Enter 2 to contract the selection by 2 pixels..



Click on your 'styles box' and choose 'pattern'



locate your diamond fill,


and with your flood fill tool , fill your text with your diamond pattern... With your text still selected and contracted, go back to 'selections' and choose 'invert'... Go to 'effects', 'texture' and choose 'sculpture' -- here are my settings...



Go to 'selections', 'select none' and you should now have something like this:



At this point, you can add a drop shadow if you are going to use a light background... But for the purposes of this turorial, I'm going to use black -- so a drop shadow isn't necessary...

*NOTE: in most cases, when you use a drop shadow or a tube (such as sparkle), you should NOT save it with a transparent background... Your image will have an ugly white blur around it where the drop shadow or tube is placed...

Create a new layer and call it 'background'... On your layer palette, drag the background layer beneath layer one... Choose your flood fill tool, , and fill with white, black or color of your choice.. If creating text to display on a web page, its best to use the same background as your web set... Just open and minimize the background in PSP and it will appear in your patterns menu... Right-click on layer one and choose 'duplicate'... Then do it again to have a total of 3 layers of your text....



'X' out the eyeglasses on the copies of the layer and make sure that the original layer is active... Use your 'zoom' tool , to zoom in on your text... Now, choose your 'tubes tool' , then click on the tiny arrow on your tool options box to bring up your tubes... Locate the sparkle tube and enter the size you like for your sparkles... I chose 21, but you can use your own settings...



Place sparkles in various areas of the diamond fill... Go to 'layers', 'merge', 'merge visible', and save this as #1... Go to 'edit', 'undo merge layers... On your layer palette, 'x' out the eyeglasses on layer one, then click on the copy of layer one, making it active... Place your sparkles in various areas of the text, 'layers', 'merge', 'merge visible' and save it as #2... Go back to 'edit' and 'undo merge layers'... 'X' out the eyeglasses on that layer and click on the last copy of layer 1... Add your sparkles, merge visible and save as #3....

Open AS and click on the animation wizard , accept the default on the 1st screen, on the next one make sure you choose transparent, accept the default on the next screen...On the following screen, you can set your timing.. I used 20 -- just remember that the higher the number, the slower the animation will be... The next frame prompts you to add the images you want to animate.. Click on 'add image', then browse to where you saved your images... Hold down 'cntrl' while selecting your images so you can add more than 1 at a time... Hit 'next', then 'finish'... You can view your animation with the 'film reel tool' , if you like what you see, choose your 'crop tool' , and select your text in any frame... Click on 'crop' at the top of your screen and you will see that all the frames have been cropped.. You can now go ahead and 'save as', name your gif and you're done!

You should have something like this:



Here is an example on white background with a drop shadow... Remember to apply your drop shadow BEFORE you add the sparkles...



I hope you've enjoyed the tutorial!