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CREATING YOUR OWN PICTURE TUBES CREATING SEAMLESS PATTERNS CREATING EMBOSSED 3-D TEXT COLOR REPLACER TOOL CREATING A SIMPLE 3-D BOX CREATE A CUSTOM BRUSH click on the little paintbrush, then choose Custom. In the Custom CREATING EASY VIGNETTES BEGINNING LAYERS CHANGING CURSOR SETTINGS CAPTURE PART OF AN IMAGE CAREFUL WHEN ROTATING TEXT BE CAREFUL WITH MULTIPLE CAPTURE FUNCTION
Sometimes a saved
picture file does not look as good as it did when you finished making it. And
sometimes when you post it, it looks fuzzy. Here's a solution: When you open a
new file, instead of the default 72-pixel resolution, change the resolution to
300 or so pixels. After you've finished with the picture, save it as a jpg. In
the Save dialog box, click the Options button. Lower the compression to about
10. Now your picture will look as clear as when you made it. Note: Files done
this way will load a bit slower on the Web, but for your fine art, isn't it
worth the wait?
Sometimes you will want
to make an image that has a transparent background, so that you don't see the
background when putting it on a Web page, etc.
While you are working on your image, you must keep it as a JPG if you want to use 16Mil colors or add any filters. Once you are satisfied with your picture, THEN you must drop the colors down to 256 (Colors, Decrease) and change it to a GIF file (Save As image.gif). Then, to make it transparent, click the Dropper tool and right-click the background of your image to select the color. Make sure the background color is the background and not the foreground, which is located on your tool palette to the right. (Of those two little squares right under the color palette, foreground is on top). Next, you click Colors, Set Palette Transparency. Then, select Optimized Median Cut, Set The Transparency To The Current Background Color. You can check it by clicking Colors, View Palette Transparency. The background should be transparent. Note, however, that the background will LOOK transparent when your picture is a JPG, but when you put it on your page, it won't be. The requirements for a transparent picture are - It must be a GIF (256 or less colors). - The background must be a solid color.
You can position your
mouse over a tool on the toolbar to find out what it is. At the bottom of your
screen, there will be a short description of what the tool does.
You also have a Help tool, which is depicted by an arrow and a question mark. Click once on this tool, and a question mark is added to your cursor. Then, click any tool or menu item, and a help file pops up explaining what you can do with that particular tool.
There is a ton of
information available on the Internet about Paint Shop Pro. You can find free
filters, tubes, brushes, and tutorials galore. Many people have spent
countless hours of their time to help others. Just open your favorite
search engine and type paint shop pro (tubes, brushes, whatever)
You'll soon find yourself overwhelmed with information. There are lots of usergroups, too, along with newsgroups devoted specifically to this wonderful program. A good place to start would be the Web site of the maker of the program: http://www.jasc.com
When you're working on a
new graphic and you want to save it, if you choose File, Save, the Save As
dialog box will open and Paint Shop Pro will default to the .psp format. This
format is used when you want to preserve all layers, masks, and selections so
that you can work on the graphic in the future. Clicking the drop-down menu
will allow you to change the format you want to save in. However, if you still
have separate layers, a dialog box will ask if you want to merge current
layers. (Thus, the only way to save an image with layers is in the .psp
format.) If you're working on an image that was saved previously, Paint Shop
Pro will save the image in the format that it was previously saved in.
If you choose File, Save Copy As, Paint Shop Pro will remember the last format you saved in and the last folder you saved it to. This is a very handy feature if you don't like having to scroll through all the formats and search for the folder that you most often save to.
SIZING
THINGS UP
Paint Shop Pro gives you several choices when you're resizing an image. For best results, try not to make a small image much larger than its original size unless it is a vector image. Otherwise, the image may become pixilated. If you must go larger, choose Bicubic for the Resize Type in the Resize dialog box. For good results in reducing an image, choose Bilinear for the Resize Type. PAINT
SHOP PRO 6 AND THE GRADIENT FILLS
A really fun part
about PSP6 is its Gradient function. This function lets you create and save
new gradients for future use. Here's how: Select the Flood Fill tool and
choose Linear Gradient from the Fill Style dropdown list. In the Options
box, click the Edit button. A new dialog box will pop up; choose New here
and give your gradient a name. You'll then see a solid line and some little
color crayons. You can add more crayons by clicking along the bottom of the
color bar. Click on a crayon, and your Color Box will pop up. Choose a new
color for each crayon until you get the effect you want.
I never recommend
attempting to resize an image much larger than, or out of proportion to, the
original. If you do, you usually get a very fuzzy picture. If you have to
resize larger though, here's the cleanest way to do it. Go to the Image menu
and choose Resize. Enlarge no more than 110 percent of the original at a time.
Use the Bicubic Resize Method and make sure that Maintain Aspect Ratio is not
checked. Now click OK. Go to the Image menu and choose Sharpen. If you are not
satisfied with the results, you can repeat the process at ten percent at a
time.
You can find many
freeware Photoshop plug-ins at
http://perso.club-internet.fr/gpl/index.html Most of these Photoshop plug-ins work well with Paint Shop Pro (with the notable exception of plug-ins that use Photoshop transparency settings). If you're confused about compatibility issues, the site offers a pretty detailed explanation. This site also offers many filter resources as well as reviews of the available filters. The site offers Harry The Raver's filters and the Filter Factory filters, of which there are hundreds. You'll have to convert these filters to 8bf files. Harry also offers the PICO conversion tool, free. These should get you started. With the help of filters, Paint Shop Pro can perform almost any function that high-end graphics programs can.
There are dozens of
plug-in filters available free on the Web. A plug-in filter is basically a
shortcut to the more complex procedures that can be done with Paint Shop Pro.
With plug-ins, you can create professional graphics and special effects with a
click of the mouse.
One site that offers free plug-ins (in addition to many tubes, tutorials, and masks) is http://www.digitalartresources.com/PSP/ArtResources.htm If you click on Links, and then on Graphics Plus, you'll find a particularly good set of filters. This set of filters includes a function called page curl, a very interesting special effect that looks like a curled-up page.
When you're working with
several layers in Paint Shop Pro, things may get confusing. One way to remedy
this is to hide all of the layers except the one you are working with. In your
Layers Palette, there's a little icon (glasses) next to the name of each
layer. You can click on that icon and the layer will be hidden. Click on it
again, and the layer will come back into view.
You can arrange your
toolbar any way you want--placing it on the right, left, top, or bottom of
your screen. You can also put any tools you want on the toolbar for quick
access, or you can remove tools that you don't use. To move the toolbar, click
and hold the double line at the left or on the top of the toolbar. Then, you
can drag it to where you want it to be.
To add or delete tools from the toolbar, choose File, Preferences, Customize Toolbar. Tools that are not currently on your toolbar will be located on the left, while the tools that are currently there will be located on the right. To add a tool, click once to highlight it, then click Add. The tool will move over to the right. To delete a tool, click once to highlight it, then click Remove. The tool will move over to the left. You can arrange the tools in any order by clicking the Move Up or Move Down key. You can also add a separator bar by clicking the Separator button. Simply click Reset if you want to restore all buttons and remove any spaces.
FINDING
LOST TOOLBARS
Toolbars are your most important allies in Paint Shop Pro. While you're moving them around, they can sometimes dock themselves in a place where you don't want them--they can even hide from you. To get all the toolbars back in order, press Ctrl-Shift-T. The toolbars automatically jump to attention right in the center of your workspace!
The best way to navigate
around in Paint Shop Pro is to use the toolboxes. I recommend that you have
these boxes open at all times:
- Toolbar - Tool control - Color palette - Layers palette - Tool palette It's best if you dock your toolbar at the bottom of your workspace. Click on any non-tool portion of the toolbar and drag to the bottom of the screen. Elongate it to fit all the way across the screen, much like the navigation bar in Windows. Keep your Tool control box in the upper-right corner of your workspace, but be careful not to cover your Color palette, which is docked at the right portion of the workspace. The Layers palette can be placed at the bottom of the screen above the toolbar. This is a resizable box, so you can manipulate it to suit your needs. Finally, reshape the all-important Tool palette into a rectangle and place it below the Tool control. Once you have your workspace set up, Paint Shop Pro will remember your settings and open them that way every time.
Installation of filters
is easy. To do so, make sure you have Paint Shop Pro closed. Open My
Computer/C:/Program Files/Paint Shop Pro through Windows Explorer. Make sure
that in your Paint Shop Pro folder there is a subfolder called Plugins.
Most filters come in a zip format. Unzip your new filters to the Plugins directory within Paint Shop Pro. Now, to install simple filters that don't need to be converted (the provider of the filters will tell you if this is the case and direct you to a conversion utility and tutorial for how to use it), open Paint Shop Pro; choose File, Preferences, General Program Preferences; and then click the Plug-in Filters tab. In the dialog box, check the boxes beside Enable Filters, Include Sub-folders When Searching For Filters, and Enable Plug-in Automatic File Format Identification. In the first text box, click the Browse button, then browse for your Plugins folder (look under C:\Program Files\Paint Shop Pro 5\Plugins). Click OK, and your filters will load. From that point on, you can locate the filters through the Image menu.
Filters are plug-ins
that give special effects to your images. For example, you can make a button
that looks like glass or wood, or create 3D effects on your text. Paint Shop
Pro comes with a few built-in filters such as blur, emboss, hot wax coating,
and so on, but you can also buy them or download them from the Internet. Most
of them are worth their weight in gold. Two excellent ones are Blade Pro,
which you can find at
http://www.flamingpear.com/blade.html and Eye Candy, which you can find at http://www.pcworld.com/r/tw/1%2C2061%2Ctw-pp1%2C00.html Most filters require that a specific file be added to your Windows System directory (System Folder on the Mac), and you can usually find the file to download at the same place that you find the filters.
OK, so what is that Alpha
Channel anyway? The Alpha Channel saves selections for you temporarily. The
saves are available only while Paint Shop Pro is open; they disappear into
cyberland when you close PSP.
Here's an example: Let's say you wanted to make text out of a picture of rotelli pasta (OK, I happen to like pasta). Anyway, select the Text tool and choose a fat font. It doesn't matter what color. Once the font is on and still selected, choose Selections, then save it to the Alpha Channel. Leave the settings at their defaults for now, and click OK, then Yes. Now, undo your text (from the Edit menu, choose Undo). At this point, you have your plain picture of pasta again. But we're not finished. Go to the Selection menu and choose Load From Alpha Channel, then click OK in the dialog box. Now you have a selection of your text on the picture, which is transparent. You can copy and paste your pasta text onto a bowl of Marinara sauce if you like!
Here's a simple way to
make patterned text that looks like it's "cut out."
Open an image with a pattern that you want to use. Press Shift-D to duplicate the image and work with the duplicate. Select the Text tool and type your text. Make sure that the Floating option is NOT selected. Click OK. Now choose Edit, Copy, then Edit, Paste, As New Image. Go back to the original image and choose Edit, Undo Text. Then choose Edit, Paste, As New Selection. Move the selection around to where you want it. Choose Image, Effects, Drop Shadow and add a drop shadow to your text. Click Selections, Select None to see the final effect.
If you're working on an
image that is 256 colors or less, Paint Shop Pro offers a neat little tool
called an image palette. You can choose how the colors in your image are
displayed by palette order, luminance, and hue.
With your 256-color or less image open, click Colors, Edit Palette. All the colors that are currently being used in your image will be displayed. If you want to change a color, double-click on its square, and the Color dialog box will open. You can then pick the new color you want to use.
CREATING
SEAMLESS PATTERNS
So you've created a wonderful texture and you'd like to put it on your Windows desktop or use it as a background on your Web site. The problem is that when you try to use it, there are separation lines everywhere! Here's what you need to do. Make the new image size large--about 200 x 200 pixels. Next, grab the Shapes selection tool. In the Tool control, set it at Square, no Feather, and no Antialias. Starting from the top-left portion of the image, 50 pixels in from the corner, click and drag out the square. (The square should be about 50 pixels away on all corners.) If you get too close to the edges, Paint Shop Pro will not create a seamless pattern. Now go to the Selections menu and choose Convert To Seamless Pattern. This will open a copy of your background, which is seamless. To test this, open a new image set at 200 x 200 pixels and Floodfill it with your pattern. Voila!--you should see no seams. The Flood Fill tool
acts like a can of paint that you can "pour" onto your image. There
are lots of different options, such as linear gradient, sunburst gradient,
radial gradient, rectangular gradient, solid color, and pattern. In this tip,
we'll show you how to use the pattern fill.
When flood-filling an
image or selection with a gradient fill, you can set options for all gradients
except linear. You can set the two colors--for instance, the background color
could be the edges of the gradient, and the foreground color would be the
starting point--by changing the colors on the Active Colors palette.
MASK
BASICS--PART 1 OF 6
You can use the vertical and horizontal slides to set the distance between the edges of the fill area and the gradient origin. The default is 50 percent for each, or in the center.
Paint Shop Pro offers a selection method called masking. You can change or remove a background, add fancy edges and frames, and enhance certain colors and sections of an image, all by using the masking method. In the next tip, we'll discuss the dynamics of this method and show you how to create and save a mask. ************************************************** MASK BASICS--PART 2 OF 6 In our last
tip, we discussed some of the ways you can use a mask in Paint Shop Pro. A
mask is basically a black-and-white stencil. The black in a mask is the
portion that is open for editing, and the white is the part of the mask
that covers the portions you don't want to affect. In the last tip, we created a simple mask from a basic shape and saved it to disk. Now we'll apply it to an image. Choose File, Open and then open an image. Click on the Edit menu and choose Copy. Return to the Edit menu and choose Paste As A New Image. This step ensures that you don't inadvertently ruin the original image. Click on the X in the upper-left corner of the original image to close it. Next, click on the Masks menu and choose Load From Disk. Browse for the Masks folder that you created. Click on the Ellipse mask and then click OK. What happened? The image now has a portion of the background removed, with the remaining portion in an ellipse! Now you can copy the shape and paste it onto any background you like. In the next tip, we'll further explore masks. **************************** MASK BASICS--PART 4 OF 6 When you're making a new mask, it's best to make it rather large for generic purposes. The mask, when applied to an image, will adjust to the proportions of the image. Keep in mind that if you have an image that is much wider than it is long, or vice versa, the mask will stretch and appear out of proportion. To remedy this, try making a custom mask for the image on which you plan to use it. To do this, open the image you plan on masking by clicking on the File menu and choosing Open. Browse to the image to which you want to apply the mask. Make a copy of the image by going to the Edit menu and choosing Copy. Return to the Edit menu and choose Paste As A New Image. This step ensures that you don't inadvertently ruin the original image. Click on the X in the upper-left corner of the original image to close it. Next, click on the View menu and choose Image Information. The resulting dialog box will give you the exact dimensions of the image. Now open a new image by clicking on the File menu and choosing New. In the Image Dimensions section of the resulting dialog box, enter the dimensions of the original image and click OK. Draw the black shape onto the white canvas. Click on the Masks menu and choose New, From Image. In the resulting dialog box, you'll see a drop-down menu in the Source Image section. Choose the new image that you made. If you have just the mask image and the copy of your image open in the workspace, then the mask you made will be Image 2. Click OK. Now the mask appears on the image in the correct proportions. The background becomes transparent. Oops, the mask is on backwards. No problem. Just click on the Masks menu and choose Invert Mask. In the next tip, we'll show you how to make special edges with masks. In the first four tips in this series, you learned how to create simple masks in Paint Shop Pro. In this tip, you'll learn how to make an edge on an image using the Mask function. Let's start out by making an edge mask. Open a new image. Enter 400 for the Width and 400 for the Height. Choose White for the Background color. Set the Foreground color in the Color Palette to Black. Now choose one of the Paint tools from the Tool Palette. The idea here is to outline the edges of the white canvas on the new image in an abstract fashion. You can paint on a random zigzag edge or a straight edge; the type is a matter of choice. The end result will be a frame of sorts. Remember that the black portion of a mask is the portion you will work with, while the white portion of a mask is the area that is protected. Save the mask by clicking on the Masks menu and choosing New, From Image. In the resulting dialog box, choose This Window for the Image Source, and click OK. Next, click on the Masks menu and choose Save To Disk. Enter the filename Edge and save the file to the Paint Shop Pro Masks folder. The file extension should read *.msk. In the next tip, we'll apply this edge and use some special effects. ************************* MASK BASICS--PART 6 OF 6 Now that you have an edge, you're ready to apply it as a mask to your image. Open the image you plan on masking. Make a copy of the image by choosing Edit, Copy. Return to the Edit menu and choose Paste As A New Image. This step ensures that you don't inadvertently ruin the original image. Click on the X in the upper-left corner of the original image to close it. Now add a new raster layer to your image by clicking on the New Layer icon in the Layer Palette. Choose a color for the final edge. (To best complement a photo or an image, try using the Dropper tool in the Tool Palette and clicking it on one of the dominant colors in the photo or image.) Next, click on the Flood Fill tool in the Tool Palette and click on the image to fill the layer. The image is now one solid color. To apply the mask, click on the Masks menu and choose Load From Disk. In the resulting dialog box, choose the file named Edge and click OK. Now that you have the mask on the image, it's time to create some special effects. Click on the Masks menu and choose Save To Alpha Channel. Click on the Masks menu again and choose Delete. A warning box will pop up asking if you want to merge the mask into the current layer; click OK. Next, add another new layer to your image by clicking on the New Layer icon in the Layer Palette. Click on the Selections menu and choose Load From Alpha Channel. You should now see a selection marquee around your edge. Select Image, Effects, Drop Shadow. Make the Shadow Color black, the Opacity 100%, and the Blur 0. Using the Vertical slider in the Offset section, click and drag to the number 1. Repeat this process with the Horizontal slider. Click OK. Now the edge begins to have some dimension. Finally, repeat this process, but instead of having the Vertical and Horizontal sliders set at 1, set them at -1. The final image should have a three-dimensional edge that looks like a fancy frame!
A mask is a grayscale image that
serves as a stencil. Using the Mask function, you can put an image inside a
rose. Find a picture of a black rose (clip art). Open it in Paint Shop Pro and
make sure that it's set at 16.7 million colors. Choose Colors, Grayscale, then
go back and increase the color depth again. Now you have a stencil. You can
use this stencil to put your picture inside a rose.
I will not go into great detail about how to make this work--I will instead refer you to a few excellent tutorials available on the Web: http://www.digitalartresources.com/PSP/ArtResources.htm
You can't change the
size of a custom brush, but you can make it a transparent GIF by itself and
then use the Resize feature (Image, Resize) to make it the size that you want.
You can create a two-toned effect by left-clicking (thus making it the
foreground color), then without moving your mouse, right-clicking (thus adding
the background color on top of it).
You can also make the brush as dark as you want by clicking more than once (make sure you don't move your mouse or you'll get a blurred image), and you can make a silhouette by clicking until it is filled with color. A nice effect is to make a silhouette, then click once; the result is an outlined picture that is colored in. You can also position your mouse, take note of its exact position (by using the ruler), and then change the colors in the Active Colors palette to make a multicolored picture with very stunning effects. CUSTOM
BRUSHES BEGINNING LAYERS BATCH
CONVERSION ANTIALIASING ADDING
A PICTURE FRAME WITHOUT CROPPING YOUR HEAD! OUTLINING
TEXT
Here's a great tip from Tomi
on a newsgroup:
You may open PSP at the same time
you are reading the newsgroup. If you see a tube title you like, but no
preview, you can drag and drop the tube file on your PSP button to open. Once
you have viewed it, you can save as you wish.
Neat tip Tomi, thank you!
********************************
Here's another, posted by Jessica:
Another way to open a tube without
a preview is to open your message to full size by double clicking on it.
Then click on the 'attachment' bar on top that has your tube name.
Highlight that, hold your mouse down until you get a circle with a cross
through it. Drag it to your PSP button on your task bar. You can let go
when the PSP window opens and your tube will appear...voila!
This is like magic, thank you
Jessica!
*********************************
To create your own picture tubes, you must
first decide which images you would like to make tubes out of. The images must
have a transparent background and be 24-bit, with only one layer. Then, you
must decide which ones you want to put together and make them all the same
size.
Let's say you have six images of kittens that you want to use, and they are each 170 pixels across (width) and 190 pixels down (height). You want to arrange your tube file so that it has three pictures across and two down (for a total of six). So first, you need to open a new image to copy the pictures into. Since you have three pictures across, three times, your total will be 510 (170 x 3), and since there are two pictures down, two times, your total will be 380 (190 x 2). So you'll open a new image with dimensions of 510 x 380, with a transparent background. Next, you need to set your grid to the proper proportions so that you can space the pictures evenly. Click File, Preferences, General Program Preferences, Rulers And Units. Under Grid, you will be using pixels for units. The horizontal (across) spacing will be 170 (each picture is 170 pixels wide) and the vertical (down) spacing will be 190 (each picture is 190 pixels in height). Make sure Grid is toggled on by clicking View, Grid. You will now see your grid in your new image. Copy and paste one image of a kitten into each square on the new image. Now select File, Export, Picture Tube. In the Cells Across box, enter 3 In the Cells Down box, enter 2 Give the tube a name, and it will automatically add the .tub extension. You are now ready to use the tube.
What if you grab a Picture Tube and
decide you don't like it? You can't just delete it; you have to also delete
it from the Tubes.ctl file. Open Tubes.ctl from Windows Explorer. Find the
name of the Tube you no longer want and delete it. Make sure that there are
exactly as many spaces between each .ctl as before!
by Traci Pori When you right-click on a node point in a vector image, the Node Edit menu will pop up. Notice that the menu offers several options. For now, let's look at the node types. The first type presented is Asymmetric. When you manipulate an Asymmetric node, each side of the node changes independently. When you choose Asymmetric, a handle will appear on the node. If you pull on one side of the handle, it changes the line before the node independently of the line after the node. Each line can be sized and shaped without the other being changed. by Traci Pori To determine a node type before you edit it, try running the mouse over it. Look in the Status bar in the left corner of the Paint Shop Pro workspace. As you move your mouse over the node, the status bar displays the node type and the X (distance from the top horizontally) and Y (distance from the left vertically) coordinates of the node in relation to the entire image.
by Traci Pori Converting a curve to a line is easy with the Vector tools in Paint Shop Pro 6. If you want to make text along an obscure path, such as a butterfly shape, you can do it using the Draw tool set at Freehand and Vector. Choose the Draw tool from the Tool Palette and trace around the image/path as closely as you can. Now you can edit the nodes to get the shape precise. Click on the Vector selection tool in the Tool Palette and, from the Options Palette, choose Node Edit. Click on a node. If the node is a line and needs to be more of a curve, right-click and, from the Node Edit menu, choose Node Type, Curve Before or Curve After. The line converts to a curve. If a curve needs to be more of a straight line, right-click on the node and choose Node Type, Line Before or Line After from the Node Edit menu. To smoothly blend a curve with a line, right-click on the node, then choose Node Type, Smooth/Tangent from the Node Edit menu. Once you've modified all of your nodes, you're ready to add the text.
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