Ok, you passed "Lake Applets 101" with flying colors and now you're dying to create overlays like the one above, right? If so, welcome to "Lake Applets 201" or "Overlay, ala BJ." This tutorial will hopefully help you create this very cool effect using Bruce Jodoin's method and the graphics program "Paintshop Pro 7." There are other methods of creating overlays that may be better or worse than his, but this method works for me and hopefully for you.

Before we begin, you should be familiar with the basic Lake applet. If you have never created a Lake applet before, you may want to take the basic course, Lake Applets 101 . You'll need to have the graphics program Paintshop PRO and some basic knowledge of it. I use PSP 6.0 for all of my overlays and I'll try to explain each procedure as thoroughly as possible as we proceed step by step. Other versions of PSP will work, but some actions may be slightly different. I've never used PSP 3 or 4 or any other graphics programs for my overlays, so I'm afraid I won't be much help as to the differences. To tryout a free trial version of PSP, go to http://www.jasc.com/ and check it out.

Ready to learn? Bruce broke the tutorial up into four steps and used "screenshots" to show and explain what to do. I hope it helps. Good Luck!!