Buggy Painter Tips

Free Buggy Parts

I have placed some of my buggy parts in the public domain as a PaintShop Pro 9 document (although I saved it as PSP8 compatible, so it should work there too) They're free for anybody to use, although donations ot TBux are welcome.

When you open them, all you'll see is white image with text. Hide the "Comments" layer group at the top of the layer list to see the actual image. The reason I'm posting this as a PSP image is that I didn't want to merge the layers. This way I can provide 5 different hubcap options, 3 tread options, and several highlights to help make your buggy shiny. If somebody with both PSP and Photoshop wants to convert this to a Photoshop file, I'd be glad to provide it in that format too.

Note that I'm not giving up all my goodies in this file.

Majandi has also released some free dash boards on his web site.

Getting rid of that pesky hood ornament

It took me a long time to figure out how to get rid of the Hood ornament on the buggy template. Here's how to do it, step by step. Note, I use Paint Shop Pro 8, so these instructions are specific to that program. You can do the same things in Photoshop, but I don't know exactly how. I'm also not sure if these instructions will work for older versions of PSP.

• Download this image. (Note, if you downloaded my free buggy parts above, this is already a layer in that template).
• Open your buggy texture in Paint Shop Pro or Photoshop and add the image you just download as a new layer. Call it "Hood Ornament Selection Mask" or something like that and then hide the layer. You'll never see it in the final image and it doesn't need to be visible to do what you need it to do.
• Make the new layer the "Active" layer.
• Use the Magic Wand selection tool to select the smaller black rectangle. If you've hidden the layer, just click on the hood where the hood ornament should go. If you hit the right place, you should get one rectangle selected. If you miss, you'll see all the white area selected with two holes where the black was. In that case, just try again.
• Now, with that area still selected, change the active layer to the one that your buggy texture is in and Copy <Ctrl-C> the rectangle. If your main texture is made up of multiple layers, you'll have to either merge them to one layer, or just follow these steps once for each layer.
• Paste <Ctrl-V> the selection and you should get a tiny new image which is the area you just selected.
• Flip the little image <Ctrl-I> because the hood ornament is upside down in the texture.
• Select All <Ctrl-A> and Copy <Ctrl-C> the little image again.
• On your main buggy image, make the mask layer active again and use the Magic Wand tool to select the black box where the larger version of the hood ornament goes. If you have the layer hidden, it's just below the headlights.
• Switch back to the layer that you copied the smaller image from.
• From the Edit menu, Paste Into Selection <Ctrl-Shift-L> This will resize the little image to fit the bigger box. This is the step that I don't know how to do in Photoshop. But I'm sure there must be a way to do it.
• Save the thing and bring it up in Previewer.