as the finished jewel will be.)  Choose whatever color you'd like your jewel to be in your Foreground/Stroke Materials palette.  If you'd like to follow along exactly with my screenshots, I used #3D469D.  Flood fill your canvas with the color you've chosen.

2.  Go to Effects > Plugins > Eye Candy 3.1 > HSB Noise.  Enter the settings as follows (also shown in the screenshot below) - Hue Variation: 15; Saturation Variations: 30; Brightness Variation: 100; Opacity Variation: 0; Lump Width: 4; Lump Height: 100; Random Seed: 1.  And click the Checkmark to apply the effect.

You can fiddle with those settings as you'd like.  The only one which really needs to stay as is, is the Lump Height.  That will create the vertical striation which will be necessary in the next step.  If the pattern is horizontal instead, the next step won't work properly.

3.  Next, go to Effects > Distortion Effects > Polar Coordinates.  Select the settings of Rectangular to polar and Transparent.  Settings shown in the screenshot below.  Click OK to apply the effect.

*After this step, if you'd like to follow the additional shape steps below, duplicate your canvas two times before moving on to step 4.  The two duplicated canvases can be minimized to use later.

4.  Activate your Selection Tool & choose a Circle as your Selection Type.

5.  Place your cursor in the center of your canvas.  You can see the exact coordinates by looking down in the bottom right of your PSP window.  Area is shown in the next screenshot.

 6.  Once you've located the center, click & hold your mouse button to drag the selection out to the size you'd like.  For my example, my canvas was 400 x 400 pixels so the center is x:200, y:200, and I've drawn out a selection which is 200 x 200 pixels.

7.  Invert the selection (Selections > Invert) and hit Delete on the keyboard.  Your canvas should resemble mine as shown in the screenshot below.

I select the most central area of the canvas because the colors get blurrier the further from the center you go.  This is just my personal preference - not necessary if you like how yours looks.

8.  To trim the canvas down and remove all the excess space, use the Crop tool.

9.  The next step will add a reflection to the top of the jewel.  Activate your Ellipse tool with the settings as follows (also shown in the screenshot below although a the image is a bit blurry so the main settings to be sure of are noted):  Create On Vector checked, Line width set to 0, Anti-alias checked.

10.  In the Materials Palette, set your Foreground/Stroke Properties to Black (#000000) and the Background/Fill Properties to White (#FFFFFF).  Change the Background/Fill from Color to Gradient, and choose Foreground-Background with an Angle of 0 and Repeats at 0.

11.  With the Ellipse tool still activated, draw an ellipse near the top of your round jewel.  Your canvas should resemble mine as below.

12.  In the Layers Palette, change the Blend Mode on that top ellipse to Screen, and lower the opacity to about 60%.

13.  Merge visible layers (Layers > Merge > Merge Visible), and the round jewel is finished.  My end result is shown in the next screenshot.  Yours should look somewhat similar.

If you wish to add any type of setting, there are steps for a bezel setting & prong setting in my previous gemstone tutorial which you can follow & use for this new jewel if you'd like.  Those settings can be found in the following tutorial - Create a Gemstone.

Alternate Shapes - Octagon
1 -3.  Follow Steps 1 through 3 above to create the basic pattern which will become the jewel.  Or, if you duplicated the canvas after step 3, just activate one of those minimized canvases to use for the next steps.

4.  Activate your Selection Tool and choose Octagon for your Selection Type.

At this point, you could choose any Selection type you'd like for a different shaped jewel.

5.  Draw out the selection you'd like - something similar to mine in the screenshot below.

6.  Invert the selection (Selections > Invert), and hit Delete on the keyboard.

7.  Next activate your Rectangle Shape Tool and set your Foreground/Stroke color to Black (#000000) and Background/Fill to White (#FFFFFF) and change the Fill from Color to Gradient.  See step 10 above for those settings.  This will become the reflection on top of the octagonal shape.  Draw out a rectangle with the bottom edge as wide as you want the reflection to be.  The top edge will overhang the octagon, but we'll fix that in a moment.  Your canvas should resemble mine as below at this point.

8.  Leave the rectangle as a vector shape, and activate the Object Selection Tool.  Click on the rectangle with that tool so that it is selected & active.

9.  Hover over the top right corner of the rectangle with the Object Selection Tool.  You should see an outline of a rectangle with square corners.  Still hovering over that same corner, push the Ctrl key on your keyboard.  The shape should change from a rectangle to a trapezoid.  I tried to capture the shape that will be displayed in the screenshot, but it wouldn't show up for me.  The screenshot below though has the corner you need to click circled in red.

10.  With the Ctrl key held down, use your mouse button to click on the upper right corner and push toward the center of the shape.  Angle the sides of the new shape so that it follows the shape of the jewel.

11.  Again, change the blend mode for that trapezoid shape to Screen & lower the opacity to about 60%.  Settings for that are shown in the screenshot in step 12 above in the round jewel section.  Merge visible layers (Layers > Merge > Merge Visible), and crop the canvas to the jewel.  Resize to suit yourself.  Your finished jewel should look similar to mine below.

Alternate Shapes - Pear/Teardrop
1-3.  Follow the original steps 1 through 3 to create the basic pattern we'll use to fill the jewel.  Or, if you duplicated the canvas after step 3, just activate one of those original canvases to use for the next steps.

4.  Activate your Ellipse tool.  In the Materials Palette, set the Foreground/Stroke properties to Black (#000000) and the Background/Fill properties to White (#FFFFFF).  Change the Background/Fill from a Color to Gradient with 0 Angle and 0 Repeats.  (Screenshot of those settings is shown in Step 10 above in the Round Jewel section).

5.  Draw an Ellipse (line width of 0) positioned near the top of the blue circle.  My placement is shown in the screenshot below.

6.  Activate your pen tool.  It's the tool that's shown above in the screenshot, one up from the bottom.  We're going to do a bit of vector editing, but I promise it will be painless.  Right click on the ellipse and choose Convert To Path.

7.  With the Pen Tool still active, click on the top node.  Clicking on it will make it the active node so we can make some changes to the basic shape.  After clicking on the top node, your canvas should look like mine below.

8.  Your Pen Tool should still be active.  Right click on the top node we just activated.  Choose Node Type > Line Before.

9.  Again, with your Pen Tool, right click on that top node once more.  This time choose Node Type > Line After.  Yours will look like mine below.

10.  Next, with the Pen Tool still active, click on the left side node so that it becomes active.  Hold down the Shift key on your keyboard, and with your mouse, click on the right side node.  Holding the Shift key lets you choose both the nodes at the same time so you can move them together.  You'll see a dotted line connect those two side nodes which you've selected.

11.  Next, click on that larger dot in the center of the dotted line connecting the two side nodes.  I've circled the spot to click in the next screenshot.

12.  Once you've clicked on that spot, hold the mouse button in while pulling downward.  That will shift the location of the side nodes so that the shape become more bottom-heavy / pear-shaped.

And that's it, all finished with the vector editing.

13.  Activate the Magic Wand tool and click anywhere outside the pear shape.  Your canvas should look like mine below.

14.  Smooth the selection (Selections > Modify > Smooth...).

15.  Use the following settings:  Smoothing amount - 10, Corner scale - 2, Anti-alias & Preserve corners both checked.  This will make the shape we're creating quite a bit smoother on the edges.  The screenshot below shows the difference in the two preview panes.

16.  Activate the jewel layer in your Layers Palette (named Raster 1 in my layers).  Hit delete on the keyboard to remove the excess color.

17.  Activate the top gradient shape layer again, and resize by 50%.  Be sure to UNcheck the All Layers box.

18.  Change the blend mode on this layer to Screen & lower the opacity to about 60%.  Move the top shape upward so that it's near the top of the point.

19.  Merge visible layers (Layers > Merge > Merge Visible) and then crop the canvas to trim the excess blank space around the jewel.  Yours should look something like mine below.

This was another pretty long tutorial with quite a few steps but quite a few options too.  I hope someone will find it useful, and I also hope that everything was explained well enough for you to follow.  As always, feedback is very much appreciated - good, bad or otherwise.  Thanks for trying my tut!  Any results you create from doing my tutorial are yours to do with as you please.