[Hall of tricks]

PhotoImpact 4.2 doesn't have much capability of doing 3D objects, granted. But using some built-in tools and some imagination you can give some interesting illusion of perspective.  In the following image the shadow and the lines in the background give the illusion that there is a vanishing point to the image thus making you believe that you're looking at a 3D image.

For downloading purpose, I've only include the screenshots I think are important. The tool mainly used to create this image is the Transform Tool. What are we waiting for, let's begin!

Let's start by creating the image and the vanishing point background.

• Create a new image of 640 x 480.
• Choose Grid and Partition from the Web menu.
• Set the parameters as follow then click OK.

• The image now contains 24 vertical lines (25 columns).
• Click the Transform Tools. The tool bar at the top contains a section named Freely transform. In this section click Perspective.
• At each corner of your image appears a handle. Drag the upper left (or right) handle over to the top middle of your image.
• Click the Pick Tool to remove the handles.
• There you go. Don't worry if you think that the top part doesn't look nice, we'll crop it later.

Now let's add the text.

• Click the Text Tool button.
• Add the text to the image, choose a Font and Font Size. Warning: Make sure the Mode is set to 2D Object and do not add any shadow.
• While you press the Ctrl key on your keyboard drag the text higher. This is a quick way to duplicate an object.
• Having the second copy selected choose Edit/Convert Object Type then From Text To Image (I'll explain later why).
• From the Web menu, choose Object Shadow Designer. Set the dialog box as follow:

• Right-click the text with the shadow and choose Ungroup. See, that's why we needed to convert the text to an image. Now the text and the shadow are detached from one another.
• Click the Pick Tool, click in the background to deselect everything then select the text on top of the shadow and press Del.
• At this point you should only have the text object and the shadow above, right? Below, I only show the bottom part of the image.

Before we turn the text around, add a guideline just below the colored text. Believe me they are not called guidelines for nothing.

• From the View menu, choose Ruler.
• Bring the mouse pointer in the top ruler and drag down until you get just below the colored text. This guideline will help you to keep the text horizontal in the next step.
• Again, from the View menu, choose Ruler.

No let's add vanishing points to the text and the shadow. This one will require dexterity from you.

• Select the colored text
• Click the Transform Tools. The tool bar at the top contains a section named Freely transform. In this section click Operate virtual track ball.
• If this is the first time you use this tool, look carefully at what happened. A circle appeared around the text with a handle in the center.  Also your mouse pointer has a globe attached to it.  In another tutorial we'll tell more about this feature.
• Hover the mouse pointer just below the handle in the middle and drag down. This will tilt the text toward you so it look like it's standing up.  Dragging the mouse up would tilt the text away from you as if it was laying flat on the plan (the background).
• Use the guideline to keep the text horizontal by dragging the mouse right of left. Note: You can drag the mouse off the limit of your image.

• Drag the middle handle to move the text near the bottom of the image. Use the background lines as guides to center the text.
• Click the Pick Tool and drag the guideline just below the shadow.

Now for the shadow to look real, it needs to be stretched vertically before we use the track ball.

• Select the shadow text.
• Since the shadow is a blurry object, we'll use another method to add the vanishing point effect. In the Freely transform section click Perspective.
• Drag the upper left (or right) handle up and to the right. Align the bounding box on the background lines to ensure that the shadow look flat on the plan.

• Move the shadow just behind the text (behind in 3D terms).
• You will probably need to resize the width of the shadow until the first and the last letter match their shadow. Use the Resize button until you're happy.  Then fine tune the location of the shadow. Here's mine.

Three more steps to go: Adding the bevel to the text, the spot light that casts the shadow and cropping only what we want to keep.

• Select the text then click Text Tool. From the Mode list notice that all 3D effect are gone. They're also gone from the Path Tool. To fix this choose Edit/Convert Object Type than Reset Text/Path Object.
• Now from the Mode list, select 3D Round or whatever you like. You can imagine how long it took me to figure out this last step!

• Click the background.
• Click the EasyPalette button on the toolbar.
• From the EasyPalette toolbar, click Galleries (the first one) and choose Magic.
• Click the Light tab and scroll down to thumbnail L24.
• Right-click on L24 and choose Modify Properties and Apply.
• There is only one thing to do here. Move the spot light and change it's direction. Move the mouse over the blue handle in the preview box and drag it right below the red one. The blue handle defines the direction of the spot light.
• Drag the red handle over to the bottom middle of the preview box. The red handle defines the spot light location.
• If you want you can narrow the spot light by dragging any of the two blue handles in the lower left corner of the dialog box.
• Click OK. Isn't that nice?

• Click the Selection Tool. Make sure it's the Standard Selection Tool that appears
• Click and drag a rectangle around the section of the image you want to keep.

• From the Edit menu choose Crop.
• Right-click anywhere in the image and choose Merge All.
• There you go. Congratulation for keeping up with me all along.

Note: Now that all the objects are merged, you might want to turn the image into a button with the Button Designer.