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CUSP
NODES
by Traci Pori
A useful node in Paint Shop Pro 6 is
the Cusp node. Creating a cusp changes a curved line into a point. A neat use
for the Cusp node is making a heart shape. Draw a vector circle. Next, click on
the Vector Selection tool in the Tool Palette. Click Node Edit in the Tool
Option Palette. Right-click on the top node and select Node Type, Symmetric.
Right-click the node again and choose Node Type, Cusp. Repeat this process on
the bottom node. Now you can manipulate the top and bottom nodes into a heart
shape.
The Capture function can get a little
tricky. Here's how to use it: Go to the Capture menu and choose Setup. If
you're looking to capture just a small area of an image, choose Area. Go to
the image you wish to capture and right-click. A little crosshair appears. Go
to the edge of the image, then left-click. You might assume that you'd click
and drag, but you don't. Just roll your mouse along until you've captured the
entire part of the image that you want, then left-click again. This takes some
practice, but you'll get the hang of it in no time!
Ever wonder what the Batch
Conversion option is? If you have several files (pictures) that you need to
convert to a certain format for use in other programs, you can convert one or
more with the Batch Conversion tool. Then you won't have to open each image
and do a Save As.... This process will make copies of the files in the new
format while leaving the originals intact.
RESIZING
THE CANVAS OF YOUR IMAGE
When you're working on an image and you
find that your canvas is too small (or too big for that matter), you can
resize it. When you're adding to the canvas, make sure that the color of the
background in your Active Colors palette is set to the same color of your
image background because that's the color Paint Shop Pro will use. Choose
Image, Canvas Size, and the resulting dialog box will tell you what size your
image currently is. You can then use the scroll bars to put in a new width and
height. If you just want to add extra canvas, leave the Center Image
Horizontal and Center Image Vertical boxes checked. When you click OK, the
canvas will be sized to the dimensions you specified. If you are working with
a canvas that is too big, cropping is a better choice for making it smaller.
Did you know that you can scan a
portrait and turn it into a charcoal drawing? You can with Paint Shop Pro.
First, go to the Colors menu and choose Gray Scale. Then go to the Image menu
and choose Edge, Enhance Edges. Return to the Image menu and choose Noise, Add
Noise. Click the Random button and increase the noise percentage by sliding
the ruler until you get the desired effect in the preview window. Now print
the result and tell everyone you've become a portrait artist!
GET IT
STRAIGHT
You can draw, paint, airbrush, and even erase in a straight line.
Simply hold down the Ctrl key while applying the effect.
To make a mirrored lake reflection of
your text, do the following: With the Shapes selector tool set at Rectangle,
no Antialias, and no Feather, select the top half of your image. Make your
background and add text. When you're satisfied with the look, choose Edit,
Copy. Now go back to the Edit menu and choose Paste As A New Layer. Go to the
Selections menu and choose Select None. In the Layers Palette, click on Layer
2. Go to the Image menu and choose Flip. Use the Four Way Arrow tool to place
your flipped copy directly under your original. For some added effect, go to
the Colors menu and choose Adjust, Brightness, Contrast. Darken the mirror
just a bit. Then go to the Image menu and choose Wind from the Deformations
submenu. Now you can just picture that cool dark lake!
GETTING
CENTERED
Paint Shop Pro automatically centers any new layer you paste onto an image.
However, creating text in the center is not as automated--the text is created
wherever you've placed the cursor on the image. For
perfectly centered text, add a new layer to your image and then enter your
text. Now from the Edit menu, choose Cut. Return to the Edit menu and choose
Paste As A New Layer. Ta-da! Your text appears exactly in
the center of the image.
Sometimes you might want to copy a part
of an image into another image and make it fit exactly. For example, if you
have a picture frame and you want to put a picture in it, you would do the
following.
First, select the area that you want to put the picture in. Next, select the
picture and copy it. Then, make the destination image active again and click
Edit, Paste, Into Selection. The copy of your picture will expand or contract
to fit exactly into the selection. You can adjust the feather option of your
selection when first making it, depending on how "hard" you want the
image edges to be.
REALISM
IN COPY AND PASTE
If you want to add an image of yourself to a luxuriant forest background,
here's a way to make the result appear more realistic.
Once you've pasted your image as a new layer, go to the Image menu and choose
Drop Shadow. Make the shadow about 30 percent opaque, with a Vertical and
Horizontal Alignment of 1 and a Blur of 2. This will help blend your image
into the surroundings.
Paint Shop Pro offers a technique
commonly known as ghosting, in which one image is faded into another. To make
this effect, open the two images you want to fade together. Decide which of
the images will be prominent and which will be the faded image. Make sure both
images are set to 16.7 million colors. Now select the Lasso tool, choose Point
To Point, and enable the Antialias option. Set the Feather option to 1. Then,
go around the image you want to "ghost in." Once you've gone all the
way around, right-click and your path becomes a selection. Now select Edit,
Copy. Make your background image active, click the Edit menu, and paste the
image as a new layer.
You'll notice a new layer in the Layers palette. On the right is an opacity
slider. Simply pull back from 100 to about 50 with a normal blend mode. Now
you have your ghosted image.
ODDBALL
SELECTIONS
To make an odd-shaped selection such as an archway or pear, start with the
Shapes selection tool. For an archway, you begin with a rectangle selection,
then simply add a Circle selection top. To do this, hold down the Shift key
while you add to the selection. Click and drag from the top-center of the
rectangle to the edges of the rectangle selection, then release the mouse
button. You've just added to your selection. To subtract from a selection, hold
down the Ctrl key while making the selection.
Paint Shop Pro offers many keyboard
shortcuts. The following is a list of keystrokes that are available for
selecting a tool quickly. Print it out and use it as a quick reference.
Airbrush: U
Clone: N
Color Replacer: , (comma)
Crop: R
Deform: D
Eraser: E
Eye Dropper: Y
Flood Fill: F
Freehand Selection: A
Line: I
Magic Wand: M
Mover: V
Paintbrush: B
Picture Tube: . (period)
Retouch: Z
Selection: S
Shape: / (forward slash)
Text: X
Zoom: G
Hope this helps!
You can change your cursor settings in Paint
Shop Pro to get a better idea of the size and shape of the brushes you're
working with. To get a precise cursor, go to the File menu and choose
Preferences, General Program Preferences. Click on the Cursors And
Tablet tab. Click on the options Use Precise Cursor For Tools Instead Of
Standard Cursors and Show Brush Shape Outline For Brushes. Now when you
grab a brush tool, say the Airbrush tool, your cursor will be in a round shape
and in the same size as the pixel size you chose for the brush tip.
In your Paint Shop Pro directory, you will find
a folder named Papers. This folder contains "papers," such as brick,
lava, and marble. And, as with many other features of Paint Shop Pro, you can
make your own papers.
These files can be used with many of the tools, such as the Airbrush,
Paintbrush, Retouch, and Eraser tools. When one of these tools is active,
you'll see a Paper Texture drop-down box in the Control palette. If you want
to paint so that it looks like you're painting on canvas, for example, choose
Canvas from the drop-down menu. You can change the opacity, hardness, size,
and density by clicking the Brush Tip tab on the Control palette.
OPENING
MULTIPLE IMAGES
To open more than one image from the Paint Shop Pro browser window, hold down
the Shift key while clicking the images you want to open. Here's another neat
trick: From the Paint Shop Pro browser window, you can browse your Internet
cache and clear out all of those unwanted pictures. To do this, go to the File
menu in Paint Shop Pro and click on Browse. A browser window will open in the
last directory that you opened. In the right window, navigate to the Temporary
Internet Files folder by double-clicking on the C: drive. Now scroll down and
double-click on your Windows folder, then double-click on the Temporary
Internet Files folder. If you've never looked at what your computer grabs
while you're surfing, you're in for a big surprise. You can hold down the
Shift key and select the pictures you want to delete. Finally, right-click and
choose Delete.
You do not have to
export any of the tubes you collect, if you think you'll only use it once or
twice. Why clutter your .ctl file with tubes? A tube is basically an image
on a transparent background. You can open the file from your browser and
copy and paste it onto the image as a new layer. You can resize before or
after if you need to. Be sure to sharpen the image if you make it smaller by
choosing Image, Sharpen. Then you can toss it when you've finished.
SAVING
FILES
What if you make a
complex image in Paint Shop Pro consisting of many layers and functions,
and you run out of time? What if your program crashes before you complete
the project? Well, depending on the importance of your project, there is
an easy solution.
After each function you perform, save, save, save. When you first open an
image, go to the File menu and choose the Save As command. Name your file
and save it as a PSP file. Now with each layer, choose Save again. When
you close your unfinished project and save it as a PSP file, you can
reopen it and all the layers will still be intact. In other words, if you
have a seven-layer project, all seven layers will appear in the layers
window as if you had never closed the file.
Sometimes tubes you
download share the same shape and size but are in different colors. What
if you really only need one color, a grayscale, or as close as possible?
If you lay the tube on a new layer, you can colorize it. To save space,
export only one tube in the group. If the tubes are different sizes,
export only the largest.
RULERS,
GRIDS, AND TOOLBARS
To help with making an image, Paint
Shop Pro comes with a ruler and a grid. These are toggle buttons, however,
and must be "turned on" in order for you to see them.
Choose View, Rulers or Grid to turn them on (or off if there's a checkmark
next to them). You can set the size of these elements by going to File,
Preferences, General Program Preferences, Rulers And Units. For the ruler,
you can set the size by pixels, inches, or centimeters. For the grid, you
can set it any size you want, also in inches, pixels, or centimeters. You
can also set the color of the grid lines.
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