Designed with Punch! Pro.
This tutorial requires a knowledge of a paint shop program with editing capabilities, basic computing skills, and the use of Punch's Workshop.

Square Photo Frame POB
4 Scenic Pictures PTX & PPV

Large image sized files will open in a new window (when selected) for detailed effect.
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Although the Punch Program is mainly geared toward building your home, there is that sparked imagination, when visually decorating your home, that comes to the forefront. Hence the reason Interior Decorators and other creative minds are interested in putting Punch's ability to work to assist in placing their ideas on screen.

In this tutorial an image will be transformed, cropped, and sized to fit in a square frame. Additional information for non-squared and unproportionate canvases/frames are provided in Part 2 of this tutorial series.

Click here to see a gallery of 3D images that can be made using this technique.

Two galleramic views are provided. Using the scroll bars and resizing the border lines in this area will provide a view of both.

If you looked at the gallery of 3D images above, you should see two images open in a new window. The first image is a simulated gallery displaying 5 Photo Frames on two adjoining walls. The frame is the same for all as a perfect square and is provided in the download above. The picture has been converted over to a texture and replaced 5 un-needed brick textures in Punch Pro. For those who wish an even more challenging tutorial for creating un-squared sized frames, be sure to visit Creating 3D Photos Part 2-Rectangular Frame (Advanced).

Step 1: Creating Your Image.

Use your paint program to edit your image. In this example, Paint Shop Pro 7.0 is used.

1) Open your paint program and open an image you can practice on.

2) Using the magnifying glass on the left zoom in on your image.

3) Using the Crop tool draw a box around the portion of the image that you want.

4) Create a new file with image dimensions of 256 width and 256 height.

5) Select a background color and using the paint bucket pour into new image.

6) Go back to your cropped image and resize proportionately smaller than the new image.

7) Copy reduced image and paste onto the new file.

8) Add an effect. In this case a drop shadow is added to all sides to give the picture a raised look. In the first image on your right, both vertical and horizontal offsets were set to a negative, "-4". Repeat shadow and change offsets to a positive 4.

9) Merge all layers.

Step 3: Saving Your Image

1) "Save As" a BMP in the Punch pro > Texture > Brick (or your own choosing) directory. Name it the same as the texture you're replacing, BUT be sure it remains a BMP file. Such as "Brick1.bmp". You may want to save it as another file somewhere else on your hard drive to avoid it's loss should you need to reinstall Punch and rewrite over all the texture files. 2) Next, resize this same image to 50 x 50 pixels. This will be the thumbnail image displayed in Punch Pro's Library Panel. 3) "Save As" a BMP file such as "Brick1ppv.bmp". (The 'ppv' within the name is only a reminder that this file will be the one to convert to a ppv file later on). 4) Open paint shop's browser. Go to Punch Pro's Objects > Texture > Brick directory. Both bmp files should be present. Re-Sort to refresh tree. 5) Highlight the original Brick1 Files, "Brick1.ptx and Brick1.ppv" and move them to the root directory - Textures. (If the *.pti is displayed in your paint program, do not touch it). 6) Once those files are moved, rename the *.bmp files. a) Rename "Brick1.bmp" to "Brick1.ptx". b) Rename "Brick1ppv.bmp" to "Brick1.ppv". 7) At this point, you can close your paint program. When transferring, uploading, or downloading a frame containing an image, the image will not show up in the frame. You must have the texture file that is associated with the image and place it in your texture directory as a substitution for the named texture.

Step 3: Changing The PTI File

1) Open the Brick1.PTI file in Window's Wordpad (or notepad). Start > Programs > Accessories > Wordpad (or notepad) > c:\ > Program Files > Punch Pro > Textures > Brick > Brick1.PTI 2) Change the width and the height to 24. Save. .

Step 4: Creating Your 3D Photo Object.

1) Open Punch Pro's CAD Workshop. 2) Open the Photo Frame you downloaded above. 3) Open your brick textures on the right library panel. The top brick (brick1) should show part of your image. Drag this image/texture to the white board (canvas) of your frame. 4) You may at this point save this file as an individual POB file in any of your object's directories. Such as, "LighthouseYellow.POB". 5) Exit Workshop and "Add Object to Punch! Home Design?" 6) Move 3D Photo Framed into desired position.

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