Creating Eggs from Circles

What we'll do: In earlier versions of PSP, it was easy to create an egg shape from a circle using Perspective-Horizontal or Perspective-Vertical. But these effects were "fixed" in PSP9, and although they now technically are correct they can no longer create egg-like shapes from circles. In this tutorial, we'll use a different method that's only a little more involved and only a little less foolproof than the old method.

The result will look something like this:

What you'll need: An image that is circular and placed on a layer with transparency, and PSP's Deform and Mesh Warp tools.

Steps:

  1. Create an image that is circular and centered on a layer with transparency. Be sure that there's just enough room around your shape to accommodate the finished egg. Here's an example:

    The circle can be something simple, such as a solid-colored simple shape, or something more complex, such as the output of Balls and Bubbles. The example here was made using Balls and Bubbles followed by the Warp effect.

  2. Choose the Deform tool and nudge the circle down towards the bottom of the image canvas by holding down the Shift key and pressing the down arrow key repeatedly until the circle is in the proper position:

    (If you want to move the circle in larger steps, hold down both the Shift and Ctrl keys while pressing the down arrow key.)

  3. Choose the Mesh Warp tool . Make sure that in the Tool Options palette Symmetric is not selected and that Show mesh is selected. Then set Mesh horizontal to 1 and Mesh vertical to 4:

  4. While holding down the Ctrl key, click on the topmost mesh node and drag up, with the Ctrl key still down, as shown:

  5. Do the same thing with the next mesh node: Hold down the Ctrl key and drag the node up, but not as far as you did the topmost node. When you're about to release the mouse button, the mesh should look something like this:

  6. Examine your egg shape and adjust the nodes if necessary. When the shape is the way you want it, click the Apply icon on the Tool Options palette. You can then add any other effects to your egg that you want, or copy your egg to another image, or save it as a PspImage file or Picture Tube for later use.

To make a horizontal egg rather than a vertical one, use the Deform tool to nudge your original centered circle so that it's over near one of the sides of your image canvas and in the Mesh Warp Tool Options palette set Mesh horizontal to 4 and Mesh vertical to 1, then Ctrl-drag the appropriate nodes to get the shape you want.

How-To