By doing this tutorial you agree to my terms of use.
Screen shots were taken from PSP7 and as such copyright belongs to JASC

 

For this tutorial you will need KPT5 FibreOptix and Eye Candy and a working knowledge of vector shapes and node editing.  You will also need my FibreOptix santa preset, this needs to be extracted to your KPT5/presets/FibreOptix folder, the light preset needs to be extracted to KPT5/Presets/Lights. And my Eye Candy 4000 glass preset which needs to be extracted to your Eye Candy 4000 Settings/Glass folder.

1. Open a new transparent image 500 x 500. Set your foreground colour to red. With the preset shapes tool, filled, antialias checked draw an eclipse. Then draw another eclipse, this time as a vector. This one needs to be smaller in size but can be changed as we are going to play around with the nodes. Click on the Vector Object Selection tool and right click the area inside your eclipse and chose node edit. Now add a node and drag out to get the shape of the hat.

When you are happy with the shape, in layer palette, right click the vector layer and concert to raster layer.

2. Change the foreground colour to white. With the preset shape tool, vector checked, draw an eclipse slightly wider than the hat, this is going to be the fur edging. If you turn down the opacity in the layer view it will be easier to see how the eclipse looks in comparison to the hat and because it is a vector shape it will be easier to resize.

       

Once you are happy with the shape, in the layer palette, right click and convert to raster and bring the opacity back up to 100%. In the layer palette, click layer1, your red eclipse and with the magic wand, feather 0, click on it to get the marching ants. Now click on layer3, your white eclipse, and delete. Ctrl+D (select none). 

4. We now need to paint some black lines onto the cutout eclipse. So with the draw tool, foreground black, and with these settings draw some lines. 

       

With your selection tool draw around your cut out eclipse and click on it to select. Now open KPT5 FibreOptix and apply my santa preset using the built in grey to white gradient. Crtl+D (select none). In the layer palette drag the fur layer down so that it is below layer2.

 5. In the layer palette, click layer2, your top layer, to make it active and create a new raster layer. Set the foreground to white and with the preset shape, vector unchecked, draw a circle for the bobble. Draw around it with the selection tool and click on it to make it active and apply the FibreOptix santa preset using the built in grey to white gradient. Ctrl+D (select none).

Before we finish with the hat we need to add some shading. I do this on a separate layer as it is easier to then erase unwanted parts of the shadow. In the layer palette click layer2 to make active, with the selection tool draw around the hat and click to make active. Shift/Ctrl/F to defloat, create a new layer. Now go to image/effects/drop shadow using these settings.

Ctrl/D (select none). With the eraser tool erase the outer edges of the shadow leaving the crease of the hat, at this point you may find it better to decrease the opacity of the eraser to about 22 so that the shading tapers.

     

We have now completed the hat so you can merge all visible layers.

 

Page 2