Microsoft Digital Image Pro has some fun features that you can customize. One of these is the Photostroke option. This tutorial will show you how to take an edging brush and turn it into a custom Photostroke that you can access within DIP to make edge effects or freehand draw with these great brushes!

For this tutorial, I am using Ro’s Folk Art Edges Brushes. All brushes sold at ScrapGirls include ABR as well as PNG files. Open your PNG file in DIP. You are going to create two graphic files and one text file to customize your Photostroke.

Select your PNG brush file from the stack.

Duplicate the whole picture.

 

Working in your duplicate picture, make sure your design goes from edge to edge. (For the example above, I needed to crop the image to make sure it went edge to edge. This is important to create a smooth edge in your final project.)

Once you have it cropped the way you want it, make another duplicate of the whole picture.

Go back to your first copy of your brush. Pick a name and save it as a BMP image. (It will ask you if you want to flatten the image as a BMP, and yes, you do!) Pick a name that is fairly simple. I chose to call this one "ROStripey." Another tip is to create a separate folder for these Photostroke add-ons so they will be easy to find.

Go to the second copy of your brush. You are going to need to go to Resize Image and Resize to 96 ppi. Save this image as a PNG file with the EXACT SAME NAME as your BMP file. It is important that is has the same name. Save it to your new Photostroke folder.

These are your two graphic files. Now you are going to need to create the TXT file that will tell DIP what to do with your new Photostroke.

You will need to find your Photostroke folder within the DIP program files. Browse to Local Disc (C:)> Program Files> Microsoft Digital Image 10 (or your version)> PiFiles> Paint> Brushes> Phostroke.

Here you will find your existing Photostrokes, you will see that each one has two graphic files and a text file. Select one of the TXT files. (Any one, it doesn’t matter.) Copy this file to your newly created Photostoke folder that you just saved your images to.

Go to the folder where you saved your images and the copied TXT file. Rename the TXT file with the EXACT SAME NAME as you have named your images. Open the TXT file.

You need to change the Display Name to match your file names. You need to change the Thumbnail File Name to match your file names and you need to change the Brush File Name to match your file names. Save your TXT file.

Now you have created your custom Photostroke. Browse through your folder and select your two image files and your TXT file. Copy these files into the DIP Photostroke Folder (this is where we first found your TXT file). You are ready to go.

 

Open DIP and select your image.

 

Select your image and go to Edges> Photostroke. When you scroll down your list of Photostrokes, your newly created Photostroke will show up!

You can select the width and transparency for different effects!

You can also go to your menus at the top (Effects> Paintbrush> Photostroke) and draw directly with your new Photostroke! When you use this effect, it will be in its own layer and you can easily recolor with Effects> Fill with Color or Texture.

 

Here is a LO made using Ro’s Folk Art Edges as custom Photostrokes. I edged the photo and the papers, and then used the painting to make the curvy detail.

 

I made a custom Photostroke with Lori Cook’s Edging Brushes 2 to make a custom edge effect on this photo.

 

And Lori’s Edging Brushes 2-Funk on the edges of this photo. See the rounded edges. It will do this automatically. You can leave it like this, or for the square edge like the photo above, you can crop back down to the original photo.

Tutorial uses:

	Note: Commercial license versions of Folk Art Edges 1 Brush Set and Edging Brushes 2-Funk are also available.

Tutorial written by Melissa Renfro