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Paint Shop Pro 8 Solutions Copyright ©2003 Muska & Lipman Publishing, a division of Course Technology All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means without written permission from the publisher, except for brief passages for review purposes. Address all permission requests to the publisher. Paint Shop Pro 8 is a registered trademark of Jasc Software, Inc. All other copyrights and trademarks used as examples or references in this book are retained by their individual owners. Credits: Senior Marketing Manager, Martine Edwards; Marketing Manager, Heather Hurley; Associate Marketing Manager, Kristin Eisenzopf; Manager of Editorial Services, Heather Talbot; Senior Acquisitions Editor, Kevin Harreld; Senior Editor, Mark Garvey; Retail Market Coordinator, Sarah Dubois; Production Editor, Argosy; Copyeditor, Ginny Kaczmarek; Proofreader, Heather Moehn; Technical Editor, Sarah Arnott; Cover Designer, Chad Planner; Interior Design and Layout, Susan Honeywell, LJ Graphics; Indexer, Sharon Shock. SVP, Retail and Strategic Market Group: Andy Shafran Publisher: Stacy L. Hiquet Technology and the Internet are constantly changing, and by necessity of the lapse of time between the writing and distribution of this book, some aspects might be out of date. Accordingly, the author and publisher assume no responsibility for actions taken by readers based upon the contents of this book.
Library of Congress Catalog Number: 2003104188 ISBN: 1-59200-091-6 5 4 3 2 1 Educational facilities, companies, and organizations interested in multiple copies or licensing of this book should contact the publisher for quantity discount information. Training manuals, CDROMs, and portions of this book are also available individually or can be tailored for specific needs. Muska & Lipman Publishing, a Division of Course Technology 25 Thomson Place Boston, MA 02210 www.muskalipman.com
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About the Author Lori J. Davis Lori J. Davis is a former college teacher and technical writer who developed a passion for Paint Shop Pro years ago while creating a gardening Web site. She has taught many Paint Shop Pro courses online and has been a beta tester for several versions of Paint Shop Pro and various plug-in filters. She is the co-author of Paint Shop Pro Web Graphics, 3rd Edition, and the author of Paint Shop Pro 6 Power! and Paint Shop Pro 7 Solutions. Lori has a popular Paint Shop Pro Web site, Lori’s Web Graphics, at http://loriweb.pair.com.
Dedication In memory of Barbara Ann Rust Davis and Frances Elizabeth Leland Rust Kitson.
Acknowledgments Thanks to the many talented folks in the Paint Shop Pro community whom I’ve had the pleasure of interacting with online and in person over the years. Special thanks to my technical editor, Sarah Arnott, and to Kathleen Byrne and all the folks who helped bring this book from idea to reality.
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Contents 1 Paint Shop Pro 8 Basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Installing Paint Shop Pro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Installing the CD Version . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Installing the ESD or the Trial Version . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
The Paint Shop Pro Workspace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 The Tools Toolbar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 The Menu Bar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 The Standard Toolbar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 The Specialty Toolbars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 The Tool Options Palette . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 The Materials Palette . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 The Overview Window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 The Layers Palette . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 The Status Bar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Other Palettes and Toolbars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 The Brush Variance Palette . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 The Magnifier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 The Histogram Window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 The Effects Toolbar and the Web Toolbar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Managing Palettes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Floating and Docking Palettes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Resizing Palettes and Toolbars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Auto Rollup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Dialog Boxes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Image Basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Opening an Existing Image . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Creating a New Image . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Saving an Image . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Scripts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Configuring Paint Shop Pro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Customizing Toolbars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Customizing Menus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
vi Creating Keyboard Shortcuts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Saving Workspaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Setting Preferences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Getting Help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
2 The Painting Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .29 The Paint Brush and Airbrush . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Selecting Styles and Textures with the Materials Palette . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Selecting Brush Settings with the Tool Options Palette . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Brush Variance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
The Eraser and Background Eraser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Flood Fill . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Other Painting Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 The Retouching Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 The Clone Brush and the Scratch Remover . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 The Scratch Remover . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 The Color Replacer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 Picture Tubes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
The Warping Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 The Warp Brush . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 The Deform Family of Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
3 The Drawing Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .61 The Preset Shapes Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 The Pen Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 Line Segments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 Point to Point Lines and Curves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 Freehand Lines and Curves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 Creating Cutouts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
Styled Lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
4 Working with Layers and Masks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .73 Layer Basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 Getting Acquainted with Layers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 Working with Layers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 Layer Visibility and Protect Transparency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 Linked Layers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 Layer Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
vii Opacity and Blend Modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 Merging Layers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88 Blend Ranges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 Using a Mask . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 What Is a Mask? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 Creating and Editing Masks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 Deleting Masks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 Loading and Saving Masks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 Creating an Artistic Edge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 Blending Layers with a Gradient Mask . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 A Painterly Effect using Blend Ranges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
5 Selections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .109 Making Selections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 The Selection Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 The Freehand Selection Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 The Magic Wand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
Copying and Pasting a Selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 Cut and Copy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 Paste . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120 Clear . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
Modifying a Selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 Adding to and Subtracting from a Selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 Some Selections Menu Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
The Modify Submenu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 Select Similar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 Select Color Range . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132 Inside/Outside Feather and Unfeather . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134 Shape Based Antialias and Recover Antialias . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134 Remove Specks and Holes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 Smooth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136 Select Selection Borders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
Loading and Saving Selections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138 Converting Selections to Masks and Vice Versa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140 A Simple Stained Glass Effect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140 Isolating a Figure with a Selection Converted to a Mask . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
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6 Vector Solutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .147 Vector Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148 Deforming a Shape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149 Modifying an Object’s Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 Object Alignment and Distribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
Modifying a Shape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 Node Editing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 Changing Node Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157 Transforming Selected Nodes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157 Making Cutouts with Vectors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
Example: A Simple Vector Drawing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
7 Text Solutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .169 Adding Text to an Image . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169 Enhancing Text with 3D Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174 Warping and Deforming Raster Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 Modifying Vector Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178 Creating Text on a Path . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178 Converting Text to Curves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181 Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182 Creating a Logo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182 Making Text Stand Out on a Complex Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
8 Photo Editing Solutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .187 Overview of Enhance Photo Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187 Correcting Lens Distortion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189 Basic Color Correction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191 Histogram Adjustment and Adjust HSL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192 JPEG Artifact Removal and Unsharp Mask . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194 Some Other Adjust Menu Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195 Blur Filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195 Sharpness Filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196 Softness Filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196 Add/Remove Noise Filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196 Negative Image . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
Color and Contrast Adjustment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197 Adjustment Layers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
ix Cloning, Retouching, and Scratch Removal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201 The Clone Brush . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201 The Retouching Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203 The Scratch Remover . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
Correcting Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205 Cropping, Resizing, and Rotating . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206 Cropping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206 Resizing Images and Layers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
Flip, Mirror, Rotate, and Straighten . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209 Example: Enhancing a Photo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
9 Print Solutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .213 Image Size and Resolution for Printing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213 Choosing the Right Paper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214 Printing an Image . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215 Using Paint Shop Pro’s Print Layout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216 Printing from the Browser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 A Note on Printing Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221 Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221 Creating and Printing a Newsletter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221 Creating and Printing a Greeting Card . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
10 Web Graphics Solutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .229 What Makes a Graphic Suitable for the Web? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229 Creating Buttons, Bars, and Bullets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230 Handmade Buttons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231 Separator Bars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232 Bullets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
Creating Background Tiles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234 Optimizing and Previewing Web Graphics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236 JPEG Optimizer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237 GIF Optimizer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239 Creating Transparent GIFs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241 PNG Optimizer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242 Preview in Web Browser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
Using the Image Mapper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244
x Using the Image Slicer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246 Example: Creating a Unified Site . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
A Paint Shop Pro 8 Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .251 Built-in Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252 3-D Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252 Art Media Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253 Artistic Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254 Distortion Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255 Edge Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257 Geometric Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258 Illumination Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259 Image Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260 Reflection Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261 Texture Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262
User Defined Filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264 Plug-in Filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264
B Paint Shop Photo Album . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .267 C Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .269 Paint Shop Pro Tips and Tutorials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269 Plug-in Filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270 Freeware and Shareware Fonts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270 Newsletters and User Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271 Miscellaneous . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
Introduction Paint Shop Pro is a powerful yet easy-to-use graphics editor that is also surprisingly affordable. Whether you’re creating your own images from scratch, editing clip art, or retouching digital photos, Paint Shop Pro has the tools you need. Paint Shop Pro 8 Solutions helps you explore these tools so you can make the most of them and make them work for you.
What You’ll Find in This Book This book shows you what sorts of projects you can undertake with Paint Shop Pro 8, giving you guidance to help you in your own graphics projects. In this book, you’ll find: Instruction on using Paint Shop Pro’s basic tools and commands Hands-on examples that show you how to use Paint Shop Pro to create handmade images and edit digital photos Tips on how to print images and optimize them for the Web Techniques for using layers, masks, and vectors to create just the right effect Not every feature of Paint Shop Pro can be covered in a book of this length. Some seldom-used or advanced features, such as Image Arithmetic, are not discussed. But you will find all of the basics and quite a bit more.
This Book’s Intended Audience This book is for graphics hobbyists and business people who have just started out with Paint Shop Pro. It should help anyone who wants to discover how this versatile program can help them create or edit graphics, whether printed or onscreen, photographic or hand-drawn.
Assumptions This book assumes that you have Paint Shop Pro version 8 and an interest in creating and editing digital images. You may be unsure about what sorts of graphics operations Paint Shop Pro makes available to you, but you want to explore what’s there and discover how Paint Shop Pro can help you with your own graphics projects. Here are a few other assumptions in this book: You’re running Microsoft Windows® 98, NT4 SP6a, 2000, ME, or XP. Paint Shop Pro is available only for the PC platform. You should also be familiar with how to install and run programs on your PC.
xii You’re familiar with the peripherals used with your computer. This book will help you use Paint Shop Pro to edit scanned images and digital photos and to print your images. But you will need to be familiar with your particular peripherals (your scanner, digital camera, and printer) and how to install them and use them. You want to learn. This book has been written to help you explore the many graphics operations that Paint Shop Pro makes available to you. Working with graphics can sometimes be challenging, but your curiosity and desire to learn will help you meet challenges in your quest for great graphics.
How This Book Is Organized Paint Shop Pro 8 Solutions is divided into ten chapters and three appendices: Chapter 1, “Paint Shop Pro 8 Basics.” This chapter gets you started. You’ll get acquainted with Paint Shop Pro’s workspace and several basic tools and features. Chapter 2, “The Painting Tools.” Chapter 2 focuses on the Paint Brush, Airbrush, and other tools you use for freehand painting with pixels. You’ll look at the Picture Tube tool, which enables you to paint with ready-made pictures, as well as the retouching tools and Clone Brush, which can help you retouch digital photos. Chapter 3, “The Drawing Tools.” In Chapter 3, you’ll learn about the basic drawing tools: the Pen tool and the Preset Shapes tool. You’ll see how to draw lines and shapes in raster mode and how to create your own styled lines. Chapter 4, “Working with Layers and Masks.” In this chapter, you’ll learn about the power of layers and masks. Layers let you manipulate part of a complex image while leaving the rest untouched, blend one image into another, and produce many effects that would be difficult or close to impossible without layers. Masks enable you to modify transparency on other layers without actually affecting the data on those layers. Chapter 5, “Selections.” Being able to isolate parts of an image and modify only that part makes many image-editing tasks easier. This chapter shows you how to do just that, using Paint Shop Pro’s selection tools. Chapter 6, “Vector Solutions.” Drawing with vectors allows you to warp a shape or change its attributes again and again, all without degrading image quality in the least. Discover how vectors can help you create great drawings that you can change easily whenever you like. Chapter 7, “Text Solutions.” Whether you’re creating buttons for a Web site, an illustration for a business report, or a poster for your community festival, you’ll need to add text to your images. Learn how Paint Shop Pro’s Text tool can help you get the text effects you need.
xiii Chapter 8, “Photo Editing Solutions.” Now that scanners and digital cameras are becoming more and more affordable, the number of people needing the digital equivalent of a darkroom is on the rise. Paint Shop Pro fits the bill by providing you with a wide range of photo editing tools and filters. In this chapter, you’ll learn how to retouch and crop your photos, remove red-eye, adjust color and contrast, and more. Chapter 9, “Print Solutions.” This chapter covers printing with Paint Shop Pro. Print a photo, a set of thumbnails, a greeting card, or whatever you need. Chapter 10, “Web Graphics Solutions.” Paint Shop Pro has lots of tools for the Web graphics designer, including built-in Web optimizers, an image slicer, and an image map utility. In this chapter, you’ll learn about these and more. Appendix A, “Paint Shop Pro 8 Effects.” Paint Shop Pro 8 has many built-in special effects. This appendix lists them all and provides many examples. Appendix B, “Paint Shop Photo Album.” Users of Paint Shop Pro might also be interested in Jasc’s Paint Shop Photo Album. This appendix describes some of this application’s features. Appendix C, “Resources.” This appendix lists a few online resources for Paint Shop Pro.
Conventions Used in This Book The following conventions are used in this book. All Web page URLs mentioned appear in boldface, such as www.jasc.com. Hot keys in commands and menu options are shown in boldface. In the running text, all HTML tags and attributes appear in full monospace caps, so that the HTML code stands out from the rest of the text. In expanded examples, HTML code is presented in lowercase. (Today’s Web browsers don’t pay attention to case in HTML code. Keep in mind, though, that specifications for HTML coding are being considered that include a preference, if not a requirement, that HTML tags and attributes appear only in lowercase.) Besides these typographical conventions, this book features the following special displays for different types of important text:
TIP Text formatted like this offers a helpful tip relevant to the topic discussed in the main text.
xiv NOTE Text formatted like this highlights other interesting or useful information that relates to the topic discussed in the main text.
CAUTION Cautions highlight actions or commands that can make irreversible changes to your files or that can cause other serious problems. Read cautions carefully, since they can help you avoid confusion or loss of work.
Keeping the Book’s Content Current Everyone involved with this book has worked hard to make it complete and accurate. But as we all know, mistakes sometimes find a way of creeping in. If you find any errors or want to make suggestions for future editions, please contact Muska & Lipman Publishing at http://www.muskalipman.com.
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Chapter 1 This chapter provides an introduction to Paint Shop Pro’s interface and basic features. Even if you’re already familiar with earlier versions of Paint Shop Pro, you’ll want to take a good look at what’s here, because Paint Shop Pro’s interface has changed quite a bit between versions 7 and 8.
Installing Paint Shop Pro Paint Shop Pro 8 is available direct from Jasc Software, Inc. (http://www.jasc.com) or from your favorite software vendor. If you acquire Paint Shop Pro from Jasc, you can order the CD version with a printed manual or the downloadable ESD (Electronic Software Distribution) version. If you’d rather try before you buy, there’s a downloadable trial version available at the Jasc site.
Installing the CD Version To install the CD version of Paint Shop Pro, place the installation CD in your CD drive. Windows should detect the CD and automatically start the autorun program on the CD. In the autorun window, click Install, which will start Paint Shop Pro’s setup program. Follow the installation instructions that then appear.
NOTE If the autorun program doesn’t start when you insert the CD in your CD drive, you can run the autorun program or the setup program by hand. To run the autorun program, use Windows Explorer or My Computer to navigate to the CD, then double-click AUTORUN.EXE. To run the setup program, navigate to the Paint Shop Pro folder on the CD and then double-click SETUP.EXE.
Installing the ESD or the Trial Version Installing the download versions—the ESD and trial versions—is a little different from installing the CD version:
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Navigate to the folder where you saved the downloaded file. Make a backup copy of the downloaded file and save it to some type of removable media, such as a Zip disk. Keep this backup copy in a safe place. Double-click on the name of the downloaded file to extract the installation files. By default, the installation files will be copied to C:\Program Files\Jasc Software Inc\Setup Files. If the installer doesn’t run automatically, navigate to this folder and double-click SETUP.EXE. Follow the installation instructions that appear onscreen.
The Paint Shop Pro Workspace Paint Shop Pro’s workspace, the area in which you do your image editing work, is surrounded by Paint Shop Pro’s major palettes and toolbars. Most of the palettes and toolbars are by default docked around the edges of the workspace. These are the Tools toolbar (on the left); the Tool Options palette, the Menu bar, the Standard toolbar and a couple other toolbars (at the top); the Materials palette, the Overview window, and the Layers palette (on the right); and the status bar (at the bottom). Figure 1.1 shows these various toolbars and palettes, along with the Learning Center and an open image. (Icons on some of the palettes and toolbars would be greyed out if no image were open.) Figure 1.1 The Paint Shop Pro workspace, showing major palettes and toolbars
When you first open up Paint Shop Pro, the Learning Center is displayed in the workspace. If you’re new to Paint Shop Pro, you should take a look at the various tutorials (or “Quick Guides”) available from the Learning Center. If later on you want to hide the Learning Center, click the close button on its title bar. If you want to access the Learning Center again, choose Help > Learning Center or press F10.
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The Tools Toolbar The Tools toolbar, which appears by default along the left edge of the workspace, contains all of Paint Shop Pro’s image editing and selection tools. (See Figure 1.2.)
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Figure 1.2 The Tools toolbar
Some of the icons on the Tools toolbar are for single tools only and some are for a family of tools. Any icon for a family of tools has a small arrow at the right of the icon. To open a flyout for a family of tools, click the arrow for that tool family. Figure 1.2 shows the Tools toolbar with the flyout for the Brushes family open. To select a tool from the flyout, click on that tool in the flyout. To make a tool that is currently displayed on the Tools toolbar the active tool, click its icon.
TIP Hover the mouse pointer over a tool icon on the Tools toolbar to display a tool tip showing the name of the tool. At the same time, a description of the tool and its function is displayed on the status bar.
The Menu Bar The Menu bar, which appears at the very top of the workspace, contains menus for accessing Paint Shop Pro commands and operations. As Figure 1.3 shows, the Menu bar includes menus labeled File, Edit, View, Image, Effects, Adjust, Layers, Objects, Selections, Window, and Help.
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Figure 1.3 The Menu bar
To access any of these menus, click the menu’s label or press the Alt key along with the menu’s hot key. For example, to access the File menu, click Alt+F.
The Standard Toolbar The Standard toolbar, which by default is docked below the Menu bar, enables you to access the most commonly used Paint Shop Pro commands (see Figure 1.4). Figure 1.4 The Standard toolbar
TIP You can customize any menu or toolbar, adding or removing icons for the various operations and palettes. You’ll take a look at how to customize Paint Shop Pro later in this chapter.
The Specialty Toolbars Besides the Standard toolbar, two other toolbars that Paint Shop Pro provides are displayed: the Photo toolbar and the Script toolbar. The Photo toolbar contains icons for many of the photographic filters available in the Adjust menu. The Script toolbar contains icons for commands available under File > Script. We’ll look at the Photo toolbar in Chapter 8, “Photo Editing Solutions.” The Script toolbar will be examined later in this chapter, in the discussion of scripting.
The Tool Options Palette Below the Standard and specialty toolbars is the Tool Options palette—the palette you use for setting options for Paint Shop Pro’s tools. Each tool on the Tools toolbar has its own version of the Tool Options palette. Figure 1.5 shows the Tool Options palette for the Selection tool. Notice that on the far left of the palette is a label that looks like the tool’s icon as it appears on the Tools toolbar. Click this icon or the small arrow beside it to access a drop-down menu for presets, then the various controls for the tool.
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Figure 1.5 Example of the Tool Options palette
When you have an image open and the Tool Options palette is not displayed, you can toggle the palette on by pressing the F4 key or choosing View > Palettes > Tool Options. To toggle the Tool Options palette off, press the F4 key again or choose View > Palettes > Tool Options.
NOTE Some settings are made with JNEs (Jasc Numeric Editors), such as the one shown in Figure 1.6. Figure 1.6 JNE control
A JNE provides you with several ways to set a numeric value:
Type a value in the text box.
Click or drag in the meter bar (directly below the text box).
Click one of the spin controls (to the right of the text box).
Click the slider button (to the right of the spin controls), and then drag the slider on the resulting pop-up slider.
JNEs appear in several Paint Shop Pro dialog boxes as well as in the Tool Options palette for several tools.
The Materials Palette The Materials palette, which by default is docked on the right edge of the workspace, enables you to select the active materials for drawing and painting (see Figure 1.7). Figure 1.7 The Materials palette
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TIP
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The Materials palette is where you select the colors, patterns, or gradients you want to paint with. You can also select textures with the Materials palette. On the left, the Materials palette has a tabbed panel with tabs for Colors and Swatches. To the right of that panel are the Material Properties boxes. To the right of those boxes are a pair of Color boxes. Colors tab. With 24-bit color images, you can use the rainbow color picker on the Colors tab to select the foreground or background solid color. Position the cursor over this multicolored box and the cursor changes to the Dropper tool. Click with the Dropper to set the foreground/stroke color. Right-click with the Dropper to set the background/fill color. Greyscale images have a similar color picker, showing 256 shades of grey. With paletted color images having 256 colors or fewer, the color picker shows only the colors available in the image’s palette. Swatches tab. Use the Swatches tab, shown in Figure 1.8, to save and load materials. Figure 1.8 The Swatches tab
The saved materials can be as simple as a solid color with no texture or as complex as a gradient or pattern with a texture. Click a swatch to load that material in the Foreground/Stroke Material Properties box. Right-click a swatch to load that material in the Background/Fill Material Properties box. To save your own material as a swatch, click the Create New Swatch button at the bottom of the Swatches panel and then enter a name for your swatch. When you click OK, the Material dialog box pops up. Choose your material and click OK. Your new swatch is added to the available swatches. Foreground and Background Color boxes. At the top right of the Materials palette are the Color boxes. The left box shows the current Foreground solid color and the right box shows the current Background solid color. Operations that make use of foreground color or background color—such as the Buttonize effect and Edit > Clear—use the colors shown in these boxes, even when the current style for foreground or background is set to something other than Color mode.
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TIP To switch the foreground color and background color, click the double-headed arrow between the two Color boxes.
The box on the upper left controls the Foreground/Stroke. With the painting tools, such as the Paint Brush and Airbrush, this controls the Foreground (that is, the paint applied when you click or drag with the primary mouse button). With the drawing tools—Draw, Preset Shapes, and Text—this controls the Stroke (that is, the line itself or the outline around a shape). The box on the lower right controls the Background/Fill. With the painting tools, this box controls the Background (that is, the paint applied when you click or drag with the secondary mouse button). With the drawing tools, this box controls the Fill (that is, the area enclosed within a curve or the interior of a shape). To set the Foreground/Stroke, click the Foreground/Stroke Material Properties box. To set the Background/Fill, click the Background/Fill Material Properties box. In either case, this opens the Material dialog box.
TIP Switch the Foreground/Stroke and Background/Fill styles with each other by clicking the bent double-headed arrow between the two swatches.
The Material dialog box, shown in Figure 1.9, is where you choose material of a specific style (Color, Gradient, or Pattern) and maybe a texture.
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Foreground and Background Material Properties boxes. The two large overlapping boxes on the Materials box control what material to use for your paint.
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Figure 1.9 The Material dialog box
Each style has its own tab: Color tab. Select a solid color on the Color tab, shown in Figure 1.10. Choose a color from the color picker, or choose one of the standard color swatches. Or enter values for the R (red), G (green), and B (blue) JNEs or for the H (hue), S (saturation), and L (lightness) JNEs. You can also enter an HTML code for a color in the HTML text box. Figure 1.10 Color tab
Gradient tab. Select a gradient on the Gradient tab, shown in Figure 1.11. Pick the gradient you want by clicking the preview window and selecting from the dropdown list. Choose a gradient style—Linear, Rectangular, Sunburst, or Radial—by clicking one of the Style buttons. For a rectangular or sunburst gradient, set the center point and focal point. For a radial gradient, set the center point. You can also adjust the angle of the gradient and the number of times the gradient pattern repeats.
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Figure 1.11 Gradient tab
CHAPTER 1 Pattern tab. Select a pattern on the Patterns tab, shown in Figure 1.12. Pick the pattern you want by clicking the preview window and selecting from the drop-down list. Any currently open images are available for selection, as are patterns stored on disk. You can also adjust the angle and scale of the pattern. Figure 1.12 Pattern tab
You set a texture for the Foreground/Stroke or Background/Fill on the panel of the Material dialog labeled Texture, shown in Figure 1.13. To include a texture, select the Texture check box. If you don’t want a texture, be sure this check box is not marked.
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Figure 1.13 Texture panel
To choose a particular texture, click the Texture preview to bring up the Texture picker. You can also adjust the texture’s angle and scale.
NOTE The current and previous materials are shown in windows below the Texture panel of the Material dialog box. You can reset the material to the previous material by clicking the Previous window. You can also call up swatches by clicking the small swatch button to the right of the Current window.
On the Materials palette, you can easily switch between the three style modes for the Foreground/Stroke or Background/Fill by clicking the leftmost icon under the relevant Material Properties box and choosing the style you want from the flyout, shown in Figure 1.14. Figure 1.14 Styles flyout menu: Color (top), Gradient (middle), Pattern (bottom)
There are two other icons under each of the Material Properties boxes: a Texture toggle and a Transparent toggle. Clicking the Texture on adds the Texture currently selected in the Materials dialog box to the material. Click this toggle off if you don’t want your material to include a texture. Clicking the Transparent toggle on turns the material off. Only certain tools allow Transparent to be toggled on. For example, the drawing tools allow it, but the Paint Brush and Airbrush do not. You’ll see examples of the various settings for materials in Chapter 2, “The Painting Tools,” and Chapter 3, “The Drawing Tools.”
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TIP Another way to select materials is to right-click on the Foreground or Background Material Properties box. This opens the Recent Materials dialog box. In this dialog box, you can choose from both a set of standard colors and the most recently used materials.
TIP If you want the Materials settings that you select to carry over from tool to tool when you change tools, be sure that the All tools check box is selected. When this check box is unselected, each tool retains its own Materials settings.
The Overview Window Paint Shop Pro provides you with a handy way to get an overview of your image: the Overview window. As shown in Figure 1.15, the Overview window lets you get a look at your entire image even when the image is too big to fit in the image canvas window. Figure 1.15 The Overview window
In the Overview window, you can move the view of an image that doesn’t fit in the image canvas window by dragging in the Overview window’s thumbnail of the image.
TIP Another way to move around in the image canvas window is to drag with the Pan tool, whose icon on the Tools toolbar looks like an arrow-shaped pointer.
You can use controls on the Overview window to zoom in and out on your image. You can set a zoom factor directly on the JNE, or zoom out by 1 by clicking the icon immediately to the right of the JNE. Zoom in by 1 by clicking the next icon. You can also show the image at its actual size by clicking the icon on the far right.
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The Recent Materials dialog box is available not only on the Materials palette, but also in any dialog box that includes a color control.
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TIP There are a few alternative ways to zoom in and out on your image. First, if you have a mouse with a scroll button, you can zoom in whenever the image has focus by scrolling up with the scroll button. This technique works no matter what tool is active. Zoom out by scrolling down. Another alternative is to use the Zoom tool, which is in the same tool family as the Pan tool and whose icon on the Tools toolbar looks like a magnifying glass. To zoom in, click in your image with the Zoom tool, repeating to zoom in further. To zoom out, right-click with the Zoom tool. You can also set a specific zoom factor directly with the drop-down list on the Tool Options palette for the Zoom tool or Pan tool.
Several pieces of information about your image are displayed on the Info tab of the Overview window, shown in Figure 1.16. These include Image Height, Image Width, Pixel Format (that is, color depth), Memory Used (which is not equivalent to file size and is not very useful), and Cursor Position. Figure 1.16 The Info tab of the Overview window
The Layers Palette Paint Shop Pro makes available to you a very powerful feature: layers. Layers let you separate your image into different levels so you can edit pieces of the image independently, without affecting other pieces of the image. Think of a layer as a clear sheet of plastic on which you paint. Like painted sheets of plastic, layers can be stacked one on top of another, allowing solid areas on lower layers to show through transparent areas of higher layers. The Layers palette, shown in Figure 1.17, is the control center for creating and editing individual layers in your images. Figure 1.17 The Layers palette
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On the Layers palette, each layer has its own layer button labeled with an icon and the layer’s name. There are different icons for different types of layers: The Background layer, which doesn’t support transparency, has an icon that looks like a solid-colored sheet of paper.
The icon of a vector layer, such as Vector 1 in this example, looks something like a vector selection bounding box over a semitransparent rectangle. Each vector object on a vector layer also has its own button and icon. Vector text has an icon that looks like a capital A. Vector lines and shapes have an icon that looks like a small circle overlapping a rectangle. The icon of a mask layer (not shown in Figure 1.17) looks like a theatre mask. The icon of an adjustment layer, such as the layer labeled Brightness/Contrast in this example, looks like whatever the particular adjustment’s icon is in the Adjust menu. Each layer button has its own set of controls in addition to a layer button. These controls will be covered in Chapter 4, “Working with Layers and Masks,” and Chapter 5, “Selections.”
NOTE The painting tools—such as the Paint Brush, Airbrush, and Picture Tube tool—are available only on raster layers. The drawing tools—the Pen tool, Preset Shapes tool, and Text tool—can be used on either raster layers or vector layers. To use the Pen tool or Preset Shapes tool on a raster layer, be sure that Create As Vector is not checked in the Tool Options palette. To use the Pen or Preset Shapes on a vector layer, be sure that Create As Vector is checked. To use the Text tool on a raster layer, be sure that Create As on the Tool Options palette is set to either Selection or Floating. To use the Text tool on a vector layer, be sure that Create As is set to Vector.
The Status Bar At the very bottom of the Paint Shop Pro workspace is the status bar, which displays a variety of information: When you hover the mouse pointer over a tool’s icon on the Tool palette, a description of the tool is displayed in the status bar. When you hover the mouse pointer over an icon on any toolbar, a description of the relevant Paint Shop Pro command or operation is displayed. When you hover the mouse pointer over areas of the Materials palette, the status bar indicates what the various parts of the palette are for.
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The icon of a raster layer, such as Raster 1 in this example, shows a semitransparent rectangle over a white rectangle.
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When you move the mouse pointer in an image canvas, on the left of the status bar is information about the active tool. On the right, the status bar shows the coordinates of the cursor and the dimensions and color depth of the image.
Other Palettes and Toolbars In this section, you’ll take a brief look at three more windows that Paint Shop Pro provides: the Brush Variance palette, the Magnifier, and the Histogram window. You’ll also briefly examine two optional toolbars: the Effects toolbar and the Web toolbar.
The Brush Variance Palette The Paint Brush and Airbrush have so many controls that they would not all fit conveniently on the Tool Options palette. So some of the more advanced controls for these tools are placed on their own palette, the Brush Variance palette. To view the Brush Variance palette, choose View > Palettes > Brush Variance or press F11. We’ll examine this palette and its controls in Chapter 2.
The Magnifier The Magnifier is a window displayed near the cursor that shows a magnified view of the area around the current cursor position, as in Figure 1.18. Figure 1.18 The Magnifier
This can be useful when you’re doing detail work and need to see exactly what is being affected. To view the Magnifier, choose View > Magnifier or press Ctrl+Alt+M.
The Histogram Window The Histogram window (Figure 1.19) is a handy Paint Shop Pro interface feature to get familiar with if a lot of your work involves editing digital photos. The Histogram window is a graphical representation of the color and brightness values used in your image, with information for the shadow values displayed on the left, midtones in the middle, and highlights on the right.
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Figure 1.19 The Histogram window
The Effects Toolbar and the Web Toolbar Use the Effects toolbar to easily access several special effects and the Effects Browser, which provides thumbnails of all available Effects presets. To display the Effects Browser, choose View > Toolbars > Effects. Use the Web toolbar to easily access file optimizers for JPEG, GIF, and PNG formats, along with other Web-related commands and a few effects that are handy for creating Web graphics. To display the Web Browser, choose View > Toolbars > Web. Effects are discussed in Appendix A, “Paint Shop Pro 8 Effects.” Web-related commands and techniques are examined in Chapter 10, “Web Graphics Solutions.”
Managing Palettes You have a lot of control over the size and positioning of palettes. If the default workspace is not to your liking, you can float docked palettes, drag them where you want them, and shrink or expand them as you prefer.
Floating and Docking Palettes All of Paint Shop Pro’s palettes and toolbars, except the status bar, are floatable and dockable. To float a docked palette or toolbar, drag it by its title bar. To reposition a floating palette on the workspace, drag its title bar. To redock one of these floating palettes, just drag it to one of the side edges or the top of the workspace. (If you want to prevent a dockable palette from docking when you drag near the edge of the workspace, hold down the Ctrl key while dragging the palette.)
TIP You also can float a floatable palette or toolbar by double-clicking the palette’s handle. To redock a floating palette or toolbar, double-click its title bar.
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To view the Histogram window, choose View > Palettes > Histogram or press F7.
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Paint Shop Pro enables you to specify whether a particular palette is dockable. If you want to enable or disable docking for a palette, right-click any palette, toolbar, or menu and select Docking Options. The General Preferences dialog box then pops up, displaying its Palettes tab. Make your palette docking selections, then click OK.
Resizing Palettes and Toolbars To resize a docked or floating palette or a floating toolbar, position the cursor over an edge and drag to the size you want. You can also use the Minimize/Maximize and Restore buttons on a docked palette’s title bar. The segments of a multisegmented Tool Options palette can be resized. Position the cursor on the left edge of a segment and drag to resize the segment. To expand a hidden or partially hidden segment, click the arrow that appears on the right end of the segment.
Auto Rollup On a floating palette, you have the option of turning Auto Rollup on. With Auto Rollup on, a palette automatically minimizes to its title bar when you move the cursor away from the palette and start working in another window, such as an image canvas or another palette. To enable Auto Rollup, click the rollup lock button (the up-pointing arrow on the right of the title bar, just to the left of the palette’s Close button). Notice that the arrow then changes to a left-pointing arrow. To disable Auto Rollup once it’s been enabled, click the rollup lock button again.
Dialog Boxes Most of the commands accessed from the Effects and Adjust menus have dialog boxes. These dialog boxes all have a standard look and a set of basic controls. For example, Figure 1.20 shows the dialog box for Page Curl. Figure 1.20 Standard dialog box
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Each dialog box has a pair of preview windows, one on the left showing the original image and another on the right showing the effect of the command with the settings that are currently selected.
Below the preview windows are zoom controls and a control for changing the view area of the preview. Just to the right of those controls is a toggle to hide and display the preview windows. Figure 1.21 shows the Page Curl dialog box with its preview windows toggled off. Figure 1.21 Dialog box with preview windows toggled off
To the right of the preview toggle is an Auto Proof button, with a label that looks like an eye and a lock, and a Proof button, with a label that looks like an eye. Click the Proof button to see the effect of the command, under the current settings, on the actual image. Click the Auto Proof button if you want the effect on your image to change dynamically as you adjust the controls in the dialog box. To the right of the Proof button is the Randomize button. Click this button and Paint Shop Pro generates pseudo-random values for all the settings in the dialog box. Randomize won’t always generate useful values, but for some commands it can be helpful for exploring the capabilities of a command. Along the bottom of the dialog box are three buttons: OK, Cancel, and Help. Click OK to execute the command. Click Cancel to exit the dialog box without executing the command. Click Help to get information about the command.
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Above the preview windows is the Presets drop-down list, a Save Preset button, a Delete Preset button, and a Reset button. Presets are saved settings. Use the Save Preset button to save selected settings as a preset, and use the Delete Preset button to delete a preset from the drop-down list. Use the Reset button to return the values for the command’s settings to the factory defaults. Hold down the Shift key while clicking the Reset button to return the settings to what they were when you opened the dialog box.
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Controls specific to the command appear in the middle of the dialog box, between the preview windows and these three buttons. For example, Page Curl has controls for Curl settings, Curl bounding rectangle, and Edge mode. You can resize a dialog box by dragging its edges. You can also maximize a dialog box, either by clicking the Maximize icon on its title bar or by double-clicking the title bar. (Many of the figures in this book show maximized dialog boxes.) To restore a maximized dialog box to its nonmaximized size, click the Restore icon on the title bar or double-click the title bar again.
Image Basics Paint Shop Pro enables you to edit existing images or create your own images from scratch. With Paint Shop Pro, you can retouch a photo, modify clip art, draw an image by hand, and much more. Image files, whether existing or new, are displayed in Paint Shop Pro’s workspace in an image canvas window. If the window is too small to display the entire image, the window displays scroll bars enabling you to scroll around in your image. If you have the Overview window open, you can move around in the image canvas window by dragging the display area in the Overview window. You can also move around in the image canvas by dragging in the image with the Pan tool (which looks like an arrow).
Opening an Existing Image To open an existing image, choose File > Open, click the Open icon on the Standard toolbar, or press Ctrl+O. In the Open dialog box, navigate to the folder that contains the image you want, select the image, and click the Open button. You can also open an image from Paint Shop Pro’s Browser. Choose File > Browse or press Ctrl+B to open the Browser, shown in Figure 1.22. Figure 1.22 The Browser
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In the left pane of the Browser, navigate to the folder that contains the image you want. Then, in the right pane, double-click the image’s thumbnail. If you then want to close the Browser, click the Close button on the Browser’s title bar.
Another way to open an image from the Browser is to drag the image’s thumbnail onto Paint Shop Pro’s workspace.
TIP To open several images in a folder at once, select the first image by clicking its thumbnail in the Browser. Then hold down the Ctrl key and click on the next image that you want, and so on. Drag the selected thumbnails onto the workspace, or right-click on any one of the selected thumbnails and choose Open in the context menu.
Creating a New Image To begin a new image from scratch, choose File > New, click the New icon on the Standard toolbar, or press Ctrl+N. You’ll then see the New Image dialog box, shown in Figure 1.23. Figure 1.23 The New Image dialog box
In the New Image dialog box, set the dimensions and resolution for your image in the Image Dimensions section. Select the Height and Width that you want, using as your units either Pixels, Inches, or Centimeters (as set in the drop-down list to the right of the Height and Width controls). Pixels is usually fine, although for some print work you might want to select either Inches or Centimeters.
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Select the Resolution, using either Pixels/inch or Pixels/cm (as set in the drop-down list to the right of the Resolution control). For images that you intend to display on a video screen, the resolution is really irrelevant and 72 or 96 is quite adequate. For images that you intend to print on an inkjet printer, you’ll want to set Resolution in the range of 72 to 200 or so, depending on the dpi (dots per inch) setting for your printer, with 72 being fine for printers that print at 300dpi and 200 being fine for printers that print at 1200dpi. Set the background color and image type in the Image Characteristics section of the dialog box. Select either Raster Background or Vector Background. If you choose Raster Background, your new image opens with a single raster layer. If you choose Vector Background, your new image opens with a single vector layer. Select the Color Depth, which can be any of the following: 2 Colors (1 Bit). This is for creating an image that has exactly two colors, black and white. Unless you know that you want to make a very simple image that is a totally black and white, without any shades of grey, you won’t be choosing this type. This type is best for simple black-and-white printed images. 16 Colors (4 Bit). This is for creating an image with a fixed palette of 16 colors. Simple images that you intend to save as GIF files for the Web could be created as this type. Greyscale (8 Bit). This is for creating greyscale images, which contain only black and white and 254 shades of grey. 256 Colors (8 Bit). This is for creating an image with a fixed palette of 256 colors. Images that you intend to save as GIF files for the Web could be created as this type. 16.7 Million Colors (24 Bit). For creating full color images. This is the type you’ll normally want for almost all of your graphics projects, even when you intend to save your image as a 4-bit or 8-bit paletted image. Paint Shop Pro’s Effects and several other operations are available only with greyscale images and 24-bit color images. If you choose Raster Background, you also need to decide whether your image will open with a color background or a transparent background. To choose a transparent background, just select the Transparent check box. To select a colored background, click the Color box. This opens the Material dialog box, where you can select any material you like. If you’re unfamiliar with layers, choose a solid-colored background. That way, your image opens as a simple raster image with only a Background layer. Choosing anything other than a solidcolored, untextured background creates an image with a true layer that supports transparency (with transparent areas indicated by a grey-and-white checkered background). Once you’ve selected the settings that you want for your new image, click the OK button. A new image canvas then appears on Paint Shop Pro’s workspace, ready for you to edit as you wish.
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TIP To open a new image canvas without opening the New Image dialog box, hold down the Shift key while clicking the New icon on the Standard toolbar. A new image canvas opens with the same settings that were in effect the last time you opened a new image.
To save an image, choose File > Save, click the Save icon on the Standard toolbar, or press Ctrl+S. If you haven’t previously saved the image, the Save As dialog box then appears (shown in Figure 1.24). Figure 1.24 The Save As dialog box
Navigate to the folder in which you want to save your image file. In the File name text box, enter the name you want to give to your file; Paint Shop Pro will add the appropriate extension. Select the file type for your image in the Save as type drop-down list. In the example in Figure 1.24, Windows or OS/2 Bitmap (*.bmp) is selected as the file type. For file types that also allow you to choose option settings, the Option button on the Save As dialog box will be active. Click the Options button if you want to adjust the settings for your image. Figure 1.25 shows the Save Options dialog box for the Windows or OS/2 Bitmap format.
Figure 1.25 The Save Options dialog box
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Saving an Image
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To close the Save Options dialog box, click OK. This returns you to the Save As dialog box. When you’re ready to save your image, click the Save button. The next time you save your file, the copy on disk is overwritten. If you want to save a copy of your image without overwriting the original image or changing the name of the version currently being edited in Paint Shop Pro, choose File > Save Copy As. You’ll then see the Save Copy As dialog box, which has the same controls as the Save As dialog box. If you want to save without overwriting the file on disk but do want to change the name of the version currently being edited, choose File > Save As.
Scripts A new feature in Paint Shop Pro 8 is scripting. In its simplest form, a script is a recording of steps you take to perform some task. You can then replay those steps at any time in the future. You access the scripting commands from File > Script or from the Script toolbar, shown in Figure 1.26. Figure 1.26 The Script toolbar
To play a script, select its name in the drop-down list, then click the Run Selected Script icon to the right of the list. If you want to run a script that is located on disk but is not in the list, click the Run Script icon (which looks like an arrowhead above a folder) or choose File > Script > Run, then navigate to the folder containing the script, select the script, and click Open. If you want to cancel a script while it’s running, click the Stop Script icon on the Script toolbar or choose File > Script > Stop. To record a script, click the Start Script Recording icon on the Script toolbar or choose File > Script > Start Recording. If you want to pause recording so you can do something that you don’t want to include in your script, click the Pause Script Recording icon on the Script toolbar or choose File > Script > Pause Recording. Click this icon or choose File > Script > Pause Recording again when you want to resume recording. To cancel script recording, click the Cancel Script Recording icon on the Script toolbar or choose File > Script > Cancel Recording. To save the script so you can replay it again later, click the Save Script Recording icon on the Script toolbar or choose File > Script > Save Recording. Any output the script produces, whether an error message or just informational feedback, is displayed in the Script output window, shown in Figure 1.27. When you finish reading the output, you can close the window by clicking the close button on its title bar. To clear the Script output window, whether it’s currently displayed or not, choose File > Script > Clear Output Window.
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Figure 1.27 The Script output window
Configuring Paint Shop Pro Paint Shop Pro 8 provides you a lot of flexibility in setting up your workspace. Besides being able to float, dock, resize, and reposition palettes, toolbars, and menus, you can customize existing toolbars and menus. You can even create your own toolbars and menus. You can bind commands to keyboard shortcuts. And you can modify many aspects of Paint Shop Pro’s appearance and behavior.
Customizing Toolbars To customize a toolbar, choose View > Customize, or right-click on the title bar of any palette or on an empty space in the Menu bar and choose Customize. The Customize dialog box then opens. Click on the Toolbars tab, shown in Figure 1.28. Figure 1.28 The Customize dialog box
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A whole book could be devoted just to scripts and scripting. See the Paint Shop Pro documentation for more information on scripts. If you think you’d like to become a serious script writer, not just a recorder of scripts, you’ll probably also want to learn more about Python, the scripting language used in Paint Shop Pro. To learn more about Python, head over to http://www.python.org.
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Click the New button and enter a name for your new toolbar. A small empty toolbar is then displayed. To add commands to the toolbar, go to the Commands tab, choose the category for the command you want, and select the command from the Commands list. Drag the command onto the new toolbar. Repeat for any other commands that you want to add. If you make a mistake, just drag the unwanted command off the toolbar. You can also add commands to an existing toolbar by dragging commands onto the toolbar. If you want to delete commands from an existing toolbar, or if you make a mistake, drag the unwanted command from the toolbar.
Customizing Menus To create a new menu, go to the Commands tab of the Customize dialog box and choose New Menu in the Categories list. In the Commands box, click New Menu and drag to the Menu bar or to a displayed palette. When you release the mouse button, a new menu with the name New Menu is displayed (see Figure 1.29). Figure 1.29 Creating a new menu
To give the new menu a more descriptive name, right-click on the new menu and choose Menu Text. Type the name you want for the menu, then click OK. To add commands to the menu, highlight the command’s menu category in the Categories list, then find the command in the Commands list and drag the command to your menu. Add any other commands that you want in the same way. If you make a mistake, just drag the unwanted command off the menu. You can also add commands to an existing menu. Highlight the menu category, find the command you want, and drag the command to the existing menu. If you want to delete a command from the menu, or if you make a mistake, drag the unwanted command off the menu.
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If you want to add commands to a context menu, go to the Menu tab of the Customize dialog box and select the context menu you want to customize. The context menu is then displayed. Go to the Commands tab, find the command you want to add to the context menu, and drag that command to the context menu. Again, you can delete a command from the menu simply by dragging the command off the menu.
The Customize dialog box also enables you to bind commands to a keyboard shortcut. To change an existing shortcut or to create a new shortcut, go to the Keyboard tab of the Customize dialog box, shown in Figure 1.30. Figure 1.30 The Keyboard tab of the Customize dialog box
In the Set Accelerator for drop-down list, pick Browser if you want the shortcut to apply when the Browser window is active, or choose Default if you want the shortcut to apply when the Browser is not active. Choose a command category, then select the command in the Commands list. Click in the Press New Shortcut Key text box, then press the key you’d like to use for your shortcut. If you make a mistake, press another key to use that for your shortcut or press Esc to clear the text box. When you have the key you want, click the Assign button.
Saving Workspaces Paint Shop Pro also enables you to save one or more workspace configurations. You can make any adjustments to the toolbars or menus, position the various palettes where you want them, even open a specific image file or set of image files, and then save the whole workspace to load again whenever you need it. To save a workspace, choose File > Workspace > Save (or press Shift+Alt+S). In the Save Workspace dialog box, navigate to the folder where you want to save your workspace file, provide a name for the file, and click Save. To load a previously saved workspace, choose File > Workspace > Load (or press Shift+Alt+L). In the Load Workspace dialog box, navigate to the folder that contains your workspace files, select the workspace file that you want, and click Open. A few workspaces are included with
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Creating Keyboard Shortcuts
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Paint Shop Pro, including one named Default (which returns the workspace to the factory default) and one name Paint Shop Pro 7 (which duplicates, as much as possible, the workspace found in Paint Shop Pro 7).
TIP If you normally perform several very different image-editing tasks, you might want to create workspaces designed specifically for each task. For example, you might want to have one workspace for retouching and enhancing photographs and another workspace for creating Web graphics.
Setting Preferences Under File > Preferences is an option called General Program Preferences. Select this menu option to open the General Program Preferences dialog box, shown in Figure 1.31. Here you can modify the settings for such things as Undo limits, the appearance of dialog boxes and palettes, and the size of the thumbnails displayed in the Browser. Figure 1.31 The General Program Preferences dialog box
You might also want to tell Paint Shop Pro where to look for various resource files, such as Patterns, Gradients, Picture Tubes, and so on. For this, open the File Locations dialog box (shown in Figure 1.32) by choosing File > Preferences > File Locations. Click the type of resource you want and specify paths for the relevant files. Figure 1.32 The File Locations dialog box
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TIP You can open the File Locations dialog box from any dialog box that makes use of a particular type of resource file. Click the Edit Paths button in the dialog box to access File Locations.
Preferences are remembered for future Paint Shop Pro sessions. They are not saved or loaded with workspace files.
Getting Help Every now and then, you’re sure to reach a point where you know what you’d like to do with Paint Shop Pro but you don’t know how to get there. At such a point, don’t hesitate to reach for your Paint Shop Pro Users Guide or to look in Paint Shop Pro’s Help for the answer. You might be surprised how easy it is to find just the solution you want simply by consulting the documentation supplied with Paint Shop Pro. To access Help, choose Help > Help Topics or press the F1 key. This brings up a standard Windows Help file for Paint Shop Pro. Look in the Table of Contents for the topic you want, or go to the Search tab to search for something specific.
TIP Also available in the Help menu is a list of all keyboard shortcuts for Paint Shop Pro commands. This is especially handy if you’ve remapped some of your shortcuts or added new ones and you need a reminder of which commands are bound to which keys.
If you run into technical problems, you can contact Jasc technical support by calling the technical support number listed in the Users Guide. You can also head over to the Jasc Software Web site at http://www.jasc.com.
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NOTE
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TIP Before contacting Jasc technical support, check out Paint Shop Pro’s Very Frequently Asked Questions at http://campratty.com/questions.html to see if you can find the answer to your question there. You should browse the FAQ even if you don’t have a specific question, since you’re sure to learn something new and interesting.
Now that you’re familiar with the basics of getting around in Paint Shop Pro and know how to look for help, let’s move on to what you’re really interested in—how Paint Shop Pro can provide solutions for graphics projects.
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Chapter 2 The first tools that you’re likely to use in Paint Shop Pro are the basic painting tools, such as the Paint Brush and Airbrush. In this chapter, you’ll explore these and other painting tools. Here’s what you’ll be looking at in this chapter: Using the basic brushes Adjusting brush characteristics Getting acquainted with more advanced pixel-modifying tools
The Paint Brush and Airbrush The Paint Brush and Airbrush are the most basic painting tools. They differ from each other only in the way they apply “paint” to an image. The Paint Brush applies paint in dabs—when you keep the mouse in one place while continuously holding down either mouse button, the effect is no different than simply single-clicking the mouse button. The Airbrush, on the other hand, applies paint like an aerosol spray can—when you keep the mouse in one place and hold down one of the mouse buttons, paint is applied until you release the mouse button. In most other respects, however, these two tools are very similar.
Selecting Styles and Textures with the Materials Palette As you saw in Chapter 1, “Paint Shop Pro 8 Basics,” the styles available on the Materials palette are solid color, gradient, and pattern. Clicking one of the Material boxes brings up the Materials dialog box, where you can go to either the Color, Gradient, or Pattern tab to select your paint. If you click the Foreground Material box, the paint you select is for the Foreground paint. If you click the Background Material box, the paint you select is for the Background paint. Your selection for the Foreground paint is used when you paint with the left mouse button. Your selection for the Background paint is used when you paint with the right mouse button.
NOTE The Transparent style mode is not available with the Paint Brush and Airbrush, since it would not be useful to paint with no paint.
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Figure 2.1 shows examples of painting with each of the style modes: solid color, gradient, and pattern. Figure 2.1 Foreground style mode set to solid color (left), gradient (middle), pattern (right)
Setting the Texture mode on or off also affects the appearance of your paint. If you set the Texture mode on for the Foreground, then the texture you select for the Foreground is combined with the color, gradient, or pattern you’ve selected to produce your Foreground painting material. (It is similar for the Background.) Compare Figure 2.1, where the Foreground texture is toggled off, to Figure 2.2, where the Foreground texture is toggled on and the Brush Strokes texture is selected. Figure 2.2 Foreground style mode set to solid color (left), gradient (middle), pattern (right), with Foreground texture toggled on and the Brush Strokes texture selected
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TIP
As explained in Chapter 3, “The Drawing Tools,” you can also use the Pen tool, with somewhat different effects, to create straight lines.
Selecting Brush Settings with the Tool Options Palette The Paint Brush and Airbrush have several options that you can set on the Tool Options palette. Figure 2.3 shows the Tool Options palette for the Paint Brush. Figure 2.3 The Tool Options palette for the Paint Brush
When using either the Paint Brush or the Airbrush, you can control the brush shape and size, the hardness of the brush outline, the density of the brush, the brush’s thickness and rotation, the opacity of the paint, how the paint blends with what’s already on the image canvas, and the “steps” between the dabs or spray bursts painted when you drag the mouse. To see the effect that these settings have on your brush, keep an eye on the preview window in the left corner of the Tool Options palette, just to the right of the Presets control. The brush image in this window changes as you change the following brush settings: Shape. Available brush shapes are Round and Square. Size. Available brush sizes range from 1 to 500 pixels. Hardness. Controls how hard or how diffuse the edges of the brush are, and ranges from 0 (most diffuse) to 100 (completely hard). Step. Controls how the brush shape is repeated as you drag the mouse while you’re painting. The lower the Step value, the smoother and more continuous the line that’s drawn with the brush. As the Step value increases, the repeated brushstrokes or spray bursts that form the line become more pronounced individually and less continuous as a line, as demonstrated in Figure 2.4.
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Although you usually will do freehand painting when you use the Paint Brush or Airbrush tool, you also can use these tools to draw straight lines, as was done in Figures 2.1 and 2.2. To draw a straight line, click where you want to begin the line. Hold down the Shift key and click where you want the line to end—left-click to produce a line in the foreground color, or right-click to produce a line in the background color.
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Figure 2.4 Step set to 1, 25, 50, 75, 100 (from left to right)
Density. Controls how solid the brush is, and ranges from 1 (least dense) to 100 (completely solid). Thickness. Controls how thick the brush is. Reduce thickness to create an oblong brush (if the Shape is set to round) or a rectangular brush (if the Shape is set to square). Ranges from 1 to 100 percent. Rotation. Determines the rotation (in degrees) of the brush. Figure 2.5 shows examples of a square brush with a thickness of 20 and a several rotation settings. (Keep in mind that if the brush is round and its thickness is set to 100, this setting will have no noticeable effect.) Figure 2.5 Round brush with Thickness set to 20 and Rotation set to 0, 45, 90, 135 (from top to bottom)
Opacity. Controls the opacity of the paint applied, and ranges from 1 (least opaque) to 100 (most opaque). Blend Mode. Determines how the paint is blended with existing paint on the image canvas. See the discussion of Blend Modes in the discussion of the Flood Fill tool later in this chapter and in Chapter 4, “Working with Layers and Masks.”
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Wet Paint Look. This is relevant only when Hardness is less than 100 percent. It produces an effect that looks like a wet ink wash that is more transparent in the center of the stroke and bleeds to a more opaque look at the edges of the stroke, as shown in Figure 2.6. Figure 2.6 A brush with Hardness set to 15, Opacity set to 70, and Wet Paint Look selected
NOTE The Airbrush tool has an additional control—Rate—which determines the rate at which the spray builds up as you hold down the mouse button.
Notice that in addition to the individual brush controls, there’s an arrow to the right of the brush preview. Press this arrow or the preview itself and you’ll see the brush tip drop-down list, as shown in Figure 2.7.
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Stroke and Continuous. These are relevant only when Opacity is set to less than 100 percent. When you paint a single stroke with semitransparent paint, the opacity of any part of the stroke is uniform, even in areas that overlap another part of the stroke. What happens, though, if you release the mouse button and then start a new stroke? If Continuous is not selected, then any areas of the new stroke that overlap areas of the previous stroke are more opaque than the paint of either stroke individually. If Continuous is selected, the paint behaves just as if you never released the mouse button: the opacity of the paint is uniform, even in areas that overlap areas of the previous stroke. The Stroke control interrupts the Continuous behavior for a stroke and begins a new Continuous stroke.
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Figure 2.7 The brush tip dropdown list
Some of these brushes—the ones that look like modified circles and squares—are computed brush tips, made by saving settings for the standard brushes. Others are unlike the computed brushes you produce simply by modifying the various brush settings. These other brushes are custom brushes, which are bitmap representations of a shape. When you select a custom brush, the Hardness and Thickness controls are greyed out, because the shape of a custom brush cannot be varied. Figure 2.8 shows some examples of custom brushes. Figure 2.8 Examples of custom brush dabs and strokes
See the Paint Shop Pro documentation for information on saving your own brush tips and custom brushes.
Brush Variance The Paint Brush and Airbrush also have another set of controls not found on the Tool Options palette: the Brush Variance Settings. You access these settings from the Brush Variance palette, shown in Figure 2.9. To view the Brush Variance palette, choose View > Palettes > Brush Variance, or press the F11 key.
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Figure 2.9 The Brush Variance palette
CHAPTER 2 In the upper pane of the Brush Variance palette are controls for Color Blend, Hue, Saturation, Lightness, Size, Opacity, Thickness, Rotation, and Density. You can set any of these so that they vary under a variety of circumstances, as determined by their setting, a degree of jitter, or both. Before looking at the various settings, let’s talk about jitter. Jitter is a sort of randomness setting. For example, if you set Jitter for Size, the size of your brush will vary pseudo-randomly from the size you’ve set in the Tool Options palette. The higher the value of Jitter, the more the variation. Now let’s look at the values listed under Setting: Normal. With this setting there is no variance at all, except for any random variance introduced by Jitter. Pressure. Varies according to the amount of pressure applied with a stylus on a pressure-sensitive graphics tablet. Altitude. Available only with a graphics tablet. Varies according to the up-and-down tilt of a stylus on a graphics tablet. Azimuth. Available only with a graphics tablet. Varies according to the right-to-left tilt of a stylus on a graphics tablet. Twist. Available only with a graphics tablet. Varies as a stylus on a graphics tablet twists. Fingerwheel and Z wheel. Available only with input devices that have these features. Direction. Varies with the direction of the brush stroke. Fade In. Begins at zero and builds up to the value set in the Tool Options palette. Repeating Fade In. Like Fade In in a repeating pattern. Fade Out. Begins at the value set in the Tool Options palette and fades to zero. Oscillating Fade. Repeatedly fades in and out. Figure 2.10 shows some of the results you can get with these options and settings.
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Figure 2.10 Some effects you can produce with Brush Variance
In the bottom pane of the Brush Variance palette are several other controls. Fade rate (pixels) determines the length of a fade-in or fade-out in pixels. For example, if you have Size set to Fade Out and set Fade rate to 300 pixels, then the brush will completely fade out after the brush has been dragged a length of 300 pixels. Position jitter (%) determines whether and to what extent the position of a brush impression is random. At a setting of 0, the position of an impression is precisely where the cursor is when the you click your mouse button. At a high setting, the position of the impression varies from the cursor position. This control yields particularly interesting results when used in conjunction with Impressions per step. With Impressions per step set to 1, you get exactly one impression at each step interval as you drag the brush. With higher settings, you get multiple impressions at each step. To get an idea for what this means, take a look at Figure 2.11, where Position jitter (%) is set to 660, and Impressions per step is set to 12. What you see here is the result of a single mouse click. Figure 2.11 Position jitter (%) set to 660 and Impressions per step set to 12
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The Eraser and Background Eraser After the Paint Brush and the Airbrush, the next painting tool that you should get to know well is the Eraser, which is much more versatile than a pencil eraser.
In layered images (discussed in Chapter 4), the Eraser has a more interesting use. On any layer except for the Background, painting with the Eraser makes the pixels transparent. Using the Eraser with the right mouse button reapplies any paint that was previously removed—even after you close an image and then reopen that image file.
NOTE If you right-drag the Eraser on a layer, the paint that you reapply might look somewhat different than it looked originally. The Eraser’s settings for Opacity, Density, or Hardness, and the texture mode setting can produce different effects from the original.
The Tool Options palette for the Eraser has most of the same controls and settings as the Paint Brush. In addition to the normal Eraser, Paint Shop Pro 8 has a much more powerful tool: the Background Eraser. With the Background Eraser, you position the center of the brush outside the edge of a figure you want to isolate from the background, with the edge of the brush outline overlapping that figure. Paint Shop Pro samples the pixels at the center of the Background Eraser to determine what pixels to erase, leaving other pixels alone. Figure 2.12 shows an example where the Background Eraser is being used with its default settings (which is the place to start when you’re first becoming acquainted with the Background Eraser). Figure 2.12 The Background Eraser in action
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In unlayered images, the Eraser acts like the Paint Brush in reverse: if you paint with the left mouse button, the pixels that you paint over are replaced with the current Background paint; if you paint with the right mouse button, the pixels are replaced with the current Foreground paint.
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The Background Eraser is available only on true layers, and the checkerboard pattern you see in Figure 2.12 is how Paint Shop Pro indicates transparency by default. If you try to use the Background Eraser on a Background layer, Paint Shop Pro displays an Auto Actions prompt saying that the target must be promoted to a true layer. In that case, just click OK if you really do want to use the Background Eraser on that layer. If you’re not yet familiar with layers, you’ll probably want to hold off exploring the Background Eraser. But after you’ve gone through Chapter 4, be sure to give the Background Eraser a try.
TIP You can temporarily switch to the behavior of the normal Eraser by holding down the Spacebar key while clicking or dragging with the Background Eraser.
Flood Fill The Flood Fill tool, in its simplest form, is like a paint bucket from which you can pour paint onto your image. By using different settings in the Tool Options palette for Blend Mode, Match Mode, Tolerance, and Opacity, you can create more complex effects. Blend Mode, which you will explore in Chapter 4, controls how the pixels of your fill are blended in with the pixels that the fill covers. Used with Match Mode set to None or with Opacity set to less than 100, the various Blend Modes can produce some very interesting effects. Just as with the other painting tools you’ve looked at so far, you set the style modes and the texture modes for the Flood Fill tool on the Materials palette. Controls particular to Flood Fill are located on its Tool Options palette, shown in Figure 2.13. Figures 2.14a–c show a few of the effects that you can produce with the various Flood Fill settings using different style and texture modes. Figure 2.13 Tool Options palette for the Flood Fill tool Figure 2.14a Image with white canvas filled with a pattern (Style: Pattern; Texture: Null; Blend Mode: Normal; Match Mode: None; Opacity: 100)
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Figure 2.14c A gradient applied on a grey beveled circle on a white image canvas (Style: Gradient (sunburst, with focal point different from center); Texture: Null; Blend Mode: Normal; Match Mode: None; Opacity: 50)
When you click with the Flood Fill tool in your image, pixels surrounding the spot where you click are replaced according to the current Match Mode. Match Mode has seven different options: None. All areas are filled, regardless of the characteristics of the pixel that you click. RGB Value. Surrounding pixels matching the Red-Green-Blue color value of the target pixel are filled. Color. Surrounding pixels matching the target’s hue and saturation, regardless of brightness, are filled. Hue. Pixels surrounding the target that match the Hue value (for example, where 0 is red, 90 is green, 180 is blue, 225 is red-violet, and 255 is red again) are filled.
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Figure 2.14b Texture applied on a grey beveled circle on a white image canvas (Style: Solid Color; Texture: On; Blend Mode: Screen; Match Mode: RGB; Tolerance: 95; Opacity: 70)
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Brightness. Pixels surrounding the target are filled according to their level of brightness. All Opaque. Nontransparent areas surrounding the target are filled. Opacity. The pixels that are filled match the target’s opacity. Figures 2.15 and 2.16a–c illustrate how the Match Modes affect the behavior of Flood Fill. Figure 2.15 shows the original image. Figure 2.16a shows the result of clicking the center pixel with the Flood Fill tool, with the following settings in the Materials palette and Tool Options palette: Foreground Style: Solid Color mode Foreground Texture: none Match Mode: RGB Value Tolerance: 50 Opacity: 100 Figure 2.16b shows the result of clicking the same pixel with the same settings, except that Match Mode is set to Color. Figure 2.16c shows the result of clicking on the same pixel with the same settings, except that Match Mode is set to Brightness. Figure 2.15 Original image
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Figure 2.16a Match Mode set to RGB Value
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Figure 2.16b Match Mode set to Color
Figure 2.16c Match Mode set to Brightness
With Match Mode set to Opacity, surrounding pixels that match the target pixel’s opacity are filled, whereas with Match Mode set to All Opaque, all contiguous nontransparent areas of the image are filled. With Match Mode set to None, the entire image canvas (or the entire selection, if there is one) is filled, no matter where you click inside the image. (If there’s a selection, you must click inside the selection in order for the fill to be applied.)
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Tolerance, which can be set from 0 to 200, determines how similar to the target pixel surrounding pixels must be in order to be filled. With Tolerance set to 0, only pixels that exactly match the target pixel (according to the Match Mode) are filled. The higher the Tolerance settings, the less closely the pixels need to match the target pixel to be among those that are filled.
TIP If you try to fill the seemingly solid center of an antialiased outlined shape, you might find a fuzzy fringe of pixels between the edge of your fill and the inside edge of the outline. To fill the entire center of the outlined shape, increase the Tolerance for the fill so that the antialiasing pixels are also included as target pixels of the fill.
Opacity can be set from 0 to 100 percent. A setting of 100 makes the fill completely opaque. Lower values make the fill less opaque (that is, more transparent), letting some of the original color show through. The Sample Merged check box is relevant only for layered images. With Sample Merged unchecked, only pixels on the current layer determine what areas are to be filled. With Sample Merged checked, the pixels of all layers are examined to see what areas are to be filled, just as if the layers were merged (although only areas on the current layer are actually affected). You’ll explore layers in Chapter 4.
Other Painting Tools The other painting tools are the retouching tools, the Clone Brush, the Scratch Remover, the Color Replacer, and the Picture Tube tool. The retouching tools, Clone Brush, and Scratch Remover are particularly useful for editing digital photos. The Color Replacer enables you to replace a color in your image with another color of your choice. And the Picture Tube tool enables you to use ready-made images as your paint.
The Retouching Tools The retouching tools are easy to overlook, but they have two handy functions: touching up digital photos and creating digital paintings. For example, when you want to darken an overly light area of a photo, you can use either Lighten/Darken or Burn. To soften the edge of a pastedin selection, you can use Soften. For digital painting, try Smudge and Push. The Tool Options palette for each of the retouching tools is much like the Tool Options palette for the Paint Brush. Some of the retouching tools have other tool-specific controls, too, such as the Retouch control for Lighten/Darken or the Mode controls for Change to Target. The Limit control for Dodge and for Burn is particularly handy for folks touching up digital photos. Limit enables you to limit the effects of the Dodge and Burn tools to only the shadows, only the highlights, or only the midtones. Figure 2.17 shows an example of an unretouched photo and a version where some dodging and burning has been applied.
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Figure 2.17 An unretouched photo (left) and the retouched version (right)
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In the retouched photo, first Burn with Limit set to Shadow was used on the dog’s face to darken the shadows without affecting highlights or midtones. This increases contrast in areas where detail is important. Burn was then applied to the whole background with Limit set to None, in order to darken the overall background and reduce detail there. Finally, Dodge with Limit set to None was used selectively on the dog to further emphasize details there. This example gives only a hint of what you can achieve with the retouching tools. Figure 2.18 further illustrates some of the effects that you can produce with these tools. Figure 2.18 Some retouching effects
The Clone Brush and the Scratch Remover Like the retouching tools, the Clone Brush and Scratch Remover are great for repairing photos. The Clone Brush enables you to paint with pixels from different areas of your image—or even from an entirely separate image—so you can paint over a blemish or other portion of your image that you’d like to remove. The Scratch Remover provides you with a quick and straightforward means of removing scratches and similar imperfections from your photos.
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Clone Brush Basics You use the Clone Brush to apply portions of an image as “paint.” The source image can be either the image that you’re modifying or some other image. The Clone Brush works only with 256-greyscale images and 16-million color images. Most of the controls on the Tool Options palette for the Clone Brush are the same as for the Paint Brush. There are also two other controls: a check box for Aligned Mode and a check box for Sample Merged. To begin painting with the Clone Brush, right-click in the source image at the point where you want to begin picking up paint. How the Clone Brush then behaves depends on whether you’ve selected Aligned Mode or not. When Aligned Mode is unchecked, the Clone Brush returns to the source point each time that you stop painting and then restart (unless you first choose a new source point). When Aligned Mode is checked, the source point of your cloning shifts to the point at which you start painting again, relative to your original source point (again, unless you first choose a new source point). Sample Merged is like what you saw for the Flood Fill tool. With Sample Merged checked, layers are treated as if they were merged together in a single layer when you select your source point.
Aligned Clone Mode Here’s an example with Clone mode set to Aligned Mode. Suppose that you want to clone the image in Figure 2.19 so that it looks like the image was created with an art material, such as chalk or charcoal. Figure 2.19 Source image to be cloned
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Open both the original image and a new image with the same dimensions and with a white image canvas.
2.
In the Tool Options palette, select a custom brush that produces an effect like whatever art material you want to simulate, set Step rather low, and set Opacity to 50 percent or less. Select Continuous in the Stroke segment of the Tool Options palette, and make sure that Aligned Mode is checked.
3.
In the Materials palette, select a texture for the Foreground. It doesn’t matter what else you select in the Materials palette, since the paint will be whatever comes from your source image.
4.
Now right-click the area in the source image where you want to begin picking up the paint. When you then start painting in the target image, you’ll see a crosshair in the source image that shows where the paint is being picked up, as shown in Figure 2.20. Try to begin painting in the position in the target image that corresponds to the position you clicked on in the source image.
Figure 2.20 The cloned image in progress
NOTE When you right-click with the Clone Brush, you’ll hear a click from your PC’s speaker. This click is to alert you that you’ve changed the source point for the cloning.
5.
When the painted area in the target image is basically the way you like it, go to the Tool Options palette and click Stroke. Now the next time you paint on the image, the opacity of the stroke will be added to the opacity of any previously stroked areas. Notice that because the Clone Brush is in Aligned Mode, whenever you begin a new stroke in your target image, the paint in the source picks up in an area aligned with where you restart in your target.
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1.
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6.
Repeat step 5 until you get the total effect that you want. When you click the Stroke icon, you might also want to adjust the brush size to get more control over which areas you make more opaque. The final result is shown in Figure 2.21.
Figure 2.21 The completed clone image
In Chapter 8, “Photo Editing Solutions,” you’ll look at another example of how to use the Clone Brush in Aligned Mode. There you’ll use the Clone Brush to remove an object from a digital photo.
TIP Another way to “clone” a source image onto a new image is to paint with the Paint Brush, using the original image as a Pattern that is loaded as the Foreground material. Open up your original image and the new image. Click the Foreground box on the Materials palette and go to the Patterns tab of the Material dialog box. Click the Pattern Picker to open up the pattern selection list, and then select your source image (near the top of the list). Select whatever texture you want, then click OK. Select the brush tip you want, adjust the brush settings as needed, and paint away in your new image canvas.
Cloning with Align Mode Unselected Unselecting Aligned Mode is most useful when you want to add multiple copies of a single object or pattern, perhaps overlapping the copies with one another. For instance, clone a single horse to get a whole herd of horses, or clone a tree to create a forest. Figure 2.22 shows a simple example of this mode.
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Figure 2.22 Cloning with Aligned Mode unselected
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NOTE The grey-and-white checkerboard pattern in the sphere image isn’t actually part of the image. As mentioned earlier in this chapter, it’s just the default pattern that Paint Shop Pro uses to indicate transparency in an image with a transparent background. You’ll sometimes want to use an image with a transparent background as the source for cloning, because an image with an opaque background might accidentally pick up the unwanted surrounding color as well as the areas that you want to clone.
The Scratch Remover Use the Scratch Remover to repair scratches and similar imperfections in your digital photos. For example, you can remove the creases in the photo shown in Figure 2.23. Figure 2.23 A photo that could be repaired with the Scratch Remover
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In the Scratch Remover’s Tool Options palette (shown in Figure 2.24), set the Width and choose the Selection Box. Then drag the tool along a segment of the imperfection. When you release the mouse button, the pixels within the selection box are replaced with colors like those of the pixels just outside the selection box, giving a result like what you see in Figure 2.25. Repeat the process for any remaining segments of the imperfection. Figure 2.24 The Scratch Remover’s Tool Options palette
Figure 2.25 Segments of the imperfection being removed with the Scratch Remover
The Color Replacer The Color Replacer, which is in the same family of tools as the Eyedropper, does just what its name implies: it replaces an existing color in your image with some other color. You use the Color Replacer to replace an existing color in your image with another color either by changing the current background color to the current Foreground color, or vice versa, depending on whether you use the tool with the left mouse button or the right mouse button. The Color Replacer’s Tool Options palette has most of the controls found on the palette for the Paint Brush. In addition, there’s a Tolerance control. If you set Tolerance to 0, the pixels to be replaced must match the specified color exactly. Setting the Tolerance to a higher number tells Paint Shop Pro to also change pixels that closely match the specified color. With a Tolerance setting of 200, all the pixels are changed. Compare Figures 2.27a and 2.27b. In Figure 2.27a, the Foreground color is set to white, and the Background color is set to a brownish color found in the original coins image (shown in Figure 2.26), with Tolerance set to 5. In Figure 2.27b, the Foreground and Background colors are also white and brown, but this time Tolerance is set to 40.
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Figure 2.26 Image with its original colors
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Figure 2.27a Color Replacer result with Tolerance set to 5
Figure 2.27b Color Replacer result with Tolerance set to 40
TIP Painting by dragging with the Color Replacer is convenient when you want to replace a color in only certain parts of your image. But if you want to replace all instances of a certain color in your image, you can take a shortcut. To change all instances of the current background color to the current foreground color, double-click your image with the left mouse button. To change all instances of the current background color with the current foreground color, double-click your image with the right mouse button.
Picture Tubes Picture Tubes are quite unlike any other painting tool. With Picture Tubes, you don’t paint with a color, gradient, or pattern. Instead, you paint with ready-made images. Figure 2.28 shows an image created almost entirely with Picture Tubes.
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Figure 2.28 An image created with Picture Tubes
To select a particular Picture Tube to paint with, choose the Picture Tube tool, and on the Tool Options palette (shown in Figure 2.29), click the tube preview window or the arrow button adjacent to the preview window. A selection list containing thumbnails and names for the available tubes drops down. Figure 2.29 The Picture Tube’s Tool Options palette
The Scale control adjusts the size of the Picture Tube elements. You can set the Scale anywhere from 10 percent to 250 percent, with 100 percent being the default. As for Step, the setting helps determine how closely tube elements are placed next to each other when you drag with the Picture Tube tool. In conjunction with Step, Placement Mode—which can be set to either Random or Continuous—determines how the tube elements are placed as you paint with the Picture Tube tool. Step (measured in pixels) determines either exactly how far apart the center of one tube element is from the next (if Placement Mode is set to Continuous) or what the maximum distance is between tube elements (if Placement Mode is set to Random). Selection Mode determines how the different elements in the tube are selected as you paint with the Picture Tube tool. The following are the settings available for Selection Mode: Random. Tube selection is (as you might suspect) random. Incremental. Each tube element is selected sequentially, and when all the available tube elements are used, the sequence is repeated. Angular. Tube selection is determined by the direction in which you drag the mouse as you paint.
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Pressure. This is effective only if you’re painting with a pressure-sensitive graphics tablet and have Paint Shop Pro set up to recognize different pen pressures. Velocity. Tube selection is dependent on the speed of your mouse drag.
Figure 2.30 A tube with both Placement Mode and Selection Mode set to Random
Compare this with Jasc’s Film strip tube, in which Placement Mode is set to Continuous, and Selection Mode is set to Incremental. Draw one line with this tube and you produce a series of evenly spaced figures. Release the mouse button, draw another line, and you produce the same spacing and the same series of figures, as shown in Figure 2.31. (Note, though, that the starting image in the second series is determined by where the last series ended.) Figure 2.31 A tube with Placement Mode set to Continuous and Selection Mode set to Incremental
An example of a tube that has Angular as its Selection Mode is Paint Shop Pro 7’s Pointing Hands. Figure 2.32 shows the result of dragging with this tube up diagonally from left to right, and then down from left to right, and then across from right to left.
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For example, Jasc’s Marbles tube has both Placement Mode and Selection Mode set to Random. Draw a line across an image canvas once with this tube, release the mouse button, and then draw again, and you’ll see that the two lines are quite different, as shown in Figure 2.30.
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Figure 2.32 A tube with Selection Mode set to Angular
Also present on the Picture Tube Tool Options palette is the Settings button, which looks like the Picture Tube tool’s icon with a red check mark on its lower right. Clicking the Settings button opens up the Picture Tube Settings dialog box, shown in Figure 2.33. Figure 2.33 Picture Tube Settings dialog box
When you’re using (as opposed to creating) Picture Tubes, you should adjust only the Placement Options on the right of the Options dialog box. The Cell Arrangement text boxes on the left side of the Picture Tube Options dialog box should not be changed. You use these controls only when creating your own tubes using File > Export > Picture Tube. (See Paint Shop Pro’s Help for more information on creating your own tubes.) You might wonder why you’d ever want to use the Settings button, since the controls you’d normally use in the Picture Tube Settings dialog box are the same as those available on the Tool Options palette itself. The difference is that you can modify the default settings for the tube when using the Picture Tube Settings dialog box. To make your adjusted settings the new defaults, check the box labeled Save as default for this Picture Tube.
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Here’s a summary of all the Picture Tube options: Scale. Sets the relative size of the tube elements.
Placement Mode. Determines how tube elements are spaced when you drag with the Picture Tube tool. With Random spacing, tube elements are spaced randomly, anywhere from 0 pixels up to the number of pixels set with Step Size. With Continuous spacing, the tube elements are always spaced at the spacing set with Step Size. Selection Mode. Determines how the different tube elements are selected when you drag with the Tube tool: Random. Selects the elements randomly. This default is probably the most commonly used Selection Mode. Incremental. Selects the elements in a fixed order, from left to right and from top to bottom, in the tube cell arrangement. After all the tube elements have been selected, selection begins again with the first tube element. Angular. Selects the tube elements based on the direction of the drag. Pressure. Relevant only if you’re using a pressure-sensitive tablet. Selection here is based on stylus pressure as you draw with the Picture Tube tool. Velocity. Selects the elements based on the speed of your drag. For now, don’t worry too much about the details of the Picture Tube settings. If you decide to create your own tubes, though, you’ll want to return to this summary to consider what options you have available for placing and selecting the elements of your tubes. See Paint Shop Pro’s Help for instructions on creating your own Picture Tubes.
TIP You can find tubes for downloading from Jasc Software at http://www.jasc.com. To install your new tubes, follow the instructions given there. The Jasc site also lists several other sources of downloadable tubes. Tubes created for either Paint Shop Pro 7 or Paint Shop Pro 8 are usable within Paint Shop Pro 8.
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Step. Determines the number of pixels for the brush step for your tube. Setting Step Size in the Export Picture Tube dialog box sets the default brush step. You can modify the Step Size in the Picture Tube Options dialog box.
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The Warping Tools New in Paint Shop Pro 8 are a whole family of deforming tools, in addition to the Deform tool that appeared in earlier versions of Paint Shop Pro. Also new is the Warp Brush, found in the same family of tools as the Paint Brush and Airbrush.
The Warp Brush Let’s look first at the Warp Brush, whose Tool Options palette is shown in Figure 2.34. Figure 2.34
The Warp Brush’s Tool Options palette
In addition to some of the controls available with the Paint Brush, the Warp Brush has several Warp Modes: Push. Pushes pixels, moving them in the direction of the brush stroke. Expand. Enlarges the area under the brush. The effect increases the longer you hold down the mouse button. Contract. Shrinks the area under the brush. The effect increases the longer you hold down the mouse button. Right Twirl. Swirls the pixels under the brush to the right, as if the image were a thick liquid being stirred. The effect increases the longer you hold down the mouse button. Left Twirl. Swirls the pixels under the brush to the left, as if the image were a thick liquid being stirred. The effect increases the longer you hold down the mouse button. Noise. Warps the pixels under the brush pseudo-randomly. Use this mode to give a more natural look to the edges of drawn or painted objects. Iron Out. Undoes the effects of a previous warp. In order for this to have an effect, you must drag the mouse across an area of warped pixels (much like using a real iron). Unwarp. Undoes the effect of a previous warp. Unlike Iron Out, Unwarp has an effect as soon as you click with the mouse. The effect increases the longer you hold down the mouse button. The various other settings for Warp Brush affect how each Warp Mode modifies your image. The size of your brush and the setting for Strength are perhaps the most important. In general, a large brush produces a more subtle effect than a small one. And a time-dependent brush like Push and Unwarp has a stronger effect more quickly when Strength has a high value.
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The Noise setting that is active when Warp Mode is set to Noise affects how sharp or jagged the introduced randomness effect appears. Higher values produce a more jagged effect, while lower values produce a smoother effect.
Figure 2.35 A normal photographic portrait
Figure 2.36 A silly variant
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You might think that the Warp Brush is just a toy, good for torturing photos of your friends or pets. You certainly can use the Warp Brush in this way, and it definitely is fun to do so. For example, starting with the photo in Figure 2.35, you can produce wickedly warped versions like 2.36 and 2.37.
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Figure 2.37 A completely warped variation
However, the Warp Brush has more practical and benign uses as well. Using much more subtle modifications, you can change a person’s age or expression, for example. Compare the original portrait with the version in Figure 2.38, where the friendly young man is warped into an angry young man. Figure 2.38 A friendly fellow warped into an angry guy
To get these more subtle effects, try using a rather large brush (so that the warping effects are not abrupt) with Strength set relatively low. And remember to take advantage of Iron Out and Unwarp to selectively undo some of the effects you get with the other Warp Modes.
The Deform Family of Tools This family includes four tools: Deform, Straighten, Perspective Correction, and Mesh Warp. Straighten and Perspective Correction will be examined in Chapter 8. Let’s take a look at Deform and Mesh Warp.
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The Deform tool is used to deform pixels on an entire layer or in a floating selection. It cannot be used on a Background layer. Consider the example in Figure 2.39, where a star shape surrounded by transparency appears on a layer.
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Figure 2.39 A shape ready to deform
Activate the Deform tool and a bounding box with handles on the corners, top, bottom, and sides surrounds the shape on the layer. Click and drag on a top, bottom, or side handle (or on one of the sides on the bounding box) to adjust the width or height of the shape. Click and drag on one of the corner handles to adjust the width and height simultaneously.
TIP Right-click and drag with the right mouse button down on one of the corner handles to resize the shape while maintaining the aspect ratio of the original.
Holding down the Shift or Ctrl key—or both at the same time—modifies the behavior of Deform. With the Shift key down, dragging a Deform handle produces a shear effect, as in Figure 2.40. Figure 2.40 Producing a shear effect with Shift and dragging
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With the Ctrl key down, dragging a Deform handle produces a perspective effect, as in Figure 2.41. Figure 2.41 Producing a perspective effect with Ctrl and dragging
With both the Shift and Ctrl keys down, dragging with a Deform handle produces free deforming effects, as in Figure 2.42. Figure 2.42 Producing a free deform with Shift+Ctrl and dragging
You can also use the Deform tool to rotate or reposition the shape. To rotate the shape, put the mouse cursor over the handle at the end of the bar radiating from the center of the shape. (The cursor’s shape changes to a pair of curved double-headed arrows when the cursor is in the proper place.) Then drag to rotate the shape. To reposition the shape, place the cursor on any spot inside the bounding box wherever the mouse cursor’s shape is like the double-headed crossed arrows of the Mover tool, then drag. With Mesh Warp, a mesh is superimposed on your image. When you move the nodes of this mesh, the image is warped:
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Move individual nodes by dragging them. This warps the image area near the node in the direction in which the node is moved.
To move a whole row or column of nodes to form a curve, hold down the Ctrl key as you drag. When the Ctrl key is down, the pixels at the node you drag are moved more than the adjacent nodes, which are moved more than the nodes farther out from them, so that a curved warping is produced. See Figure 2.44, where text is being warped into a egg shape. Figure 2.43 Moving a column of pixels in a straight line
Figure 2.44 Forming a curved effect along a row of pixels
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When the Shift key is down, all the nodes in the row or column move together in a line, pulling all the pixels in the row or column in the direction in which the nodes are moved. See Figure 2.43, where a Picture Frame on a layer is being resized with Mesh Warp.
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Do some warping, change the warp grid, and do some more warping, if you like. When you have an effect you like, click the Apply button on the Tool Options palette. If you make a mistake, click the Undo button on the menu bar. And if you think it would be better to go back to the drawing board, click the Cancel button on the Tool Options palette and start again. As you get more and more comfortable with Mesh Warp, you’ll find that quite complex warp effects can be achieved, and without a whole lot of effort.
TIP You can save the warping effects of either Mesh Warp or the Warp Brush as a deformation map, and any deformation map can be loaded in either one of these tools. To save a deformation map, click the Save icon in the Deformation map segment of the Mesh Warp or Warp Brush’s Tool Options palette and enter a name for your deformation map. To load a deformation map, click the Load icon there and select the deformation map you want.
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Chapter 3 Paint Shop Pro provides you with three drawing tools: the Pen tool, the Preset Shapes tool, and the Text tool. These tools all allow you to draw in raster mode (painting with pixels) or in vector mode (providing instructions on drawing a line or shape). For now, you’ll examine drawing only in raster mode. In Chapter 6, “Vectors Solutions,” you’ll examine vector drawing. The Text tool merits a chapter of its own. You’ll explore the Text tool in Chapter 7, “Text Solutions.” Here’s what you’ll be exploring in this chapter: Adding shapes Drawing lines Using styled lines
NOTE When a drawing tool is active, the styles and texture boxes on the Materials palette control the Stroke and the Fill. For a line or curve, the Stroke is the line or curve itself, and the Fill is any area enclosed by the lines or curves. For a shape or text, the Stroke is the outline and the Fill is the “inside” of the shape or character.
The Preset Shapes Tool With the Preset Shapes tool, you can draw ready-made shapes precisely. The available shapes, which you choose from the Tool Options palette when the Preset Shapes tool is active, include everything from simple geometric shapes like Rectangle, Rounded Rectangle, Ellipse, and Pentagon, to 3-D-like spheres and buttons. The Tool Options palette for Preset Shapes is shown in Figure 3.1, and a few examples of preset shapes are shown in Figure 3.2. Figure 3.1 The Tool Options palette for the Preset Shapes tool
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Figure 3.2 Examples of shapes available with the Preset Shapes tool
You choose the shape that you want in the drop-down list on the Tool Options palette. Click the preview window or the arrow to the right of the preview window to reveal the selection list. Then select the shape you want, scrolling down by clicking or dragging in the scroll bar or by pressing the Page Up, Page Down, or arrow keys. If you want to draw your shape using the current Materials palette settings for Stroke and Fill, leave the Retain Style box unchecked. If instead you want to draw the shape using the styles and textures shown in the preview window, be sure that the Retain Style box is checked. Check the Antialias box if you want your shape to be antialiased. Aliasing is the stepped effect produced when a line is drawn on a computer screen. Antialiasing is a method of smoothing this jagged effect by adding pixels along the edge of the line in colors that are intermediate between the color of the line and the background color.
CAUTION Antialiasing is available only with greyscale images and with 24-bit color images (that is, color images with a color depth of 16 million colors).
Figure 3.3 shows a zoomed-in view of an ellipse that has solid black as its Stroke and solid white as its Fill, with no antialiasing. Figure 3.4 shows a zoomed-in view of the same sort of circle created with antialiasing. As you can see, the jagged edges of the nonantialiased circle appear to be much smoother in the antialiased version.
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Figure 3.3 Section of a circle without antialiasing
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Figure 3.4 Section of a circle with antialiasing
CAUTION Antialiasing does a great job of smoothing lines, but you have to be careful when you manipulate antialiased elements. If you paste an antialiased figure into an image or Flood Fill around an antialiased figure, a “halo” will appear around the figure’s edges where the blended pixels are located.
NOTE Antialiasing is useful for most images that are to be displayed on a video screen. However, for figures that are to be printed, it’s best to leave Antialias unchecked. For printed images, the ink will bleed along the edge of your shape, smoothing the edge.
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There’s also a check box labeled Create as vector in the Preset Shapes Tool’s Options palette. For now, leave that box unchecked. You’ll look at vectors in depth in Chapter 6. Other settings here are Line Style, Width, Join, and Miter Limit. Width controls the width of the Stroke. Line Style controls whether the Stroke is a solid line or a fancier line. You’ll look at styled lines later on in this chapter. Join determines how corners are rendered: mitered, round, or beveled. Miter Limit specifies how sharp a corner must be when mitering kicks in. Before leaving the topic of the Preset Shapes tool, you should note that you can draw shapes either from corner to corner or from the center out. To draw from corner to corner, simply drag with the left mouse button depressed. To draw from the center out, drag with the right mouse button depressed.
TIP You can constrain the aspect ratio of your shape to that of the original shape in the library by holding down the Shift key as you drag to draw your shape. Use this method to draw a circle with Ellipse or to draw a square with Rectangle, for example.
The Pen Tool The Pen tool is the tool of choice when you want to create either straight lines or smooth curves. You can select any of three Segment Types in the Tool Options palette when the Pen tool is active: Line Segments, Point to Point, or Freehand Line. Use Line Segments for straight lines drawn singly or in a series of connected lines. Use Point to Point to create complex, smooth curves. Use Freehand Line to create curves you draw by hand, simply by dragging the mouse. For simple raster lines and curves, you should select Simple Mode. When drawing on a raster layer in Simple Mode, the only Pen tool mode available to you is Drawing Mode. If you want each mouse click or drag to add to a single line or curve, also select Contiguous. If you want mouse clicks to draw separate lines or curves, keep Contiguous unchecked.
NOTE You don’t have to use Simple Mode when you’re drawing on a raster layer, but as the name of the mode says, it’s much simpler if you do. Without Simple Mode, raster drawing behaves much more like vector drawing. However, I strongly urge you not to do raster drawing without Simple Mode selected. If you want to graduate beyond Simple Mode, jump right into vectors. Vectors give you much more flexibility and are readily editable—even after you save your image.
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As with the Preset Shapes tool, you control the width of the line’s stroke with Width. Keep in mind that a line or curve’s stroke is what you think of as the line or curve itself. The fill for a line or curve is the area contained “under” the curve or set of lines (that is, the area contained within the shape defined by the curves and lines).
Figure 3.5a Shape drawn with Stroke set to Solid Color and Fill set to Transparent
Figure 3.5b Shape drawn with Stroke set to Transparent and Fill set to Pattern
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To draw lines or curves only, with no fill, set the style mode for the Foreground/Stroke box on the Materials palette to any mode other than Transparent, and set the style mode for Fill to Transparent. If you set the Fill to anything other than Transparent, the area between the start point and endpoint of your curve or series of lines will be filled with paint. If you want to draw a handmade shape without an outline, set the Stroke to Transparent and the Fill to anything other than Transparent. To create a handmade shape that is both outlined and filled, set both the Stroke and the Fill to anything other than Transparent. Figures 3.5a–c show each of these variations.
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Figure 3.5c Shape drawn with Stroke set to Solid Color and Fill set to Gradient
Line Segments To draw a straight line, in the Tool Options palette, choose Drawing Mode and then choose Line Segments as the Segment Type. Select the Width you’d like, and check Antialias if you want antialiasing to be in effect. Then in the image canvas, click the left mouse button at the spot where you want the line to begin and drag to where you want the line to end. Figure 3.6 shows a line being drawn. Figure 3.6 Drawing a line with the Pen tool
As long as you hold the mouse button down, you’ll see start and end nodes and a single-pixel line. When you release the mouse button, your line will be rendered without the nodes and at the width that is specified in the Tool Options palette. When you want to restrict your line drawing to horizontal lines, vertical lines, and other lines at 45-degree increments, hold down the Shift key while you drag to draw your line. And if you want to draw a series of connected lines, be sure that Contiguous is selected.
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Point to Point Lines and Curves
Figure 3.7 Shape being drawn with straight line segments using Point to Point
To close the shape, click the Close selected open contours icon on the Tool Options palette (just to the right of the Tracking drop-down list). To create curves, click to define a node (the start point) and drag. As you drag away from the node, you’ll see an arrow-shaped control. Dragging away from the node increases the length of the arrow and adds to the curve of the segment between this node and any nodes it’s connected to. Swiveling the arrow changes the curvature of the segment at the node. Add more nodes by clicking or clicking and dragging. Figure 3.8 shows a curved path being drawn in this way. Figure 3.8 Shape drawn with curved segments using Point to Point
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Point to Point provides a lot of control when drawing lines and shapes. Each line or curve is defined by a pair of nodes, and complex shapes are created by defining a series of nodes. Let’s take a look at a simple raster example of Point to Point. To draw a shape made up of a series of straight line segments, set Segment Type to Point to Point in the Tool Options palette and then simply click at the endpoints of each segment, as shown in Figure 3.7.
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If you want to close the curve, click the Close selected open contour icon. The end result for the example started in Figure 3.7 is shown in Figure 3.9, with the style for Stroke in the Materials palette set to solid color mode and Width in the Tool Options palette set to 10, and with Fill in the Materials palette set to Transparent. Figure 3.9 Shape drawn with Point to Point (Stroke: solid color; Fill: transparent; Width: 10)
Freehand Lines and Curves To draw freehand instead of drawing a set of straight lines or smooth curves, choose Freehand as the Segment Type. Be sure to set Curve tracking, too. Freehand lines are made from a continuous set of line segments, and Curve Tracking determines the length of each segment. The smaller the value for Curve Tracking, the shorter the component line segments and the smoother the curves. Figure 3.10 shows an example of a simple drawing created entirely with Freehand curves. Figure 3.10 A simple drawing created with Freehand curves
Creating Cutouts It’s easy to create cutouts in a previously drawn shape. You draw your basic shape, then draw the shape of the cutout in the opposite direction. That is, if you drew the basic shape in a clockwise direction, then you should draw the cutout shape counterclockwise, as shown in Figure 3.11. Figure 3.11 Drawing a new contour
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The result when you finish defining the cutout and release the mouse button will be something like what’s shown in Figure 3.12. Figure 3.12 A cutout created with a new contour
CHAPTER 3 If the cutout shape is completely inside the previously drawn shape, you get a “hole” in the middle of the previously drawn shape. If the cutout shape only partially overlaps the previously drawn shape, there will be a cutout where the two shapes overlap, but anywhere that the shapes do not overlap will appear as any shape would (with normal stroke and fill).
CAUTION It’s easy to inadvertently create a cutout when you’re drawing multiple shapes. If you do accidentally get a cutout where you don’t want one, undo the mistake with Edit > Undo or Ctrl+Z, then redraw your shape (being sure to draw in the same direction you used for previously drawn shapes).
Styled Lines The stroke of any of the drawing tools—the Pen, Preset Shapes, and Text tools—can be drawn with styled lines rather than solid lines. To choose a line style, click the arrow for the selection box in a drawing tool’s Tool Options palette and select the line style that you want. You can also create your own custom styled lines. To create a styled line, click the arrow or preview window for Styled Lines on the Tool Options palette, then click the Custom button at the bottom of the Line Style selection list (see Figure 3.13).
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Figure 3.13 To begin creating a line style, click the Custom button on the Line Style selection list of the Pen, Preset Shapes, or Text tools
Clicking the Line Style list’s Custom button opens the Styled Lines dialog box, shown in Figure 3.14. Here you can manipulate several line properties, including start and end caps for the entire line, segment start and end caps, and dashes and gaps. Figure 3.14 Create your new line style with the Styled Lines dialog box
To set one of the caps, click the arrow button near the cap’s preview window to get the selection box shown in Figure 3.15. Choose the cap you want by clicking it. You can then set the size of the cap relative to the line width by pressing the cap’s Size button and then setting the Height and Width for the cap.
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Figure 3.15 Choosing a cap
CHAPTER 3 You add dashes and gaps in the Style pane of the Styled Line dialog box (see Figure 3.16). The first time you click Add, you add a dash, which you can size by entering a value in the text box or by dragging the pointed thumb in the control box. Click Add again and you add a gap, which you can also size by entering a value or by dragging on its thumb. You can keep adding dashes and gaps. To resize a particular dash or gap, click its thumb and then make your adjustment, or set a value directly in the Length JNE. (Jasc Numeric Editors—JNEs—are explained in Chapter 1, “Paint Shop Pro 8 Basics.”) Figure 3.16 Adding dashes and gaps to the line
Figure 3.17 shows an example of the Styled Lines dialog box with the following settings:
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First cap and Last cap set to Tulip, each with Size set to 5.00 x 5.00 Different segment caps checked, with Segment start cap and Segment end cap both set to Pineapple, each with Size set to 2.00 x 2.00 A Dash set to 40 and a Gap set to 25 A preview of the resulting line is shown in the preview window at the bottom of the dialog box. Figure 3.17 Example of a fancy styled line
To save your styled line, select Save As New and type a name when prompted to enter a Styled Line Name. If you want to overwrite an existing styled line, enter the same name as the existing line. If you want to create a new styled line without overwriting any existing line, be sure to enter a unique name for your new styled line. (Paint Shop Pro will warn you if you try to give the new styled line the same name as an existing styled line.) You can create all sorts of styled lines for all sorts of purposes, including navigation buttons for a Web site and separator lines for newsletters.
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Chapter 4 Sometimes you want to manipulate different parts of your image independently of each other, without affecting any other part of your image. In this case, you’ll want to make use of Paint Shop Pro’s layers. And sometimes you want to gradually fade from one image to another, add a decorative edge to your image, or create transparency around a figure. In this case, a mask may just do the trick. In this chapter, you’ll explore the following aspects of layers and masks: Manipulating layers Understanding masks Using layer opacity, blend modes, and masks to create various effects
Layer Basics One of the most popular and powerful features of Paint Shop Pro is layers. You’ll probably find that you use layers in the majority of your Paint Shop Pro projects. If you’re a graphic artist whose work involves a lot of compositing, nearly all of your image editing will involve layering. Layers let you manipulate different components of your image independently. This can enable you, for example, to apply an effect or filter to only part of your image, to reposition or rotate a figure in the image without affecting the background, or to blend one part of your image into another. Paint Shop Pro has four types of layers. In this chapter, you’ll look at raster layers and mask layers. You “paint” with pixels on a raster layer. And you use mask layers to modify the transparency of lower layers without actually destroying any data on those lower layers. Paint Shop Pro also has two other types of layers: vector layers and adjustment layers. You’ll explore vector layers in Chapter 6, “Vectors Solutions.” In Chapter 8, “Photo Editing Solutions,” you’ll take a brief look at adjustment layers. Think of a layer as a clear sheet of acetate on which you can paint. A multilayered image is like a stack of these acetate sheets, each with its own image elements. Areas of a sheet that are unpainted are transparent, allowing the image elements of lower sheets to show through. Areas of a sheet that are opaque block out image elements on lower sheets. Finally, areas of a sheet that are semitransparent partially reveal image elements on lower sheets.
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Extending this analogy further, the order of the sheets in the stack can be changed. One or more sheets can be removed from the stack, either temporarily or permanently, and other sheets can be added to the stack.
Getting Acquainted with Layers Take a look at a simple example of a multilayered image to get a better idea of what layers are. Figure 4.1 shows an image with three layers, one named Background, one named Cat, and one named Yellow Planet. Figure 4.1 Simple multilayered image
Figures 4.2a–c show each of the three layers separately. The layer named Background, which is totally opaque, is filled with a dark starry sky. The Cat layer contains the head of a cat, with the rest of the layer transparent (the checkerboard pattern that you see “behind” the cat is what Paint Shop Pro shows by default to indicate transparent areas). The Yellow Planet layer contains a solid yellow circle, with the rest of the layer transparent. Figure 4.2a The Background layer
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Figure 4.2b The Yellow Planet layer
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Figure 4.2c The Cat layer
NOTE If you want to work through this example, you can find it on the e-book version’s CD or on the Muska & Lipman Web site at http://www.muskalipman.com/psp8solutions.
The palette below the Overview window in Figure 4.1 is the Layers palette, which you can toggle on and off either by clicking the Layers button on the Paint Shop Pro menu bar, or by pressing the F8 key on the keyboard, or by choosing View > Palettes > Layers. Although there are quite a few ways to manipulate layers, using the Layers palette is generally the easiest way to control layers. Examine the Layers palette, shown in Figure 4.3, more closely.
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Figure 4.3 The Layers palette
Let’s take a look at some of the most commonly used controls on the Layers palette. The left pane includes a column of rectangular labeled buttons. These buttons, the layer buttons, correspond to each of the layers in your image. The layer button at the bottom of the column corresponds to the “lowest” layer in the stack of layers, and each layer button up the column corresponds to an increasingly higher layer in the stack. In the right pane of the Layers palette are several more controls for each layer, including a Visibility toggle, which looks like an eye. Above the two panes is a row of icons for various layer commands, including the Add New Raster Layer icon (which looks like a pair of acetate sheets) on the far left and the Delete Layer icon (which looks like a pair of acetate sheets with a red X) several icons to the right. The following is a quick summary of what the basic Layers palette controls are used for. You’ll try out each of these controls, along with a few others, later in the chapter. Layer button. Click a layer button to make its layer the active layer. In most cases, Paint Shop Pro tools and operations affect only the active layer. Double-click a layer button to open the Layer Properties dialog box, which is one means of manipulating a layer. Right-click a layer button to open a menu that contains most of the commands available on the Layers menu on the Paint Shop Pro menu bar. Position the mouse cursor over a layer button, without clicking, to see a thumbnail of the button’s associated layer. The thumbnail disappears when you move the cursor away from the layer button. Opacity slider. Nontransparent areas on a layer can be entirely opaque or semitransparent. To adjust the opacity of a layer, move the Opacity slider (located in the right pane, just to the right of the Visibility toggle). Moving the slider to the left makes pixels on the layer less opaque, and moving the slider to the right increases the opacity of the pixels. (Keep in mind, though, that you can’t use the Opacity control to make pixels any more opaque than they were when they were painted on the layer.)
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NOTE
An alternative way of promoting the Background to a layer is to double-click the Background’s layer button, which first brings up an Auto Actions prompt indicating that “the target must be promoted to a full layer”. After you click OK for the Auto Action, the Layer Properties dialog box appears. Click OK there, too—the Background will automatically be promoted and its name changed to Rastern. (You can turn off the Auto Action prompt for promoting a Background to a full layer, if you like. When you get the Auto Action prompt, select “In the future: Always take this action.”)
New Raster Layer and Delete Layer. Click the New Raster Layer icon on the Layers palette toolbar to create a new empty layer “above” the currently active layer. Click the Delete Layer icon on the Layers palette toolbar to delete the currently active layer.
TIP If you’re not sure what an icon on the Layers palette toolbar is for, hover the mouse cursor over the icon. A tool tip will appear that shows the descriptive name of the icon.
Working with Layers It’s time to return to the simple three-layer example shown in Figure 4.1. To add a new layer to this image, click the layer button labeled Yellow Planet to make this the active layer. Then click the New Raster Layer button, which opens the New Raster Layer dialog box, shown in Figure 4.4.
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The Background layer does not have an active Opacity slider. This special layer, created when you either open a new image with an opaque background or flatten a layered image, does not have a transparency channel. If you have a Background layer and want it to have a transparency channel, right-click the Background’s layer button and in the context menu choose Promote Background Layer. The layer’s name will change from Background to Rastern, where n is a number determined by the current number of raster layers in the image.
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Figure 4.4 The New Raster Layer dialog box
TIP If you want to add a new layer without opening the Layer Properties dialog box, hold down the Shift key while you click on the New Raster Layer icon. Any layer that you create in this way will be given a default name of the form Raster1, Raster2, and so on. You can always give such a layer a more meaningful name later on by double-clicking the layer’s layer button and entering a new name in the Layer Properties dialog box.
Notice that in addition to the Name text box, the Layer Properties dialog box presents quite a few other controls. Don’t worry about these controls just yet. For now, all we are going to do with this dialog box is give a name to the new layer. Enter “Red Planet” in the text box labeled Name and then click OK. An empty layer is now above the Yellow Planet layer. Since this layer is empty, the appearance of the image hasn’t changed. If you look at the Layers palette, though, you’ll see a new layer button labeled Red Planet above the layer button labeled Yellow Planet. The new layer will automatically become the active layer.
NOTE The layer button of the currently active layer is highlighted.
CAUTION Before you use a tool or perform an operation on a layered image, be sure that the layer that you want to be affected is the active layer.
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Now draw on the new layer. Select the Preset Shapes tool and set the Fill color in the Materials palette to a shade of red and set the Stroke mode to Transparent. On the Tool Options palette, be sure that neither Retain Styles nor Create as vector are selected. Then draw a small circle near the middle of the Red Planet layer.
Figure 4.5 Red planet drawn on the Red Planet layer
Next, try moving the figure that you just drew. Choose the Mover tool and click with it on the red planet figure. Drag the red planet to a new position. To return the figure to its original position, either click the Undo button on the Paint Shop Pro toolbar or press Ctrl+Z.
CAUTION If you click the Mover tool on a figure that is on a layer other than the currently active layer, the Mover tool will affect that figure, and the figure’s layer will become the active layer. This can be quite handy when you do it intentionally, but be careful. It’s very easy to click in the wrong place and unintentionally move an image element on the wrong layer. If you do make a mistake, don’t forget that you can easily recover by clicking the Undo icon or by pressing Ctrl+Z. To ensure that the Mover tool affects only the current layer, hold down the Shift key while clicking and dragging with the Mover.
Now move the Yellow Planet layer above the Red Planet layer in the layer stack. You can move a layer up and down in the layer stack by dragging the layer’s layer button. Click the layer button of the Yellow Planet and drag it to the top of the layer button of the Red Planet, as shown in Figure 4.6. Keep an eye on the black line that shows up at the top or bottom of the moving layer’s layer button; this line indicates the position of the moving layer.
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The image and the Layers palette should now look something like Figure 4.5.
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Figure 4.6 Moving the Yellow Planet layer “above” the Red Planet layer
After you move the Yellow Planet layer, notice that the yellow planet figure appears to be “in front of” the red planet figure, as shown in Figure 4.7. Figure 4.7 The example image after restacking the layers
NOTE You also can move layers by using the Layers menu on the Paint Shop Pro menu bar. Click the layer button of the layer you want to move. Then choose Layers > Arrange from the menu bar and choose one of the menu options, such as Bring to Top, Move Up, Move Down, or Send to Bottom.
The next step is to copy a layer. Right-click the Red Planet layer button, and on the context menu, choose Duplicate. A new layer will be created just above the Red Planet layer, and this new layer will have a layer button labeled “Copy of Red Planet.” Nothing in the image appears different yet, however, because the copied layer is simply overlaying the original Red Planet layer. To see a difference, choose the Mover tool and drag the topmost red circle away from the red circle on the original Red Planet layer. Then you’ll see something like the image in Figure 4.8.
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Figure 4.8 Copy of Red Planet layer with its red circle moved up and to the right
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NOTE You also can duplicate a layer by using the Layers menu on the Paint Shop Pro menu bar. Click the layer button of the layer that you want to duplicate and then choose Layers > Duplicate. Another alternative is to click the Duplicate Layer icon on the Layers palette toolbar.
You’re now going to edit the circle on the Copy of Red Planet layer, changing the red circle to blue with Paint Shop Pro’s Colorize operation. First, be sure that Copy of Red Planet is the current layer, clicking its layer button if you need to. Then choose Adjust > Hue and Saturation > Colorize from the menu bar, and set Hue to 175 and Saturation to 255. After you click OK, you’ll see something like the image in Figure 4.9. Figure 4.9 Colorize applied to the Copy of Red Planet layer
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As you see, Colorize affected only the current layer. This covers the basic Layer operations. The next two sections explore a few somewhat more advanced Layer features and operations.
Layer Visibility and Protect Transparency Two controls on the Layers palette that you haven’t looked at closely yet are the Layer Visibility and Lock Transparency toggles. Each layer has an associated Layer Visibility toggle, which you use to hide a layer temporarily. One reason to hide a layer is simply to get extraneous material out of your way while you’re working on one or more layers of your image. Return to the example image as it was left in Figure 4.9. Suppose that you want to edit the Yellow Planet layer without looking at any of the other elements of your image. You can do so by hiding all the other layers, as in Figure 4.10. Figure 4.10 Layer palette with all but the Yellow Planet layer hidden
You may want to add some shading to the planet, perhaps by using the Airbrush tool to spray a darker yellow color lightly along the bottom-right edge of the planet. You probably want to add color to the planet, but you don’t want to add any paint to the transparent area surrounding the planet. You could accomplish this by using the Magic Wand (discussed in the next chapter) to select the planet. However, there’s an easier way to restrict your painting to the nontransparent areas of a layer: simply turn on the Lock Transparency toggle. With Lock Transparency toggled on, only pixels that are already nontransparent will accept paint. With Lock Transparency toggled off, any area of the layer will accept paint. Figures 4.11 and 4.12 illustrate the difference. Figure 4.11 Painting with Lock Transparency toggled off
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Figure 4.12 Painting with Lock Transparency toggled on
CHAPTER 4 In the example image, the version made with Lock Transparency on was used. If you’re working on this example, you should use this version, too. You should then make all the layers visible again by clicking their Layer Visibility toggles on.
NOTE You can easily hide all layers except the current one by using the Layers menu on the Paint Shop Pro menu bar. Choose Layers > View > Current Only. To make all the layers visible again, choose Layers > View > All.
Linked Layers Layer links are used to keep elements on separate layers together so that when you move an element on one of the layers with the Mover tool, all the elements on the other layers in the link set move along, too. In the example image, you might want to keep the three planets together in the same relative alignment. To do this, add each of the planet layers to a single layer group. Linking a layer to another layer (or set of layers) is easy—just click the layer’s Layer Link toggle. The Layer Link toggle of a layer that is not a linked to any other layer has None as its label. If no layers are linked yet, clicking a layer’s Layer Link toggle changes its label to 1. Click that same toggle after that to increment the link number and remove the layer from the linked layers labeled 1. Each click further increments the number until the label returns to None. The number of times the link number is incremented until returning to None depends on how many layers are present in the image. (You also can decrement the layer group number by right-clicking the Layer Link toggle.)
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To link each of the planet layers, click once on each planet layer’s Layer Link toggle so that a 1 shows on each toggle, as in Figure 4.13. Figure 4.13 The Planet layers all have link number 1, so they are all linked
Now select the Mover tool and drag one of the planets around the image canvas. All three of the planets move together, maintaining their original positions relative to one another (see Figure 4.14). Figure 4.14 Linked layers move together
You can have more than one set of linked layers. To add a set of linked layers, select the first layer that you want in the linked set of layers and click its Layer Link toggle until the label is a number different from any other layer. (If you click too many times, the label returns to None, and the layer is removed from any set of linked layers.) Then for the next layer that you want in the new linking, click its Layer Link toggle until the number matches that of the layer that you want to link it to. In our example, suppose that you decide that the red and blue planets should be linked and the yellow planet should be linked with the Cat layer. To accomplish this, click the Layer Link toggles for the red and blue planets so that both are labeled 1. Then click the Layer Link toggle of the Cat layer until it is labeled 2. Finally, click the toggle for the Yellow Planet layer until its toggle is also labeled 2. Figure 4.15 shows these two sets of linked layers and the effect of dragging the red planet figure after these linkings.
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Figure 4.15 You can have multiple sets of linked layers
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NOTE You can directly set the Layer Link designation for a layer by using the Layer Properties dialog box. Bring up the dialog box for a layer by double-clicking the layer’s layer button, or for the current layer, by choosing Layers > Properties on the Paint Shop Pro menu bar, or by right-clicking the layer’s layer button and choosing Properties on the context menu. On the General tab of the dialog box, set a value in the text box labeled Link Set.
Linked layers are most useful when you have a complex figure with various components on separate layers—maybe a car or a bird in a cage. By keeping the layers of such a figure in their own set of linked layers, you can ensure that the components will not become misaligned if you move any part of the figure.
Layer Groups Besides linking, multiple layers can be related by grouping. You can group layers that are adjacent to each other in the layer stack to restrict certain operations, such as masking and color adjustments, to those specific layers. As you’ll see later in this chapter, layer groups are particularly important when using mask layers and adjustment layers. Figure 4.16 The Layers palette for an image that includes a layer group
Notice that associated with the layer group header is a Visibility toggle, Opacity slider, and Blend Mode drop-down list. These controls can be used to affect all of the layers in the layer group.
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Opacity and Blend Modes You can dynamically adjust the opacity of a layer or the way a layer’s pixels are blended with pixels on lower layers by using the layer’s Opacity control and Blend Mode selector. If you save your layered image in a format that preserves layering, such as PSP or PSD, such settings are retrieved when you open the image and then are available for further adjustment. Opacity determines how much the pixels on one layer cover pixels on lower layers. The opacity for a layer can be set on the layer’s Opacity slider, anywhere from 0 (fully transparent) to 100 (fully opaque). Any layer with an opacity setting of less than 100 allows pixels from lower layers to show through to some extent. Figures 4.17 and 4.18 show a layer with some gold text above a solid-colored layer. In Figure 4.17, the opacity of the text layer is set to 100, and in Figure 4.18, the opacity is set to 60. Figure 4.17 Text layer with opacity set at 100
Figure 4.18 Text layer with opacity set at 60
Blend Mode determines how the pixels of a layer are blended with those on lower layers. With Normal Blend Mode, pixels on the layer simply cover the pixels on lower layers. With the other blend modes, the pixels of the layer are combined with the lower pixels in various ways. For example, with Blend Mode set to Lighten, only the pixels that are lighter than the pixels on lower layers show up, whereas with Blend Mode set to Darken, only the pixels that are darker than the pixels on lower layers show up. You set the Blend Mode for a layer with the layer’s Blend Mode drop-down list, located just to the right of the layer’s Opacity slider.
TIP You also can use blend modes with the Fill tool: On the Fill tool’s Tool Options palette, set Blend Mode to any of the blend modes that are available with layers. This option is particularly useful with the Fill tool’s Match Mode set to None. Refer to Chapter 2, “The Painting Tools,” for more information about the Fill tool.
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Figure 4.19 shows some of the results that you can create with blend modes, and Table 4.1 summarizes the effects produced by using the different blend modes.
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Figure 4.19 Blend Mode examples: top, left to right: Normal, Multiply, Screen, Dissolve; bottom, left to right: Hard Light, Overlay, Burn, Difference
Table 4.1 The Effects of Using Different Blend Modes Blend Mode
Effect
Normal
Pixels cover pixels on lower layers; affected only by the Opacity setting.
Lighten
Only a pixel that is lighter than those on lower layers shows up.
Darken
Only a pixel that is darker than those on lower layers shows up.
Hue
Only a pixel’s hue is applied to the layer.
Hue (Legacy)
Version of Hue that matches the behavior of Paint Shop Pro 7.
Saturation
Only a pixel’s saturation level is applied to the layer.
Saturation (Legacy)
Version of Saturation that matches the behavior of Paint Shop Pro 7.
Color
Only a pixel’s color (hue and saturation, without luminance) is applied to the layer.
Color (Legacy)
Version of Color that matches the behavior of Paint Shop Pro 7.
Luminance
Only a pixel’s luminance level is applied to the layer.
Luminance (Legacy)
Version of Luminance that matches the behavior of Paint Shop Pro 7.
Multiply
The value of a pixel and the value of lower pixels are multiplied and adjusted so that no value exceeds 255. The overall result is darker than the separate layers.
Screen
The inverse of Multiply. The overall result is lighter than the separate layers. (continued on next page)
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Table 4.1 The Effects of Using Different Blend Modes (continued) Blend Mode
Effect
Dissolve
At random intervals, pixels from lower layers are displayed. The degree of the dissolve effect increases as the layer’s opacity decreases.
Overlay
Acts like Multiply for pixels with values less than 128, and acts like Screen for all other pixels. Good for “painting” a pattern over a textured layer.
Hard Light
Similar to Overlay. Good for adding highlights and/or shadows.
Soft Light
Acts like Burn for pixels with values less than 128, and acts like Dodge for all other pixels.
Difference
Subtracts the values of the layer’s pixels from the values of lower pixels, or vice versa, depending on which pixel value is lower. This modifies the hues of the image.
Dodge
Lightness values lighten underlying pixels. The lighter the areas, the more the resulting lightening. Good for photo correction.
Burn
Lightness values darken underlying pixels. The lighter the areas, the more the resulting darkening. Good for photo correction.
Exclusion
A “softer” version of Difference.
Merging Layers The three basic layer-merge operations are Merge Down, Merge All (flatten), and Merge Visible. You can access these operations either by choosing Layers > Merge or by right-clicking a layer’s layer button in the Layers palette and choosing Merge in the context menu. Merge Down merges the currently active layer with the layer just below it in the layer stack, creating a single layer from the two. Merge All (flatten) merges all the layers in an image and makes the image nonlayered or “flat.” Any areas in the image that had been transparent are filled with white.
CAUTION For most file formats, saving automatically flattens layers. When you open such a file again, you’ll find that the layers are gone and cannot be retrieved. If you want to save your file with the layers intact, use a file format that preserves layering: PSP (Paint Shop Pro native format) or PSD (Photoshop format).
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Merge Visible merges only those layers that are visible, so it can be used to merge one or more layers while leaving other layers untouched. Merge Visible can be used when all layers or only some layers are visible.
Figure 4.20 A three-layered image with no Background layer
Figure 4.21 Merge Visible applied to all layers
Figure 4.22 Merge All (flatten) applied
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Figure 4.20 shows an image with three layers. Compare Figure 4.21, in which Merge Visible has been applied with all the layers visible, with Figure 4.22, in which Merge All (flatten) has been applied.
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NOTE If you choose Merge Visible when the current active layer is a member of a layer group, the visible layers in that layer group are the only layers that are merged. If you have one or more layer groups and want to merge all the visible layers in the image, first select a layer outside any layer group (or a layer group header if there are no layers outside any layer group). Then with this layer (or layer group header) as the active layer, choose Merge Visible.
Some of Paint Shop Pro’s operations can behave as if layers were merged even when they’re not. For example, choosing Edit > Copy Merged will copy all visible layers as if they were a single, nonlayered image. The Selection tool in some of its modes, the Magic Wand, the Clone Brush, several of the retouching tools, and the Fill tool can each be used on a layered image as if the image were nonlayered: just check Sample Merged in the tool’s Tool Options palette before using the tool. When using Sample Merged, keep in mind that although data is sampled as if the layers were merged, no actual changes to data are made to any layer except the active layer. Suppose that you choose the Magic Wand to make a selection in an image that contains the two layers shown in Figures 4.23a and 4.23b. Figure 4.23a Circle layer visible
Figure 4.23b Square layer visible
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If the Square layer is active and Sample Merged is checked in the Magic Wand’s Tool Options palette, clicking the square results in the selection shown in Figure 4.24. Clicking the square when Sample Merged is unchecked, however, results in the selection shown in Figure 4.25.
Figure 4.25 Selection when Sample Merged is not checked—only pixels in the square are selected
Blend Ranges Blend ranges are a rather advanced—and often overlooked—feature. You use Blend Ranges to determine which pixels show up on a layer and which ones don’t based either on the brightness of the pixels themselves or on the brightness of pixels below the current layer. You access Blend Ranges by calling up the Layer Properties dialog box for a layer, either by choosing Layers > Properties, or by right-clicking on the layer’s layer button and choosing Properties from the context menu, or by double-clicking the layer’s layer button. The Blend Range tab of the Layer Properties dialog box is shown in Figure 4.26.
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Figure 4.24 Selection with Magic Wand set to Sample Merged—pixels in both the circle and the square are selected
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Figure 4.26 Blend Range tab of the Layer Properties dialog box
There are three Blend Ranges controls. First, in the drop-down list labeled Blend channel, you can select whether to restrict the blend range to the Grey Channel (luminance) or to any of the three color channels (Red, Green, or Blue). The other two controls each have two pairs of arrows, one at the top of the box and one at the bottom of the box. The box labeled This layer: can be used to restrict the blending based on the brightness values of the pixels on the current layer. The box labeled Underlying layer: can be used to restrict the blending based on the brightness values of the pixels below the current layer. In both controls, the top arrows are used to set the range for pixels that are to be treated as 100 percent opaque. The bottom arrows are used to set the points at which Opacity is set to 0 percent. Dark pixels are represented at the left end of the range, and light pixels at the right end, with intermediate values in between. For now, don’t be concerned if the purpose of Blend Ranges is unclear. You’ll use Blend Ranges in one of the example projects at the end of this chapter, and once you put these controls to good use, you’ll have a clearer picture of Blend Ranges. You’ve now covered nearly all of the layer operations and controls except for the Mask Overlay toggle, which you’ll take a look at in the next section. Layers are powerful tools for creating complex images with minimal effort. To get an even better idea of the power of layers, take a look at any of the layered sample images included with Paint Shop Pro. Toggle the individual layers of the image on and off in order to see how the image is constructed. And be sure to experiment with layers in your own graphics projects!
Using a Mask When the goal is to place a figure on a new background, add a decorative edge to an image, or gradually fade one layer into another, masks are ideal. People new to image editing sometimes shy away from masks, thinking that they are too complicated for mere mortals to deal with. Actually, masks are quite simple to understand and use.
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What Is a Mask?
A mask is a greyscale bitmap. In a color image, when you make a mask layer the active layer, the Available Colors panel on the Materials palette changes to show 256 shades of grey (including black and white). Black areas on the mask layer completely mask out paint on lower layers. In contrast, white areas on the mask allow all the paint on lower layers to show, and grey areas on the mask let the paint on lower layers show at reduced opacity. The darker the grey, the lower the opacity of the paint on the lower layers. A mask seems to both keep new paint off a layer and strip existing paint from the layer. To see what this means, consider an image made up of a single layer, such as the one shown in Figure 4.27. Figure 4.27 A single-layered image
NOTE Masks work only on true layers, so when you add a mask to a Background layer, Paint Shop Pro will warn you that the Background is about to be automatically promoted to a layer.
Now suppose that on the layer shown in Figure 4.27 you load a mask from one of the sample mask files included with Paint Shop Pro, RECTANGLE.PspMask (see Figure 4.28). RECTANGLE.PspMask can be found in Paint Shop Pro’s Masks folder. (You’ll see how to load a mask from disk later in this chapter.) The result of adding this mask to the image in Figure 4.27 is shown in Figure 4.29.
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Think of a mask as a special layer that lets you paint with invisible paint—that is, paint that makes pixels on the layers below the mask layer appear to be invisible. A mask is even more versatile than that, since a mask can not only completely mask out areas of layers, but also partially mask out some areas, letting the paint of lower layers show through, but at a lower opacity.
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Figure 4.28 RECTANGLE.PspMask sample mask from Paint Shop Pro
Figure 4.29 The masked layer
The mask is added as a new layer above the previously active layer, and those two layers are automatically put together in a layer group. As you see in Figure 4.29, the area covered by the dark part of the mask layer creates transparency on the data layer. Now return to the unmasked image of Figure 4.27. Suppose that a new empty layer is added above the painted layer and then a mask layer is added above the empty layer. The mask layer and the empty layer are automatically added to a new layer group, with the bottommost layer (the original image) outside the group. If you then Flood Fill the empty layer below the mask layer with bright yellow paint, the result looks something like Figure 4.30.
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Figure 4.30 The flooded masked layer
CHAPTER 4 The white area of the mask allows that part of the layer to take on the yellow paint, whereas the black part of the mask seems to block the paint. This probably isn’t the effect that you normally want from an edge mask, though. Instead, you probably want the solid paint to show around the edge and the central part of the masked layer to be transparent (to let the content of the lower layer show through). You can easily create this effect by inverting the mask. Just make the mask layer the active layer by clicking its layer button and choose Layers > Invert Mask/Adjustment (or press Shift+K). The result is shown in Figure 4.31. Figure 4.31 The same image with the mask inverted
NOTE A mask seems to strip paint away or keep new paint from being applied, but masking is actually a bit different from masking tape or acid. The whole layer really is affected, but you don’t see the effect in the masked areas. So for the image in Figures 4.30 and 4.31, the whole solid-colored layer is filled with color, but the parts of the colored layer that actually show up depend on what parts of the layer are currently masked and unmasked.
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Creating and Editing Masks You can create masks in a variety of ways. One method that you can use to produce quite interesting results is to create a mask from an image. To do so, open both the image that will serve as the basis of the mask and the image that you want to apply the mask to. Then choose Layers > New Mask Layer> From Image to open the Add Mask From Image dialog box, shown in Figure 4.32. Figure 4.32 The Add Mask From Image dialog box
In the Source window drop-down list, select the image that you want to use as the basis of your mask. In the Create mask from section of the dialog box, you have three choices: Source luminance. Creates a mask based on the luminance levels in the source image. Dark colors in the source produce transparency on the masked layer—the darker the color in the source, the less opaque the pixels on the masked layer become. Any non-zero value. Black areas in the source image create complete transparency on the masked layer, leaving all other areas fully opaque. Source opacity. Transparent areas in the source produce transparency on the masked layer, opaque areas maintain the opacity of the masked layer, and semitransparent areas produce partial masking. The last control in the Add Mask From Image dialog box is the Invert mask data check box. When this box is checked, the mask is inverted. For example, when you’ve selected Source luminance and have checked the Invert mask check box, lighter colors in the source produce more transparency than darker colors do. Figure 4.33 shows a simple image that has been added as a mask to the topmost layer of a twolayered image, converting some of the areas of the top gradient layer to transparency, thereby allowing the solid color of the lower layer to show through. (The masked image is shown to the right of the image that was used as the basis for the mask.)
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Figure 4.33 Example of a mask created from an image
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In this example, Source luminance is selected and Invert mask data is not checked. You also can create a mask by hand. To do so, choose either Layers > New Mask Layer > Hide All (to start with a mask that completely masks out the paint on the active layer) or Layers > New Mask Layer > Show All (to start with a mask that lets all the paint on the active layer show through).
TIP You can also click the Show All icon on the Layers palette to create a new mask layer above the active layer. You won’t see any difference on the image until you edit the mask. If you look on the Layers palette, though, you’ll see the new mask layer grouped together with the previously active layer.
To edit the mask rather than the image itself, make sure that the mask layer is the active layer and then edit away. When you’re editing a mask, it’s sometimes helpful to show a representation of the mask. If you click the mask layer’s Mask Overlay toggle on the Layers palette, the mask displays as a reddish, semitransparent gel covering the active layer. Those parts of the mask that completely mask out the layer’s paint appear dark red, whereas those areas that let the paint show through don’t show any red at all. Partially masked areas appear as various shades of red, with the degree of semitransparency over the underlying image varying with the level of masking. Figure 4.34 shows an example of a mask being edited, with Mask Overlay on.
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Figure 4.34 Editing a mask with Mask Overlay on
You use black, white, and shades of grey to paint on a mask. Black creates total masking, whereas white allows all of the paint on the layer below the mask to show through. Greys allow various levels of masking—the darker the grey, the higher the degree of masking. You can use just about any of Paint Shop Pro’s tools and operations to edit a mask, including the painting tools, the selection tools, most effects, and the color adjustments that affect brightness and contrast. That just about covers the basics of mask editing. Before leaving this section, though, be sure to try out the Group Link toggle for the header of the group that groups together a mask layer and the layer that is masked. A group header’s Group Link toggle appears at the extreme right on the Layers palette. With the Group Link toggled on, if you use the Mover tool to move the mask layer, the layer that is masked moves along (and vice versa). Toggle the Group Link toggle off, and the mask layer and the layer that is masked move independently of each other. (That is, of course, unless these two layers are in the same link set.) Toggling the Group Link toggle on has the same effect as assigning the layers in the group to the same link set.
Deleting Masks Masks are saved along with an image (as long as the file format used supports alpha channels, as does the PSP format). However, you can also either permanently remove a mask or permanently merge a layer’s mask with the layer itself. In either case, you first choose to delete the mask layer, using any of the normal methods for deleting a layer. You’re then presented with a prompt that asks whether you want to merge the mask layer into the layer below it. If you just want to get rid of the mask, choose No. If you want to permanently merge the mask with the layer below it, choose Yes. There are several reasons why you might choose to merge a mask with the layer it affects. One is that masks take up space in your image, in terms of both file size and the amount of resources required during editing sessions. So, for example, if you’re low on disk space, you should merge masks where you can rather than save them with your images. Another reason for merging a
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mask is to remove paint permanently. A mask itself doesn’t really remove paint—it only makes it look like the paint is removed. If you want to remove paint entirely and permanently, merge your mask.
Early in this chapter, I mentioned that masks can be stored on disk, to be loaded when you want. To load a mask from disk, choose Layers > Load/Save Mask > Load Mask from Disk or click the Load Mask from Disk icon on the Layers palette toolbar. Then in the Load Mask from Disk dialog box, choose the file name of the mask that you want and click Load. To save your own mask to disk, make sure the mask layer is the active layer by clicking its layer button on the Layers palette, and then choose Layers > Load/Save Mask > Save Mask to Disk or click the Save Mask to Disk icon on the Layers palette toolbar. Type a name for your mask file and click Save. The file will be saved with an extension of PspMask in your Masks folder (the one specified as the save-in folder on the Masks tab of General Preferences). You also can save a mask to an alpha channel so that the mask is stored with the image even if the mask is not currently used in the image. To save a mask to an alpha channel, choose Layers > Load/Save Mask > Save Mask To Alpha Channel or click the Save Mask to Alpha Channel icon on the Layers palette toolbar. Then in the Save To Alpha dialog box, you’ll see a black-andwhite representation of the mask in the preview window. Enter a name for your alpha channel, then click Save. The mask can then be loaded later on. To load a mask from an alpha channel, choose Layers > Load/Save Mask > Load Mask From Alpha Channel or click the Load Mask from Alpha Channel icon on the Layers palette toolbar. In the Load From Alpha dialog box, choose the name of the image containing the alpha channel and the alpha channel itself. Then click Load.
NOTE To delete an alpha channel from an image, choose Image > Delete Alpha Channel.
Examples Now let’s look at some examples of effects you can produce using layers and masks.
Creating an Artistic Edge There are quite a few nice edge masks included with Paint Shop Pro, but you can also make your own edge mask by hand.
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1.
Begin by opening the image to which you wish to add an artistic edge. Then create a new layer above the original image layer by clicking the New Raster Layer icon on the Layers palette. You’ll have something like what you see in Figure 4.35.
Figure 4.35 Preparing to add an artistic edge to a photo
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Fill the new layer with the color that you want for your edge. A dull green is used in the example here. Choose the Flood Fill tool, and set the Foreground style to Solid Color. Choose the Foreground color that you want by clicking in the Available Colors panel or by clicking the Foreground box and choosing a color in the Color Picker on the Color tab of the Materials dialog box. Fill the new layer with the color by clicking on the image canvas, first being sure that the new layer is the active layer.
3.
Now you’ll add a mask to the solid-colored layer. With that layer the active layer, choose Layers > New Mask Layer > Show All. As Figure 4.36 shows, you won’t see any change on the solid-colored layer since Show All leaves all of the layer unmasked.
Figure 4.36 After Layers > New Mask Layer > Show All, you’ll still see the entire solid-colored layer
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Next, begin editing the mask. Make the mask layer the active layer by clicking its layer button on the Layers palette.
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Let’s make a simple edge mask by using the Selection tool. On the Tool Options palette, set Selection type to Ellipse and set the Feather rather high (20 is used here). Define the selection by dragging from the center of the image out. Next, set the Foreground Solid Color on the Materials palette to black, then use the Flood Fill tool to fill the selection with black. Adding black to the mask makes that part of the layer below the mask completely transparent, thus letting the paint on the layer that’s even further down show through. The result will look something like what you see in Figure 4.37.
Figure 4.37 Edit the mask by defining a selection on the mask and filling with black
NOTE Remember that all the painting and selection tools can be used to edit a mask. You could, for example, use the Paint Brush to define the masked area by hand. In this case, after you set the Foreground style to Solid Color and set the color to black, you’d paint on the mask layer until you have the effect you want. If you make a mistake, press Ctrl+Z to undo the mistake or just paint over your mistake with the same brush, using white as the paint.
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Turn off the selection with Selections > Select None (or press Ctrl+D). At this point, you can continue to edit the mask, perhaps by adding a texture with Effects > Texture Effects > Texture. Figure 4.38 shows the result of adding a brick texture to the example image’s mask layer.
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Figure 4.38 The result of adding a texture to the mask
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When you’re finished editing your mask, you can save your image if you like, in which case you can edit the mask again in a later editing session. If you’re sure that the mask is exactly as you want it, you can permanently merge the mask to the layer before you save the image. To permanently merge the mask layer with the layer below, delete the mask layer. When asked whether you want to merge the mask into the layer below it, choose Yes. You’ll reduce the image’s file size by merging the mask with the layer, but you’ll no longer be able to edit the mask in a later session.
8.
Your image is now complete, with an attractive edge added.
Blending Layers with a Gradient Mask Using a mask, it’s easy to create the effect of gradually blending one layer into another. Suppose you have an image file that contains two layers, as shown in Figures 4.39a and 4.39b. Figure 4.39a The bottom layer of a two-layer file
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Figure 4.39b The top layer of a twolayer file
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Let’s blend the top layer into the bottom layer. 1.
Make the top layer the active layer by clicking its layer button on the Layers palette.
2.
Add a mask by clicking on the Show All mask icon on the Layers palette. The image doesn’t appear to change, since all sections of the new mask are completely unmasked.
3.
Make the mask layer the active layer by clicking its layer button on the Layers palette.
4.
With the Selection tool, make a rectangular selection that begins around the center of the left edge and extends to the bottom right corner, as shown in Figure 4.40.
Figure 4.40 A selection made on the mask layer
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Choose the Flood Fill tool. On the Materials palette, click the Foreground box on the Materials palette to call up the Material dialog box, then choose the Gradient tab.
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Click the arrow in the selection list of the Gradient Picker to show the pick list of gradients. Choose the Black-White Gradient. Before clicking OK to exit the Gradient Picker, be sure that the gradient’s Style is set to linear (the leftmost Style icon), the Angle is set to 120, and Invert is selected. See Figure 4.41.
Figure 4.41 Setting up the gradient in the Gradient Picker
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Fill the selection with the gradient by clicking inside the selection, then turn the selection off with Ctrl+D. The result will look something like what you see in Figure 4.42.
Figure 4.42 The image after a BlackWhite gradient is added to the mask
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Paint on the mask layer to adjust the opacity of the layer below the mask. Remember that black paint applied on the mask layer makes the masked layer appear transparent, while white paint leaves that part of the masked layer unmasked. The final result will look something like what appears in Figure 4.43.
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Figure 4.43 The final result
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9.
You’re now ready to save the image. If you want to keep the file size down and you don’t think you’ll ever want to edit the mask again, you can first merge the mask with its layer. To merge the mask with the layer, delete the mask. When asked whether you want to merge the mask into the layer below it, choose Yes. (Alternatively, you can merge the two layers together with Layers > Merge > Merge Down; Layers > Merge > Merge Group; or Layers > Merge > Merge All (flatten).)
A Painterly Effect using Blend Ranges Do you have some photos that are severely overexposed, underexposed, or are marred by unintended motion blur? You might think that you have little choice but to consign these photos to the Recycle Bin. Before you take that step, though, you might want to try turning those seemingly hopeless photos into digital art. In this example, we’ll take a photo that has unintended motion blur (caused by the photographer’s unsteady hand) and turn it into something resembling a watercolor illustration. The original photo is shown in Figure 4.44. Figure 4.44 A hopelessly marred photo?
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Begin by making a copy of the photo, since you might want to use the original sometime in the future for another project. Choose Window > Duplicate or press Shift+D. Then close the original image and edit the duplicate like this: 1. Duplicate the Background layer: Either choose Layers > Duplicate or right-click the Background’s layer button on the Layers palette and choose Duplicate in the context menu. 2.
With the duplicated layer as the active layer, choose Adjust > Add/Remove Noise > Edge Preserving Smooth. Set the Amount of smoothing to an extreme value (30 is used in this example). If you’re working on a very large image, like the one in this example, you might need to apply Edge Preserving Smooth once or twice more. The effect you want is something like what’s shown in Figure 4.45.
Figure 4.45 Extreme values for Edge Preserving Smooth produce a painterly effect
3.
Make the original layer, at the bottom of the layer stack, into the active layer. Then choose the Flood Fill tool and set the Foreground material on the Materials palette to solid white. On the Tool Options palette, set Match Mode to None. Then click anywhere in the image. You won’t see a change yet, since the upper layer is hiding the lower layer, but what you’ve done is replace all of the pixels on the lower layer with white.
4.
We’re now going to add to the painterly effect by making light areas of the upper layer transparent, letting the white on the lower layer show through. Doubleclick the upper layer’s layer button to bring up its Layer Properties dialog box. Go to the Blend Ranges tab. Be sure the Blend channel is set to Grey Channel, then adjust the arrows on the right side of the This layer: control, as shown in Figure 4.46. Adjust the arrows until the preview window shows the effect that you want, then click OK.
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Figure 4.46 Hiding light pixels with Blend Ranges
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5.
At this point, you might be satisfied with the result. If so, save the image in PSP format for archive purposes. That way, the layers are preserved and you can edit the image later on if you like. You can also make a Web-readable copy with one of the optimizers available under File > Export. (Remember that with any of the Web-readable formats, all layers are permanently merged.)
Something else you might try is adding a duplicate layer above the current top layer, editing that layer, and using Blend Modes to create other interesting effects. For example, Figure 4.47 shows an example where another layer has been modified with Clarify (Adjust > Brightness and Contrast > Clarify) and a bit of Motion Blur (Effects > Blur > Motion Blur), with the Blend Mode set to Soft Light and the Opacity reduced to 50. Figure 4.47 Modifying the result by blending with a duplicate layer
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You can further modify the image as it suits you, perhaps touching it up with the Clone Brush or one of the retouching brushes. Maybe add a paper texture with Effects > Texture Effects > Texture. Or just print the image as is on special inkjet paper that resembles watercolor paper. These examples are just the beginning of what you can do with layers and masks. We’ll look at yet another example at the end of Chapter 5. You’re sure to find many other uses as well.
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Chapter 5 Sometimes you want to apply a special effect to only part of an image, and sometimes you want to grab a piece of one image and place it in another image. In these cases, Paint Shop Pro’s selection tools are what you need to isolate the parts that you want. Here’s what you’ll be examining in this chapter: Making and modifying selections Using Selection menu operations to adjust selections Converting selections to masks (and masks to selections)
Making Selections You can restrict image editing to a part of your image by making a selection. For example, you might add a drop shadow to selected text with Effects > 3D Effects > Drop Shadow. You might lighten only a selected area of a photo with Adjust > Brightness and Contrast > Brightness/Contrast. Or you might copy a selected part of an image and paste it into another image with one of the options under Edit > Paste. Some selection functions are performed with the Selections menu, which is shown in Figure 5.1. You can also make a selection from a mask. You will probably make most selections, however, by using one of the selection tools. Figure 5.1 The Selections menu
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The following are the three tools that you’ll find in the Selection family of tools: Selection tool. Use this tool to define a regularly shaped selection by dragging the cursor. Freehand tool. Use this tool to define an irregularly shaped selection by dragging the cursor. This tool is great for isolating a figure in an image. Magic Wand. Use this tool to define a selection based on color, hue, brightness, or opacity. Excellent for selecting a solid-colored area, such as a background in a drawing. The edges of a selection are marked with a marquee, a flashing line of dashes popularly referred to as “marching ants.” Notice the selection marquee in Figure 5.2, which shows a circular selection on a solid-colored image canvas. Figure 5.2 A selection marquee (a.k.a. “marching ants”)
The edge of a selection can be sharp or soft. To soften the edges of a selection, you can feather the selection. Feathering fades the color of the pixels within the selection, blending the selection with the background. To set the feather, either use the Tool Options palette of a selection tool before making the selection, or use Feather or Feather Inside/Outside (available under Selections > Modify) after making the selection. Figure 5.3 shows an example of a nonfeathered selection cut from one image and pasted onto a solid background compared with an analogous feathered selection. The zoom factor here is set to 200 percent so that you can see the difference better. Notice how the edges of the feathered version are softer than the edges of the nonfeathered version.
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Figure 5.3 A nonfeathered selection (left) and a feathered selection (right), pasted onto a solid background
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NOTE Another way to soften the edges of a selection is to check Antialias in the Tool Options palette of a selection tool. Antialiasing is somewhat similar to a onepixel feather, adding a row of pixels that blend the color of the selected data with the background color surrounding the selection.
You can move selections by clicking inside them and dragging them either with a selection tool (if the tool is in Replace mode) or with the Mover tool. Whether the content of the image is deleted from the original position of the selection depends on whether the selection is a standard selection or a floating selection. Standard selection. A standard selection is like a cookie cutter pressed into your image; move a standard selection, and a “hole” is left behind. This hole is filled with the current Background color on a Background layer or with transparency on a true layer. Floating selection. As its name suggests, a floating selection “floats” above your image. Move a floating selection, and although the selection’s contents move, the pixels below the selection remain unaffected. Figures 5.4 and 5.5 illustrate the difference between standard and floating selections. Figure 5.4 Moving a standard selection
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Figure 5.5 Moving a floating selection
Figure 5.4 shows a standard selection that has been moved up and to the right. Notice how the pixels of the original image have been moved and the area from which the selection was moved is filled with the current Background color. Figure 5.5 shows a floating selection; this selection has also been moved up and to the right. Here, the contents of the floating selection have moved, but the pixels of the original image are unaffected.
NOTE After you move a standard selection, it automatically becomes a floating selection.
NOTE When you have a layer that includes transparency, and you make a selection around a figure on that layer, the selection marquee snaps to the edges of the figure if you move the selection.
CAUTION If you have a selection tool active and you try to drag a standard selection that contains only transparency, you’ll receive the error message, “This operation could not be completed because the current layer does not contain any active data within the current selection area.” To reposition only the marquee of such a selection, choose the Mover tool, right-click inside the selection area, and drag with the right mouse button depressed. With this method, whether the selected area contains data or not, you move only the marquee of the standard selection.
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To turn off a selection, right-click with a selection tool anywhere on the image canvas, press Ctrl+D, or choose Selections > Select None. What you’ve seen so far applies to all selections. Now it’s time to explore each of the selection tools and take a closer look at the Selections menu.
The easiest selection tool to use is, in fact, called the Selection tool (see Figure 5.6). You use this tool to define a selection that has any one of a fixed set of shapes: Rectangle, Square, Rounded Rectangle, Rounded Square, Ellipse, Circle, Triangle, Pentagon, Hexagon, Octagon, two kinds of stars, and three kinds of arrows. You define one of these regularly shaped selections by dragging with the Selection tool. With most of the selection shapes, the selection is defined from one corner to the diagonally opposite corner. The exceptions are Ellipse and Circle, where the selection is defined from the center outward. Figure 5.6 Defining a selection with the Selection tool
You use the Selection tool’s Tool Options palette to set the Selection Type (that is, the shape of the selection), the Mode (whether the selection is to replace any current selection, be added to it, or be subtracted from it), the Feather (anywhere from 0 for no feathering up to 200 for maximum feathering), and whether to Antialias the selection.
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The Freehand Selection Tool You won’t always want a regularly shaped selection. To make irregularly shaped selections, use the Freehand Selection tool (also called the “lasso”). When the Freehand Selection tool is active, the following four Selection Types are available: Freehand. Enables you to drag the mouse to draw a freeform selection (see Figure 5.7). Point to Point. Enables you to click various points, usually around the edges of a figure, to define the edges of your selection (see Figure 5.8). This has the effect of “roping off” a figure or other area of your image. Smart Edge. Enables you to click along the edge of a figure, with Paint Shop Pro defining the selection edge based on differences in contrast (see Figure 5.9). This is good for isolating a figure on a background. Edge Seeker. This one might make you think of a cross between Point-to-point and Smart Edge (see Figure 5.10). It is also good for isolating a figure on a background. Figure 5.7 Defining a selection with the Freehand Selection Type
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Figure 5.8 Defining a selection with the Point to Point Selection Type
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Figure 5.9 Defining a selection with the Smart Edge Selection Type
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Figure 5.10 Defining a selection with the Edge Seeker Selection Type
NOTE To undo the last selection point that you set with either Point to Point, Smart Edge, or Edge Seeker, just press the Delete key. You can keep pressing the Delete key to remove previous selection points as well, if you like. That way, you don’t have to start all over from the beginning if you make a mistake while defining your selection.
Each of these tools has controls similar to those of the Selection tool: Mode, Feather, Antialias. In addition, there’s a control for Smoothing (from 0 for no smoothing to 40 for maximum smoothing). This does exactly what its name suggests, smoothing the edges of the selection to whatever degree you set. For the Smart Edge and Edge Seeker selection types, there’s also a control labeled Sample Merged. This control is meaningful only for multilayered images. When this control is checked, the selection is made as if all visible layers in the image were merged into a single layer. When this control is not checked, the selection is made based only on the pixels on the currently active layer. With the Edge Seeker selection type, there is also a control for Range. The Range setting determines to what extent the selection edge forms a straight line between selection points or conforms to the edges of the figure around which you’re defining the selection. Small Range values yield selection boundaries that are more or less straight. Large Range values yield selection boundaries that conform more closely to the edges that the tool detects.
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The Magic Wand The Magic Wand can truly be magical. The Magic Wand enables you to make selections based on the color, hue, brightness, or opacity of a target pixel that you click on in your image. The pixels that are selected either match the target pixel exactly or fall within a tolerance range, depending on the settings you select.
Figure 5.11 Tool Options palette for the Magic Wand
Match Mode Match Mode determines what the Magic Wand uses as the basis for selection. The following lists the available Match Mode settings, along with a description of how each setting affects the Magic Wand’s selection criteria: RGB Value. The pixels selected match the Red-Green-Blue color value of the target pixel. This is the mode you undoubtedly will use most often. Color. The pixels selected match the hue and saturation, but not the lightness, of the target pixel. Hue. The pixels selected match the Hue value of the target pixel (where, for example, 0 is red, 85 is green, and 170 is blue). This enables you to make a selection without regard to the pixel’s saturation or brightness. Brightness. The pixels selected match the target pixel’s brightness. This might be useful, for example, if you want to select a dark figure on a light background. All Opaque. All contiguous nontransparent pixels are selected. Opacity. The pixels selected match the target pixel’s opacity. None. There are no constraints on matching. Everything on the layer within the boundaries of the image canvas is selected.
Tolerance Tolerance determines how closely pixels must match the target pixel. A Tolerance setting of 0 restricts the selection to pixels that match the target exactly. A Tolerance of 200, the maximum, makes your selection match all pixels in your image. Different intermediate Tolerance values match more or less closely to the target. Figures 5.12a–c show examples of the selections made with Match Mode set to RGB and Tolerance settings of 5, 25, and 40, respectively, each time clicking with the Magic Wand on the pixel near the center of the image.
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The Tool Options palette for the Magic Wand has six controls in addition to Mode: Match Mode, Tolerance, Sample Merged, Feather, Antialias, and Inside/Outside (see Figure 5.11).
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Figure 5.12a Tolerance set to 5
Figure 5.12b Tolerance set to 25
Figure 5.12c Tolerance set to 40
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Tolerance is available for all Match Modes except for None and All Opaque.
CAUTION
Feathering works just as it does with the other selection tools, and Sample Merged works just as it does with the Freehand tool. Feather settings greater than 0 soften the edges of the selection, blending them in with the background. Sample Merged treats all visible layers of a multilayered image as if the layers were merged together as a single layer, sampling the pixels on all the visible layers. In addition to being able to choose Antialias, you’re able to choose whether the antialiasing occurs on the Inside or the Outside of the selected area. You could, for example, select a solidcolored text character and choose to antialias the selection with the antialiasing produced either inside the character area or outside.
Copying and Pasting a Selection The Edit operations—which are available from the Edit menu, through keyboard shortcuts, or through a context menu that opens when you right-click your image’s title bar—include Cut, Copy, several Paste operations, and Clear. The basic Edit operations, Cut and Copy, are also available as the usual Windows icons on Paint Shop Pro’s Standard toolbar.
Cut and Copy Basically, there are two ways to copy pixels to the Windows Clipboard, thereby making those pixels available for insertion elsewhere. Pixels can be either cut from an image, which both deletes the pixels from the original image and places them on the Clipboard, or copied from the image to the Clipboard, leaving the pixels in the original image as they were. To cut all the pixels from a flat image or from a layer, choose Edit > Cut or press Ctrl+X (the usual Windows shortcut for Cut). Alternatively, you can click the standard Windows Cut icon on the Paint Shop Pro toolbar or right-click your image’s title bar and choose Cut in the resulting context menu. If you want to cut only some of the pixels from the image or layer, first select the area that you want to cut, and then use any of the methods just mentioned to remove the selection from the original and place those pixels on the Clipboard. You can copy pixels to the Clipboard just as easily, and in just as many ways. To copy all the pixels from a flat image or a layer, choose Edit > Copy or press Ctrl+C (the usual Windows shortcut for Copy). You also can click the standard Windows Copy icon on the Paint Shop Pro
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Keep in mind that Tolerance and Match Mode can influence each other. When Tolerance is set to 200, all pixels are matched regardless of the Match Mode setting.
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toolbar or right-click your image’s title bar and choose Copy from the resulting menu. As with Cut, you can copy portions of the image or layer by first making a selection and then applying Copy in any of the ways just mentioned. Cut and Copy will take only the pixels on a single layer. To copy the pixels from all visible layers in an image, choose Edit > Copy Merged, press Ctrl+Shift+C, or right-click your image’s title bar and choose Copy Merged on the context menu. There’s no equivalent way to perform a one-step cut on all visible layers, though. Probably the best approach for cutting a multilayered selection is to do a Copy Merged and then delete the selection on each individual layer by first making one layer active and pressing the Delete key, and then making the next layer active and pressing the Delete key, and so on. When you cut or copy from a selection, keep in mind that antialiasing or feathering of a selection will affect the copy. With antialiasing or feathering, the edges of the copied area will be softened, picking up or blending into the original image’s background color or transparency. Sometimes you can use this to your advantage when you later paste this material. But if you want a sharp edge on your copied material, be sure to uncheck Antialias and set Feather to 0 on the Tool Options palette before you make your selection.
Paste Six different Edit operations are available for pasting material from the Clipboard: Edit > Paste > Paste As New Image (Ctrl+V). Creates a new image from whatever material is currently on the Clipboard. The dimensions of the new image will be the minimal rectangle that can surround the pasted-in material, and the color depth will match that of the source of the pasted-in material. Any background areas not covered by the pasted-in material will be transparent if the color depth was 24-bit color or greyscale when Paint Shop Pro was loaded; otherwise, the background areas will be filled with the current background color set in the Materials palette.
TIP Here’s a convenient way to Paste > Paste As New Image: Right-click on an empty area of the Paint Shop Pro workspace or on an image’s title bar. Then in the context menu, choose Paste As New Image. The menu presented when you right-click on the title bar is more extensive than the one presented when you right-click on the workspace. On the title bar menu you can select any of the Cut, Copy, or Paste operations.
Edit > Paste > Paste As New Layer (Ctrl+L). Places the pasted-in material on a new layer in the currently active image canvas. (This option is inactive for images with color depths other than 24-bit color or greyscale.) Any areas on the new layer that are not filled with the pasted-in material will be transparent. If the material is larger than the image canvas, the outer edges of the material “fall off the edges”—the material is
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still there, but it’s outside the canvas area and thus can’t be seen. Regardless of whether the material fits completely in the image canvas, it can be repositioned on its layer with the Mover tool.
If the pasted-in selection is too large to fit inside the image canvas, it falls off the edges, just like a pasted-in layer. As long as the selection is kept floating, the material outside the image canvas is not destroyed, and repositioning the selection can reveal hidden areas of the selection. However, once the selection is defloated (by choosing Selections > Defloat or pressing Ctrl+Shift+F), the areas outside the image canvas are deleted, and the shape of the selection changes to include only the areas visible in the image canvas. Edit > Paste > Paste As Transparent Selection (Ctrl+Shift+E). Similar to choosing Paste > As New Selection, except that any pixels in the material on the Clipboard that match the current Background color (as set in the Color Palette) are eliminated from the pasted-in selection. Figure 5.13 shows an example of a pasted-in selection made by choosing Paste > Paste As New Selection; Figure 5.14 shows the same material pasted in by choosing Paste > Paste As Transparent Selection with white as the current Background color. Figure 5.13 Results of choosing Paste > Paste As New Selection
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Edit > Paste > Paste As New Selection (Ctrl+E). Pastes the material on the Clipboard into the currently active image as a floating selection above the image’s currently active layer. You can position the selection by dragging until you anchor it in place by clicking. The pasted-in selection can then be manipulated like any other floating selection. It can be defloated, repositioned by dragging with a selection tool or the Mover tool, modified by choosing Selections > Modify, and so on.
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Figure 5.14 Results of choosing Paste > Paste As Transparent Selection
Edit > Paste > Paste Into Selection (Ctrl+Shift+L). Great for filling a text selection or other irregularly shaped selection. The pasted-in material is adjusted to fit inside the selection: if the selection is too big, the material is stretched; if the selection is too small, the material is compressed. Figure 5.15 shows both an image that was copied to the Clipboard and a selection filled with that material by choosing Paste > Paste Into Selection. Figure 5.15 Selection filled with material by choosing Paste > Paste Into Selection
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NOTE
The method you should choose in any given instance depends on the effect you want to produce.
Figure 5.16 The text selection filled with the seamless tile, using the Fill tool
Edit > Paste > Paste As New Vector Selection (Ctrl+G). We’ll put off looking at this one until Chapter 6, “Vectors Solutions,” where you’ll examine vectors in depth.
Clear Choosing Edit > Clear (the keyboard shortcut is the Delete key) is an operation that you might find quite useful. On a flat image or Background layer, Clear replaces pixels with the current Background solid color set in the Materials palette. On a layer, Clear replaces pixels with transparency. If you want to replace all the pixels in a flat image or layer, make sure that either no selection is active or
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When you fill a selection with a pattern, remember that there’s an important difference between using Paste > Paste Into Selection and painting with a pattern. When you use Paste > Paste Into Selection, the copied pattern stretches or shrinks to fit the dimensions of the selected area. However, when you add a pattern with a painting tool, such as the Fill tool or Paint Brush, the pattern maintains its original dimensions and tiles repeatedly to fill the selection. Compare Figure 5.16 with Figure 5.15.
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Select All is in effect, and then invoke Clear. Figure 5.17 shows an example of a star-shaped selection on a solid white layer. All of the selection’s pixels were deleted with the Delete key, revealing the patterned layer underneath. Figure 5.17 Using Clear to eliminate pixels in a selection on a layer
Modifying a Selection The best complex selections don’t pop out with a single click of the Magic Wand or a quick run around the edges of a figure with the Freehand tool. A really good selection usually demands some tweaking, and Paint Shop Pro provides several means for refining your selections.
Adding to and Subtracting from a Selection When you make a complex selection, you normally start with a simple selection and then edit that selection by adding to it or subtracting from it. Paint Shop Pro provides an easy way to add to and subtract from a selection. With any of the selection tools, hold down the Shift key and click or drag to add to a selection. Unless you’ve set up Paint Shop Pro to use a precise cursor, a plus sign (+) will appear near the cursor to remind you that you’re adding to the selection. To subtract from a selection, hold down the Ctrl key and click or drag. A minus sign (–) will appear near the cursor to remind you that you’re subtracting from a selection. Suppose that you start with an image such as the one in Figure 5.18, and you want to select the two lower spheres but not the sphere in the upper–right corner.
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Figure 5.18 An image that contains figures you want to select
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To start, you can choose the Magic Wand, set it to a fairly high Tolerance setting, and then click one of the lower spheres. The result might look something like Figure 5.19. Figure 5.19 Beginning the selection
That didn’t quite do the trick. What you could do, then, is click the Undo button and try again at a higher Tolerance setting. Another approach is to add to the existing selection. To add to a selection, hold down Shift and click with the Magic Wand in one of the unselected areas that you want to be included in the selection. Continue in this way until you have the entire area that you want selected. Figure 5.20 shows an intermediate step in adding to the selection, and Figure 5.21 shows the complete selection.
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Figure 5.20 Adding to the selection
Figure 5.21 The complete selection
Another approach that you can take with the image in Figure 5.18 is to start by selecting the white background and then inverting the selection. Click anywhere on the solid-colored background, then choose Selections > Invert (or press Shift+Ctrl+I). This produces the selection in Figure 5.22. Figure 5.22 Select the figures by selecting the background and inverting the selection
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Now you want to eliminate the upper sphere from the selection. An easy way to do this is to choose the Freehand tool and set it to Freehand mode. Then hold down Ctrl and drag around the area that you want to remove from the selection. Figure 5.23 shows this step in progress, with the end result being virtually the same as you saw in Figure 5.21.
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Figure 5.23 Subtracting from the selection
TIP Instead of holding down the Ctrl key to subtract from a selection or the Shift key to add to a selection, you can modify how a selection tool works by changing Mode on the Tool Options palette. Set Mode to Replace for normal selection behavior. Set it to Add (Shift) to add to the current selection, and set it to Remove (Ctrl) to subtract from the current selection. The behavior of the mode you choose stays in effect until you change the mode again.
Some Selections Menu Options The Selections menu enables you to alter a selection, make a selection from a mask, “promote” a selection to a layer, save a selection to disk or to an alpha channel, and load a selection from disk or from an alpha channel. Many of the items on the Selections menu—such as Modify, From Mask, and Edit Selection— are examined later in this chapter. For now, let’s take a look at some of the more basic items on the Selections menu.
Select All and Select None The first two items on the Selections menu are Select All and Select None, which do exactly as their names suggest. Choosing Select All selects all pixels in an image (or in a multilayered image, all pixels on a layer). Choosing Select None turns off a selection and is equivalent to right-clicking your image with a selection tool.
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NOTE In most cases, using Selections > Select All is unnecessary. By default, most Paint Shop Pro operations—including, for example, Edit > Copy—affect the entire flat image or layer anyway. Select All is most useful when you don’t actually want the entire image or layer selected. To get the selection you want, you might, for example, follow Select All with Selections > Modify. You’ll see an example of this later in this chapter.
Invert Another item on the Selections menu is Invert. As you saw earlier, this is a very handy operation, especially when used in combination with the Magic Wand. When using the Magic Wand, you’ll often find that selecting what you don’t want selected is easier than selecting what you do want selected. If you select the areas of your image that you don’t want and then choose Selections > Invert, the selection is “inverted” and the resulting selection is the part of the image that you did want selected.
Hide Marquee Also on the Selections menu is Hide Marquee, which can be quite useful. With Hide Marquee on, any effect at the edge of the selection will be clear during image editing, because the marquee isn’t covering the edge. Hide Marquee makes the selection marquee invisible until you uncheck Hide Marquee again. The selection border is still there—you just can’t see it. Use Hide Marquee whenever you need to see what’s happening at the edge of your selection.
CAUTION After you check Hide Marquee, it’s easy to forget that you have a selection. If you’re trying to paint in your image and nothing seems to happen, or if your paint is applied only in part of your image, check whether the selection marquee is hidden. You might have a selection set and not know it.
Edit Selection Toward the bottom of the Selections menu is an option called Edit Selection. This option lets you paint a selection with any of the painting tools and modify the selection with any operation that works on a greyscale image. If you have no selection currently defined when you invoke Edit Selection, you won’t see any change on your image until you start painting the selection. You should notice, though, that on
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the layer palette a new layer button appears above what was the active layer, and this new temporary layer is labeled Selection. If you already have a selection defined when you invoke Edit Selection, or if you start painting on the selection with black or grey, you’ll see an area of semitransparent red, just like a Mask Overlay. This area of red is your selection.
Figure 5.24 Edit Selection lets you paint a selection onto your image
Here, first Selections > Select All was applied, then Selections > Edit Selection, which adds the red overlay to the entire image canvas (since the whole image was selected with Select All). Next, the dog was deselected by painting with the Paint Brush and black paint. When you choose Edit Selection again, everything except the dog will be selected. You could then apply an effect, such as blur, to just the background. Or you could choose Selections > Invert to select the dog. Be sure to give Edit Selection a try. Many people find that painting a selection onto an image is both handy and intuitive.
NOTE Painting with white on your selection adds to the selection, and painting with black subtracts from the selection. Grey paint produces areas of partial selection, similar to what you get with feathering. Painting with a soft brush will also produce a feathering-like effect at the edges of the brush.
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When you have your selection the way you want it, choose Selections > Edit Selection again. The Selections layer button will be removed from the Layers palette, and a selection marquee will appear in place of the red overlay. Figure 5.24 shows an example.
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TIP You can quickly toggle in and out of Edit Selection mode by clicking the Edit Selection icon on the Layers palette toolbar.
Matting Matting is another option on the Selections menu. It has three subitems: Defringe, Remove Black Matte, and Remove White Matte. Each of these works only with floating selections, and only if the image is greyscale or 24-bit color.
NOTE To use any of the Matting operations on a selection, you must have a floating selection. If you have a standard selection instead, choose Selections > Float to convert your selection to a floating selection.
Defringe, Remove Black Matte, and Remove White Matte are used to remove pixels that are blended into the edge of a selection as a result of feathering or antialiasing. Remove Black Matte and Remove White Matte are for removing black and white fringe, respectively. Defringe is for removing any other background color fringe. The Matting operations can produce mixed results. For fringed selections on solid backgrounds or on their own separate layers, you might prefer to do defringing by hand. To remove fringe by hand, first make sure your selection is a regular selection. If it’s a floating selection, use Selections > Defloat to convert the floating selection to a regular selection. Then use a few operations under the next item in the Selections menu—Modify—as follows: 1.
With your antialiased/feathered selection selected, choose Selections > Modify > Contract and set the number of pixels to 1 (or to whatever number of pixels you want to bleed out).
2.
Invert the selection with Selections > Invert (or press Shift+Ctrl+I).
3.
Feather this inverted selection by choosing Selections > Modify > Feather, and set the number of pixels to 1 (or to whatever number of pixels you used in step 1).
4.
For a selection on a solid-colored background, set the background color in the Color Palette to the color of the solid background. (For a selection on its own layer, the setting for the current background color doesn’t matter; just make sure that the layer containing the selection is the active layer.)
5.
Press the Delete key a few times. The more times you hit the Delete key, the more the fringe bleeds out.
6.
Turn off the selection, either by choosing Selections > Select None, by pressing Ctrl+D, or by right-clicking with a selection tool on the image canvas.
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Voilà! Your selection is defringed, and without too much trouble. As you’ll see later in this chapter, there’s also a way to avoid the problem of fringe in the first place.
The Modify submenu can be used for all sorts of things, not just defringing by hand. The operations included under Modify are Expand, Contract, Select Similar, Select Color Range, Feather, Inside/Outside Feather, Unfeather, Shape Based Antialias, Recover Antialias, Remove Specks and Holes, Smooth, and Select Selection Borders. Of these, Contract, Expand, and Feather are all pretty much self-explanatory—use these to make a selection smaller by a number of pixels, larger by a number of pixels, or feathered by a number of pixels. The other Selection > Modify operations need a bit of explanation.
Select Similar Select Similar expands the selection based on the color of pixels in the current selection, within the Tolerance setting you specify. You can also choose whether the pixels selected are Contiguous or Discontiguous. The difference is that Contiguous selects only pixels that are adjacent to the current selection, whereas Discontiguous selects all matching pixels in the image or layer. Figures 5.25–5.27 illustrate this difference. Figure 5.25 shows the original selection, Figure 5.26 shows the result with Contiguous and Tolerance set to 60, and Figure 5.27 shows the result with Discontiguous and the same Tolerance setting of 60. Figure 5.25 Original selection
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The Modify Submenu
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Figure 5.26 Select Similar with Contiguous selected
Figure 5.27 Select Similar with Discontiguous selected
Select Color Range Select Color Range enables you to add or subtract pixels of a particular color from the current selection. When you choose Selections > Modify > Select Color Range, the dialog box that appears lets you set the color that you want to have added to or eliminated from the selection, within a tolerance range that you specify. This is one of the times that choosing Select All can come in handy. Suppose that you have a multicolored figure with black outlines, as in Figure 5.28, and you want to select everything but the outlines.
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Figure 5.28 Original image with black outlines
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You can choose Selections > Select All, followed by Selections > Modify > Select Color Range with Reference color set to Black and Subtract color range selected. The result is shown in Figure 5.29. Figure 5.29 Selections > Modify > Select Color Range applied after Selections > Select All
This is a good way to isolate either the content of an outlined image or the outline itself. To select just the outline, all you need to do is follow Select Color Range with Selections > Invert. Isolating an outline is just what you want if you’re trying to add a metallic texture to a handdrawn stained glass window, as we’ll do in one of the examples at the end of this chapter.
TIP Select Color Range can be useful in defringing a selection that you want to copy and then paste on a new background. Make your selection, then choose Select Color Range. Set the Reference color to the color of your fringe, and select Subtract color range.
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Be careful when you use Select Color Range. All instances of the color that you choose will be added to or eliminated from the selection. This might go too far, affecting areas that you really want to remain unaffected.
Inside/Outside Feather and Unfeather Choose Selections > Modify > Inside/Outside Feather when you want to add a feather to your selection. If you choose Inside, the feather will begin and end inside the current selection boundary. If you choose Outside, the feather will begin at the edge of the selection border and extend beyond the border. If you choose Both, the feather will straddle the current selection border. To unfeather a feathered selection, choose by Selections > Modify > Unfeather. All feathering is lost, with full selection extending all the way to the edge of the previous feathering.
Shape Based Antialias and Recover Antialias For selections that you intend to copy and then paste on a new background, Shape Based Antialias can come in quite handy. Suppose, for example, that you make a Freehand selection (with Antialias off) in a solid-colored image canvas, then copy the selection and paste it onto a new background. If you simply select the figure, copy it and paste, the edges of the figure will be jagged. To smooth out the edges, you can add antialiasing with Selections > Modify > Shape Based Antialias. You have the option of adding the antialiasing either Inside the current selection border or Outside. Figure 5.30 shows the results of pasting a solid-colored freehand selection with and without Shape Based Antialias (zoomed in 400 percent). The result from the original selection appears on the left and the antialiased version appears on the right. Figure 5.30 Shape Based Antialias can smooth the edges of a selection you want to paste onto a new background
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You can, for example, select the antialiased shape with the Magic Wand. Next, choose Selections > Modify > Recover Antialias (whose dialog box is shown in Figure 5.31). Figure 5.31 Recover Antialias can get you a smooth edge that looks good on any background
Here, we’ve selected the shape without the antialiased region around the shape. In this case, you’ll want to choose Outside to recover the antialiasing outside the selection. (If the antialiased region is included in the selection, you’ll want to choose Inside to recover the antialiasing inside the selection.) When you copy the shape, you’ll get the shape’s color blended with transparency. Paste this onto a new background, and the antialiased edge will blend in with the new background, producing the unjagged edge that you want.
Remove Specks and Holes There are probably plenty of times when you make a selection with the Magic Wand and find that the selection you get either includes specks that you don’t want or has gaps that you want included in the selection. Both problems are quickly remedied with Selections > Modify > Remove Specks and Holes.
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A related Selections > Modify option is Recover Antialias. Suppose you have a solid-colored antialiased shape on a multicolored background. If you select the shape and then copy and paste it on a new background, the edges of the pasted-in copy will be jagged. If you antialiased, feathered, or expanded the selection before copying and pasting, the old antialiasing is copied along, and it’s very likely that this will produce a noticeable, undesirable halo when you do the paste. You could then try to defringe the pasted-in layer or selection, but that’s extra work and doesn’t always give the best results. Fortunately, you can avoid fringe in these cases, since Recover Antialias can get you a nice smooth transition that will look good on any background.
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TIP The Background Eraser can leave a few remnants of the background unerased or semierased. Try cleaning up the remnants by using the Magic Wand and then modifying the selection with Remove Specks and Holes set to Remove holes. Once you have a satisfactory selection defined, press the Delete key to erase everything in the selected area.
Smooth Selections > Modify > Smooth is very handy for smoothing out the edges of a selection created with the Freehand selection tool. Take, for example, the selection in Figure 5.32, a selection made with the Selection tool and the Freehand tool. The parts created with the Freehand tool are quite jagged. After Smooth is applied, though, you get a nice shape like the one shown in Figure 5.33. Figure 5.32 A selection in need of some smoothing
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Figure 5.33 The smoothed selection
CHAPTER 5 In this example, Preserve corners was set to keep corners sharp while smoothing the jagged edges. If Preserve corners had not been selected, the corners would have become rounded. (You might use this to good advantage if you want a rounded polygon.)
Select Selection Borders Have you ever wanted to add an outline around a figure you selected? Paint Shop Pro 8 makes that easy with Selections > Modify > Select Selection Borders. Figure 5.34 shows the Select Selection Borders dialog box. Follow the results with a little smoothing, then fill the selection with the Fill tool and maybe add a drop shadow, and you’ll get something like what you see in Figure 5.35. Figure 5.34 The Select Selection Borders dialog box
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Figure 5.35 An outline added with the help of Selections > Modify > Select Selection Borders
Loading and Saving Selections To load a selection from disk, choose Selections > Load/Save Selection > Load Selection from Disk, and then choose the file name of the selection that you want. To load 800x600.PspSelection, for example, select 800x600 in the Load Selection From Disk dialog box, as shown in Figure 5.36. Figure 5.36 Loading a selection from disk
Click Load, and your selection is loaded onto the current active layer. If the selection marquee isn’t positioned exactly where you want it in your image, remember that you can right-click and, with the right mouse button down, drag the marquee into place with the Mover tool. To save a selection to disk, choose Selections > Load/Save Selection > Save Selection To Disk, which opens the Save Selection to Disk dialog box. Enter a name for your selection and click Save to save the selection as a .PspSelection file that you can load later with Selections > Load/Save Selection > Load Selection from Disk. You also can save a selection to an alpha channel, a way of storing the selection along with your image. You might want to save a selection to an alpha channel so that you can reuse it in
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another image. Or maybe you want to end your current editing session, but you also want to be able to edit the selection later. Maybe you want to save the selection so you can later combine it with another selection.
You load a selection from an alpha channel much as you would load a selection from disk. Choose Selections > Load/Save Selection > Load Selection From Alpha Channel, and then choose the alpha channel from the Load From Alpha dialog box. You can load a selection from any currently open image. Choose the source image and the selection you want, then click Load to load the selection in your current image.
TIP If you already have a selection when you load a selection, you can either replace the current selection with the loaded one, add the loaded selection to the current selection, or subtract the loaded selection from the current selection, depending on the Operation you choose in the Load Selection dialog box. You can easily create quite complicated selections by adding or subtracting several selections in this way.
Converting Selections to Masks and Vice Versa Selections and masks behave differently: selections restrict editing operations to a particular area, while masks seem to modify the transparency of a layer without actually changing data on affected layers. As you get proficient in creating selections and masks, you’ll probably find yourself thinking that it would be great to be able to use the Freehand tool’s Smart Edge or Edge Seeker to create a mask. Although you can’t do this directly, you can do something just about as good: you can create a selection and then convert the selection to a mask. To convert a selection to a mask, choose either Layers > New Mask Layer > Hide Selection or Layers > New Mask Layer > Show Selection. Alternatively, in the Layers palette, right-click the layer button of the layer you want to add a mask to, and in the context menu, choose either New Mask Layer > Hide Selection or New Mask Layer > Show Selection. Once you’ve created your mask, turn the selection off with Selections > Select None (or press Ctrl+D). To convert a mask to a selection, choose Selections > From Mask (or press Ctrl+Shift+S). To view the mask, click the mask layer’s Mask Overlay toggle. And to edit the mask, simply make the mask the active layer by clicking its layer button on the Layers palette, then edit away. You’ll convert a selection to a mask, edit the mask, and convert the mask back to a selection in the second example at the end of this chapter.
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Saving a selection to an alpha channel is very similar to saving a selection to disk. First, choose Selections > Load/Save Selection > Save Selection To Alpha Channel. Then enter a name for your selection and click Save.
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Examples Now let’s look at some examples. First, we’ll use selections to create the leading for a simulated stained glass window. In the second example, we’ll use selections and masks to isolate a figure on one background and place that figure on a new background.
A Simple Stained Glass Effect To demonstrate several of the selection techniques outlined in this chapter, let’s try simulating a simple stained glass window, starting with the hand-drawn image shown in Figure 5.37. Figure 5.37 A simple drawing, soon to become simulated stained glass
1.
Begin by choosing Selections > Select All, then choose Selections > Modify > Select Color Range. Select Subtract color range with Reference color set to black. A setting of 100 for Tolerance and 30 for Smooth seems to work well. After you click OK, everything except the black outline is selected.
2.
Choose Selections > Invert so that the black outline is the only thing selected. Use Selections > Modify > Smooth to smooth the selection a bit. (In this example, I set Smoothing amount to 35, Corner scale (pixels) to 10, and selected both Antialias and Preserve corners.) Next, convert the selection to a layer with Selections > Promote Selection to Layer.
3.
Lighten the promoted selection with Adjust > Brightness and Contrast > Brightness/Contrast. Set Brightness to 95 and Contrast to 0.
4.
Add some noise with Adjust > Add/Remove Noise > Add Noise. Choose Monochrome and Random, and set Noise to 14 percent. Blur the result with Adjust > Blur > Gaussian Blur, with Radius set to 2.00. Turn the selection off with Selections > Select None (or just press Ctrl+D).
5.
Set the Background color on the Materials palette to white. Then choose Effects > Artistic Effects > Hot Wax Coating. After that, press Ctrl+Y twice to add the Hot Wax effect a total of three times. If you like, sharpen the leading up a bit with Adjust > Sharpness > Unsharp Mask, using its default settings. The final result will look something like what you see in Figure 5.38.
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Figure 5.38 The completed stained glass image
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Isolating a Figure with a Selection Converted to a Mask One of the handiest uses of a mask is to strip away the background of one layer in order to place a figure on that layer in a new setting. Suppose you start out with an image such as the one shown in Figure 5.39 and want to put the gargoyle on a new background. Figure 5.39 A gargoyle in a garden
1.
There’s sharp contrast between the light-colored gargoyle figure and the dark background. This is the ideal situation for using the Freehand selection tool with either Smart Edge or Edge Seeker as the selection type. Choose the Freehand tool, and in the Tool Options palette, set Selection type to Edge Seeker and Feather to 0. Then trace around the edge of the gargoyle, as in Figure 5.40. (It might be helpful to zoom in a bit when you’re defining the selection.) Doubleclick when you near the start point in order to close the selection.
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Figure 5.40 Defining a selection with Edge Seeker
2.
When the selection is complete, choose Layers > New Mask Layer > Show Selection. Turn the selection off with Ctrl+D, then make the mask layer the active layer by clicking its layer button in the Layers palette.
3.
To see where your mask needs editing, click the mask layer’s Mask Overlay toggle. Your mask then displays as a reddish gel on the layer, as shown in Figure 5.41.
Figure 5.41 A mask shows as a reddish gel when Mask Overlay is on
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Figure 5.42 Adjust the mask layer’s Opacity to see the masked data on the layer below the mask layer
5.
Painting isn’t your only option for adjusting the mask. To soften the unfeathered edge of the selection-based mask, choose Adjust > Blur > Blur (or one of the other blur operations available under Adjust > Blur). When the mask is as you want it, set the Opacity of the mask layer back to 100 and turn off the mask overlay by clicking the Mask Overlay toggle.
CAUTION If Opacity for the mask layer is still set to 0 when you toggle off Mask Overlay, you won’t see the effect of your mask. If ever your mask seems to disappear, be sure to check the Opacity setting and the state of the Visibility toggle of the mask layer.
6.
What you do next depends partly on what new background you want to provide for your figure and partly on your own preference. One option is to add a new layer, move the new layer below the masked layer, and paint a background. An example of this is shown in Figure 5.43.
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To see the masked data on the layer below the mask, reduce the opacity of the mask layer to 0 by moving the mask layer’s Opacity slider all the way to the left. The result for our example is shown in Figure 5.42. You can then edit the mask, utilizing information that is made available to you about the contents of the layer that you’re masking. Make any adjustments you’d like to the mask, keeping in mind that painting with black completely masks an area and painting in white unmasks an area.
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Figure 5.43 A new background painted below the masked layer
7.
Another option is to convert your mask to a selection so that you can copy the selection and paste it onto a new background. To convert the mask to a selection, choose Selections > From Mask (or press Ctrl+Shift+S). Then copy the selection to the Clipboard by pressing Ctrl+C or by clicking the Copy icon on the toolbar. Open the image you want for the new background, then click on this image’s title bar and choose Paste As New Selection or Paste As New Layer. Paste As New Layer gives you all the advantages that layers provide but at the price of more overhead. The result will look something like what you see in Figure 5.44.
Figure 5.44 The mask-based selection pasted onto a new background
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Continue with any other editing that you want to do, then save the file. If you won’t want to edit the file in the future, flatten the image with Layers > Merge > Merge All (flatten) before saving the file.
Which method you use—converting a selection to a mask or making use of Edit Selection— depends entirely on your own needs and preferences. Try it both ways and see what you think.
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To leave you with some inspiration for tackling this task in a different way, consider that you could skip the masking steps and instead use Edit Selection. With Edit Selection, you can use the painting tools or a blurring effect on the selection itself. When the selection was completely edited, you’d just choose Edit Selection again to get a selection marquee.
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Chapter 6 One of the handiest features of Paint Shop Pro is its ability to create and manipulate vector objects on vector layers. Vector objects aren’t defined as collections of pixels, but instead are defined by instructions to the computer on how to draw the lines and/or shapes that make up an object. To create a vector line, shape, or string of text, select the Create as vector check box in the Tool Options palette of the Pen or Preset Shapes tool, or select Vector in the Create as dropdown list in the Tool Options palette of the Text tool. Vector objects reside on vector layers. Raster layers (“normal” layers) cannot hold vector objects, and if you try to add a vector object to a raster layer, Paint Shop Pro will immediately create a new vector layer above the raster layer, adding the vector object to the vector layer. In the Layers Palette shown in Figure 6.1, notice that the icon that identifies vector layers differs from the icon for raster layers. Figure 6.1 Display for a raster and a vector layer in the Layers palette
NOTE You can convert a vector layer to a raster layer, but raster layers can’t be converted to vector layers. To convert a vector layer to a raster layer, rightclick on the vector layer’s Layer button and then choose Convert to Raster from the resulting menu.
TIP Unlike raster layers, vector layers can be used with 8-bit, 256-color images. Keep in mind, however, that antialiasing doesn’t work in 256-color images.
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Vector Objects To practice handling vector objects, create a vector shape: 1.
Open a new image with a solid white raster background. (Having a raster layer isn’t necessary, but the solid-colored background makes it easier to see your drawing as you’re creating it. The raster layer can always be deleted later, if you like.)
2.
If the Tool Options palette isn’t visible, press F4 to make it visible. Then select the Preset Shapes tool. On the Materials palette, set the Stroke to Solid Color mode, setting the color to whatever you want for the stroke, and set Fill to Transparent. On the Tool Options palette, select Star 2 in the drop-down list. Be sure Retain style is unchecked, but be sure to check Create as vector (see Figure 6.2). Set Width to whatever width you want for the stroke.
Figure 6.2 Tool Options palette for Preset Shapes
3.
Draw a star in the middle of your new image by dragging from the upper left corner to the lower right (or by right-clicking and dragging from the center out with the right mouse button down). When you release the mouse button, you’ll see something like the shape in Figure 6.3.
Figure 6.3 A vector shape
Notice the rectangular border around the star, which indicates that the object is selected. Also notice the control handles on the top, bottom, corners, and sides of this border, and the bar radiating from the center of the circle, along with its control handles. The border and control handles can be used to move, rotate, or deform the object.
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If the Layers palette isn’t visible, press the F8 key to make it visible. Notice that there is a plus sign to the left of the vector layer icon, indicating that this layer contains at least one object. Click on the plus sign and the vector layer information will be expanded, showing a button for the new Star 2 object (see Figure 6.4).
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Figure 6.4 Layers palette display for a vector object
5.
When an object is selected, its name appears in boldface on its object button in the Layers palette. To deselect an object, right-click the object button for the selected object and choose Select None. The label on the button becomes unbolded, and the object becomes deselected. To select an unselected object, click its object button.
Deforming a Shape Now try moving, resizing, rotating, and deforming the vector object. Before beginning, be sure that the Star 2 object is selected and that you’re using either the Preset Shapes tool or the Object Selection tool. 1.
Reposition the object by placing the mouse cursor on the center handle or on any edge of the object itself. When the cursor is in the correct position, the shape of the cursor changes to the double-headed crossed arrows of the Mover tool. Then drag to move the object. Until you release the mouse button, you’ll see both the original object in its original position and a thin moving outline of the object.
2.
To resize the object, place the mouse cursor on one of the control handles on the selection border and drag. Dragging the top or bottom handle alters the height of the object, whereas dragging the side handles alters the width. To change both the height and width at the same time, drag a corner handle.
TIP To maintain the aspect ratio while resizing your object, right-click and drag on one of the corner handles with the right mouse button down.
3.
To rotate the object, position the mouse cursor on the handle at the outer end of the bar radiating from the center of the object. When the cursor is in the correct position, the shape of the cursor changes to two arrows forming a circle (see Figure 6.5).
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Figure 6.5 Rotating a vector object
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There are several ways you can deform an object: drag on a handle with either the Shift key, the Ctrl key, or both keys depressed, as shown in Figures 6.6 to 6.8. The shape of the cursor when the mouse is positioned over a handle will give you a clue about what will happen when you drag with that particular handle. When you release the mouse, the object will take on its new shape.
Figure 6.6 Deform with Shift and dragging
Figure 6.7 Deform with Ctrl and dragging
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Figure 6.8 Deform with Shift+Ctrl and dragging
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NOTE As we saw in Chapter 2, “The Painting Tools,” you deform figures on a raster layer with the Deform tool. The Deform tool is unavailable when the active layer is a vector layer.
Modifying an Object’s Properties There are three ways to access an object’s properties: Double-click on the object’s object button on the Layers palette. Right-click on the object’s object button on the Layers palette, and then select Properties from the resulting menu. Choose the Object Selection tool, select the object that you’re interested in (either by clicking its object button or by dragging the tool around the object), right-click anywhere within the object’s selection border, and select Properties. The Properties box of the Star 2 object looks something like what you see in Figure 6.9. Figure 6.9 The Vector Property dialog box
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You can modify any of the vector object’s properties. To change the stroke or fill colors, click on the appropriate color box in the Vector Property dialog box and then select the material you want, just as you would with the Materials palette. For example, Figure 6.10 shows the settings you’d use to change the stroked star to one with a gradient fill and no stroke. Figure 6.10 Modifying a vector object’s properties
Object Alignment and Distribution Sometimes you’ll want to position an object in the exact center of the image canvas, align one object with another, or evenly space a group of objects on the image canvas. There are commands for all these operations available as suboptions on the Objects menu. Align. These options enable you to precisely align selected objects with each other or in relation to the image canvas. Distribute. These options enable you to precisely distribute selected objects in the image canvas. Make Same Size. This enables you to make selected objects all the same size as the first object selected, either in height or width or both. Arrange. This enables you to move objects on a vector layer within the layer stack. For example, you could move the object at the top of the stack down in the stack. For more information on these options, see the Paint Shop Pro documentation or take a look at Ron Lacey’s excellent series on vectors in the archives of PSPpower at http://www.psppower.com.
Modifying a Shape To really exploit the power of vectors, try the Pen tool’s Edit mode. Any vector object is made up of at least two nodes, with pairs of nodes connected by segments. Entering Edit mode gives you access to an object’s nodes, enabling you to reshape and refine the object. The best way to learn about node editing is to jump right in, so let’s try working through an extended example.
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Node Editing With the Pen tool’s Edit mode, you can make complex shapes from relatively simple shapes. For example, starting with a five-pointed star, you can make a gingerbread man like the one in Figure 6.11.
Here’s how you can tackle this project: 1.
With the Preset Shapes tool set to Create as vector, draw a filled five-pointed star using Star 2 as your shape (see Figure 6.12). Be sure that on the Materials palette you have Stroke set to Transparent and Fill set to Solid Color, with a brown shade as the fill color.
Figure 6.12 A five-pointed vector star
2.
Choose the Pen tool, which should automatically be in Edit mode. In the image canvas, you’ll see the nodes and segments of the star, as shown in Figure 6.13.
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Figure 6.11 A vector gingerbread man
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Figure 6.13 The star in Edit mode
3.
Now, add a few more nodes to the star. To add a node, hold down the Ctrl key and click on the path of the star wherever you want a new node. Add two nodes for the neck, and add two more nodes for the points where the torso meets the legs, as shown in Figure 6.14.
Figure 6.14 Adding nodes for the neck and torso
4.
At this point, all of the nodes define straight line segments, but what you want instead is for the nodes for the head and the ends of the arms and legs to connect as smooth curves. To convert a node to a different type, select the node by clicking it or dragging a selection box around it with the Pen tool, and then right-click. In the context menu, select Node Type > Symmetric, as shown in Figure 6.15. Notice how the line segments connected to the node then curve at the node. Repeat for each of the other nodes that you want to convert.
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Figure 6.15 Changing some of the lines to curves
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5.
Now, fine-tune the curves of the head, arms, and legs. Click a node or drag around it to select it. A selected symmetric node displays an arrow-shaped control. Pull on the head or tail of the arrow to adjust the length of the segments connected to the node. Rotate the head or tail of the arrow to adjust the curvature of the path near the node. To move a node, click and drag the node. When you finish adjusting each of the nodes of the head, arms, and legs, the shape will look something like a gingerbread man (see Figure 6.16).
Figure 6.16 The completed gingerbread man shape
6.
Now let’s add some texture to the gingerbread: 1.
Right-click the Star 2 object button on the Layers palette and choose Copy.
2.
Right-click the Star 2 object button again and choose Paste New Vector Selection. You’ll then see an outline of the copied gingerbread man shape. Drag this shape so that it lines up exactly with the original gingerbread man object.
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3.
Double-click the object button for the copied Star 2 to bring up its Vector Property dialog box. In the dialog box, click the Fill color box to bring up the Material dialog box. In the Color Picker, choose a brown that is slightly lighter than the original brown. Then select Texture and click the Texture preview to bring up the Texture Picker. Choose something that will produce a good texture for gingerbread, such as Asphalt 1. Click OK to exit the Material dialog box, and click OK again to exit the Vector Property dialog box. Your gingerbread man will now look something like what you see in Figure 6.17.
Figure 6.17 Adding texture to the gingerbread
7.
Use the Preset Shapes tool to add stroked, unfilled vector circles for the gingerbread man’s eyes and buttons. (Deselect Star 2 first if it’s selected.)
8.
Add a nose and mouth. The nose can be added with the Preset Shapes tool set to Triangle. For the mouth, use the Pen tool. Enter Draw mode by clicking the Draw Mode icon on the Pen tool’s Tool Options palette. Click the New Shape icon to begin a new shape. For Segment Type, select Point to Point, then draw like this: 1.
Click where you want the left corner of the mouth. Be sure not to drag.
2.
Click where you want the right corner of the mouth. Again, do not drag. You define straight lines with Point to Point by clicking at each endpoint of the line.
3.
Click where you want the middle of the lower part of the mouth and this time drag a little. Dragging with Point to Point creates a node that defines a curve before and after it.
4.
Click the Close selected open contours icon on the Pen tool’s Tool Options palette. The mouth shape is then done.
And that’s that. The gingerbread man is now complete. And all from a simple star.
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Changing Node Types
To change a node’s type, use the Pen tool in Edit mode. Select the node that you want to change, right-click in the image canvas, and in the context menu choose Node Type and the specific type that you want.
TIP You can change several nodes at once to a specific type. Just select all the nodes that you want to change to that type, then right-click in the image canvas, and in the context menu choose the node type that you want. An easy way to select all the nodes in the current object is to right-click when in Edit mode and choose Edit > Select All from the context menu.
Transforming Selected Nodes The fifth segment of the Pen tool’s Tool Options palette has some very useful—but easy to overlook—options for transforming groups of nodes in an object. There’s a drop-down menu for Transformation Type, two JNEs (Jasc Numeric Editors) whose use is determined by the specific transformation type selected, and an Apply icon. Here are the various transformation types and their settings: Duplicate Selected. All the selected nodes are duplicated as a new contour. Rotate. All the selected nodes are rotated. SkewX. The shape defined by the selected nodes is skewed horizontally. SkewY. The shape defined by the selected nodes is skewed vertically. Contract. Selected nodes are contracted. If only some nodes in the shape are selected, the control arms for those nodes are contracted. If all of the nodes defining a shape are selected, the entire shape shrinks. Expand. Selected nodes are expanded. If only some nodes in the shape are selected, the control arms for those nodes are expanded. If all the nodes defining a shape are selected, the entire shape grows in size.
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In the last section, node types were mentioned briefly. The nodes for a curve can be any of four basic types: asymmetric, symmetric, cusp, or smooth. An asymmetric node has control arms that control the length of the curves before and after the node independently of each other, but that work in concert in determining the orientation of the curve before and after the node. A symmetric node has control arms that influence each other completely—adjust the length or direction of one and the other is adjusted as well. A cusp has control handles that are completely independent of each other; use a cusp node when you want to produce a sharp angle. A smooth node provides a smooth transition from a straight line to a curve.
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To apply a transformation, select the nodes you want to transform, then select Transformation Type, choose whatever settings you want for that transformation, and click the Apply icon. You can reapply the same transformation with the same settings by clicking the Apply button again. Experiment with transformations to see just what they can do. We’ll be using some transformations in the example at the end of this chapter. You’re sure to find many other uses for transformations, too.
TIP All of the transformations except Duplicate Selected can also be accessed from the Transform Selected Nodes submenu of the Pen Tool’s context menu. This submenu also provides options for Flip and Mirror.
Making Cutouts with Vectors In Chapter 3, “The Drawing Tools,” you saw how to create an object with a cutout (a hole in the object). This can be used to good effect with vector drawing as well as raster drawing. An example is shown in Figure 6.18. Figure 6.18 A cutout effect created with vectors
To create this effect, you take advantage of the direction of independent elements (or contours) of a vector object. A contour is a set of connected nodes, and an object can have one or more contours. By default, the path of an object made with the Preset Shapes tool goes clockwise from its Start point to its Close point. The direction of the path of a shape that you draw by hand depends on how you draw the shape: Proceed clockwise, and the path goes clockwise; proceed
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counterclockwise, and the path goes counterclockwise. The direction of a path is indicated by the arrow controls on a node—the arrow points in the direction of the path, as shown in Figure 6.19.
Now consider what happens when you have two independent contours in an object. Figure 6.20 shows an object made of the original shape shown in Figure 6.19 and a copy of that shape. (The copy was made by selecting all the nodes of the first shape with the Pen tool, then using Duplicate Selection on the Pen tool’s Tool Options palette, with DuplicateX and DuplicateY both set to 100.) Figure 6.20 An object with two contours
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Figure 6.19 A vector path has a direction
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Now let’s make the cutout. In the Pen tool’s Edit mode, deselect all the nodes by right-clicking and choosing Edit > Select None. Then select a single node on one of the contours by clicking that node or dragging a selection box around the node with the Pen tool. Right-click to bring up the context menu, and select Edit > Reverse Contour (or instead of using the menu, just press Ctrl+R). You’ll see that the arrow control has switched to indicate that counterclockwise is the direction for the contour that the node is on (see Figure 6.21). Figure 6.21 Reversing the contour
After you deselect the object, you’ll see something like what you saw in Figure 6.18. At the point where the two contours overlap, the intersection is treated as being “outside” the object. In this example, the contours partially overlap, so each contour produces solid areas (where they don’t overlap) and a hole (where they do overlap). If one contour is entirely contained in the other, what you get is a continuous object that looks like it has a hole in the middle.
NOTE If you’re trying to make a cutout with vectors but no cutout appears, it may be that you accidentally chose Reverse Path instead of Reverse Contour. Reverse Path reverses the path direction for all contours of an object. Reverse Contour reverses the path direction of only the contour that contains the currently selected node. To get the cutout, first be sure that you have only one node selected. Then try Reverse Contour again: Right-click to bring up the context menu, and choose Edit > Reverse Contour.
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Example: A Simple Vector Drawing In this example, you’ll explore node editing more and do some drawing with the Pen tool, learning how to combine contours and to use multiple objects to create an image, such as the pear shown in Figure 6.22.
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Figure 6.22 A vector pear
Although this example itself is very simple, the tools and techniques that you’ll use while working through the example will prepare you to create almost any vector drawing. 1.
Begin with a 500-by-500-pixel image with a white raster background. Use the Preset Shapes tool to create a small yellowish vector circle with a thin orange stroke near the top of the image canvas.
2.
With the Pen tool active, select Edit mode, and select all the nodes of the circle. Then choose the Duplicate Selected transformation on the Tool Options palette, with DuplicateX set to 0 and DuplicateY set to 200. Click the Apply button. Then set Transformation Type to Expand, with ExpansionX and ExpansionY each set at 10. Press the Apply button several times, until the duplicated circle is large enough to form the bottom of the pear, as in Figure 6.23.
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Figure 6.23 Expand the duplicate circle
3.
Figure 6.24 Deleting nodes
Right-click in the image canvas and choose Edit > Select None. Then click on the bottom node of the small circle and press the Delete key to delete the node. Click the top node of the larger circle and delete it, as well. Figure 6.24 shows the small circle with its bottom node deleted and the large circle with its top node selected and ready for deletion.
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Figure 6.25 Joining nodes
5.
Add the dimple at the end of the pear. Select the bottom node. The node of the original circle was a cusp, but Expand changed the nodes to asymmetric. What we want here is a cusp—a node whose control arms can be moved independently of each other to form a sharp angle. So right-click with the Pen tool and choose Node Type > Cusp. Then use each arm of the node’s arrowshaped control to adjust the angle at the cusp, as in Figure 6.26. Reposition the node as needed by dragging the node itself.
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To produce the basic pear shape, all you need to do now is to join the unattached nodes of the large and small circles. Begin by selecting the lower-left node on the small circle, and then hold down the Shift key and click on the upper-left node of the large circle to select that node, too. Next, on the context menu, select Edit > Join (or just press Ctrl+J). Perform the same action on the unattached nodes on the right. Figure 6.25 shows the left nodes joined, with the right nodes selected and ready to be joined.
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Figure 6.26 Adjusting the angle at a cusp
6.
You’re now ready to add the leaf and stem. For the leaf, use the Pen tool’s Draw mode, with Segment Type set to Freehand. Right-click and choose New Drawing Object. On the Materials palette, set the Stroke to Transparent and the Fill to green. Then draw a leaf shape, as shown in Figure 6.27.
Figure 6.27 Draw the leaf with Freehand segments
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NOTE Before drawing the leaf, you may need to adjust Tracking on the Pen tool’s Tool Options palette. Tracking determines the number of nodes in the drawn curve and how closely the nodes are spaced. In the example here, Tracking is set to 7.
Right-click and choose New Drawing Object. On the Materials palette, set the Stroke to dark green and set the Fill to Transparent. Then draw a vein down the center of your leaf. CAUTION If you forget to start a new drawing object, the stroke and fill of the leaf itself changes when you change Stroke and Fill in the Materials palette.
8.
Return to Edit mode. Adjust the position of the nodes and the curvature of the leaf or vein as needed.
9.
If you need to reposition or rotate the leaf and its vein together at the same time, choose the Object Selection tool. On the Layers palette, click the New Shape object button for the vein, then hold down the Shift key and click the New Shape object button for the leaf. Drag within the selection boundary with the Object Selection tool to move these objects. Drag on the control at the end of the center handle to rotate the objects.
10. Create the stem as a vector triangle with the Preset Shapes tool, as shown in Figure 6.28. In the Materials palette, set the Stroke to Transparent and the Fill to brown. Drag from the bottom up so that the triangle points down rather than up. Figure 6.28 The stem begins as a triangle
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7.
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11. Return to the Pen tool, and enter Edit mode. You can then change the type of any of the nodes and adjust the curvature of the triangle’s segments as needed. Drag the stem into position and, if you need to, rotate it with the Rotate transformation. Your image will look something like Figure 6.29. Figure 6.29 The pear with its leaf and stem
NOTE To move a single object, you can simply position the cursor over any part of the edge of the object, except on a node, and then drag the object into place. You’ll know that the cursor is in the right place on the object’s edge when the cursor’s shape changes to a horizontal S-curve.
As a last touch, let’s use gradient fills to add a little depth to the body of the pear and the leaf. 1.
Double-click the object button labeled Ellipse (the body of the pear) to bring up its Vector Property dialog box.
2.
Click the material button for Fill to bring up the Material dialog box. Go to the Gradient tab and click the gradient preview to bring up the Gradient Picker.
3.
In the Gradient Picker, select the Red-orange-yellow gradient. Set the gradient Style to Sunburst and uncheck Link center and focal points. Set the Center point to 95 (Horizontal) and 75 (Vertical). Set the Focal point to 100 (Horizontal) and 100 (Vertical).
4.
Click OK to exit the Material dialog box, and click OK again to exit the Vector Property dialog box.
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Double-click the New Shape object button for the leaf to bring up the Vector Property dialog box for the leaf. Click the material button for Fill to bring up the Material dialog box. Go to the Gradient tab and set the gradient Style to Linear and the Angle to 120.
6.
Click the gradient preview to bring up the Gradient Picker. Select Duotone green.
7.
Click OK to exit the Material dialog box, and click OK to exit the Vector Property dialog box. Deselect the nodes and the pear will look like what you saw in Figure 6.22.
You're now ready to create all sorts of simple and complex vector drawings. Try using vector lines and preset shapes to make your own scalable buttons for a Web site or scalable versions of your company logo, saving raster copies when you have just the size you want. Combine multiple vector layers to create high-quality illustrations. You'll be amazed at what you can achieve with vectors.
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Chapter 7 Whether you’re creating graphics for display on a video screen or for print, you’re likely to want to add text to your images at least occasionally. Paint Shop Pro makes adding and modifying text in your images a snap. In this chapter, you’ll be looking at: Adding text to images Enhancing raster text with special effects Warping and deforming raster text Modifying vector text
Adding Text to an Image To use the Text tool in raster mode, choose the tool from the toolbar and choose either Selection or Floating as the Create as value on the Tool Options palette. (If you want vector text instead, choose Vector as the Create as value.) Click within your image at the point where you want your text block to appear. The Text Entry dialog box, shown in Figure 7.1, opens. This is where you add your text. The characteristics of the text are set in the tool’s Tool Options palette, shown in Figure 7.2, and the Materials palette. Figure 7.1 Text tool’s Text Entry dialog box
Figure 7.2 Text tool’s Tool Options palette
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Note that not all of the controls on the Tool Options palette are showing in Figure 7.2. If your screen resolution is 1024-by-768 or 800-by-600, this will be the case for you as well. Remember, though, that if you need to see a control that isn’t visible, all you need to do is click the arrow for the hidden segment. In Figure 7.2, the hidden segment is the one on the extreme right. Click this segment’s arrow and the segment will be shown (while, of course, hiding some other segment). For now, don’t be concerned about the hidden controls. We’ll look at them later in the chapter. The first control to the right of the Presets drop-down list is a drop-down list labeled Create as. This control has three options: Vector. Select this if you want to create text on a vector layer rather than on a raster layer. Vectors are discussed in detail in Chapter 6, “Vector Solutions.” Selection. Select this if you want an empty text selection. This gives you a standard (nonfloating) selection in the shape of the text you specify. Essentially, it acts like a “cookie cutter” pressed into the active layer. For text selections created on raster layers, when you click inside a text selection and drag with the Text tool, you’ll drag both the text selection marquee and the part of the layer that it contains. On a background layer, the displaced pixels will be replaced with the current Background Solid Color specified on the Materials palette. On a layer that supports transparency, the displaced pixels will be replaced with transparency.
TIP To move just the marquee of a standard selection without moving the selection’s contents, choose the Mover tool and right-click and drag with the right mouse button down within the selection.
Floating. Select this to create your text as a floating selection. The text will “float” above the active layer and have whatever fill you select on the Materials palette. If you drag a floating text selection with the Text tool, the colored text will move and the pixels of the layer beneath the selection will remain untouched. To anchor your floating text in place and deselect it, click the right mouse button while using the Text tool. The selection marquee will disappear and your text will no longer be movable.
TIP If you anchor your text and then notice that it isn’t quite where you want it, you can get the text selection back by clicking the Undo button, by pressing Ctrl+Z, or by choosing Edit > Undo.
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Unlike other options on the Text tool’s Tool Options palette, the value for Create as must be set before you click in your image with the Text tool. To the right of Create as are controls for selecting the font and setting its size and for setting the width of the text’s stroke:
Size. A drop-down list in which you select the size for your text. Alternatively, you can enter the size in the text box above this list, which enables you to select a size that isn’t included in the list. Stroke width (pixels). If the Stroke in the Materials palette is set to anything other than Transparent, this control sets the width of the stroke. If the Stroke in the Materials palette is set to something other than Transparent, you can also choose to suppress the stroke by setting this to 0. Table 7.1 shows some examples of text with various settings for Materials.
Table 7.1 Italic Arial Text with Various Materials Settings
Solid color fill with texture; no stroke
Gradient fill, no texture; no stroke
Pattern fill, no texture; no stroke
Gradient fill with texture; solid color stroke, no texture
Pattern fill, no texture; solid color stroke with texture
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Font. A scrolling drop-down list in which you select the font face for your text.
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To the right of the font, size, and stroke width controls are check boxes for Antialias and Warp Text: Antialias. Antialiasing works with text as it does with shapes and lines. If you select Antialias, the jagged edges of your text will be made smooth by blending the text color with the background color. Keep in mind that checking this box has an effect only if your image is a 256-greyscale image or a 24-bit color image. Warp Text. This is relevant only for text that is made to conform to a path. We’ll look at text on a path later in this chapter. In the next segment of the Tool Options palette are three icons labeled Alignment. Click the first icon on the left if you want multiple lines of the text that you enter to be left-aligned. Click the middle icon if you want your text to be centered. Click the third icon if you want your text to be right-aligned. Align Left. All text is left-aligned. The block of text is placed in your image so that the left edge of the first line of the text is placed at the point you clicked on when you activated the Text tool. Align Center. All text is centered. The block of text is placed so that the first line of the text is centered horizontally around the point you clicked on when you activated the Text tool. Align Right. All text is right-aligned. The block of text is placed so that the right edge of the first line of text is placed at the point you clicked on when the Text tool was activated. Next is a set of four icons labeled Font Style. Click the first of these for bold text. Click the second for italic text, the third for underlined text, and the fourth for strikeout. These are standard Windows font styles, and some styles might not be supported for some fonts. The next set of controls governs the appearance of your text’s stroke. These controls—Line Style, Join, and Miter limit—all work as they do with the Pen tool.
NOTE The controls for Line Style, Join, and Miter limit are relevant only when Stroke width (pixels) is set to something other than 0.0 and when Stroke in the Materials palette is not set to Transparent.
Now let’s examine those controls that were hidden in Figure 7.2. If that segment of the Tool Options palette is hidden on your screen, click the segment’s arrow. You’ll then see a check box labeled Auto kern, and two JNEs (Jasc Numeric Editors), one labeled Kerning and the other labeled Leading. These control the spacing between characters and between lines.
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Kerning. This affects the spacing between adjacent characters. Positive values for kerning increase the amount of spacing, and negative values decrease the spacing. Set the kerning by clicking between two characters (or before or after a single character) or by selecting text by dragging across the text. Then adjust the Kerning control.
Auto kern. Automatically sets the kerning appropriately for the font. Let’s actually enter some text. Select the Text tool, then choose the setting for Create as. (You won’t be able to change the Create as setting when the Text Entry dialog box is displayed. For this time, choose Floating.) Click the place in your image that you want your text to begin. In the text box of the Text Entry dialog box (labeled Enter text here), you enter the text. You can simply enter text of a single font, size, color, and other characteristics or you can vary the text characteristics for any part of the text string. Suppose you start out by entering the text shown in Figure 7.3, with Arial Black as the font and a size of 48, no stroke, no special font style, and the Fill color set to a shade of medium blue. Figure 7.3 Entering size 48 Arial Black text in the Text Entry dialog box
You can have different characteristics for any substring of the text. For a character or string of characters that you haven’t yet typed into the Text Entry dialog box, just change whatever characteristics you like on the Tool Options palette or Materials palette, then type in your new text. For text that you’ve already entered, highlight the portion of the text you want by holding down the left mouse button and dragging, and then choose whatever settings you want for that portion of text. In Figure 7.4, the text shown in Figure 7.3 has been modified in several places:
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Leading. The Leading control affects the amount of space between lines of text. Enter positive values to increase the spacing, and enter negative values to decrease the spacing. Set the leading by clicking at the end of a line and adjusting the Leading control. (By the way, “leading” rhymes with “bedding.” “Lead” here refers to the lead strips that were used by typesetters to increase the spacing between lines of type.)
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“easy” now has a blue stroke and a yellow fill and is italicized, the font for “add” and “image” has been changed, “add” now has a gradient fill, and “image” has an orange fill and is italicized and underlined. Figure 7.4 Changing some of the text
Notice that the characteristics of the text in the Text Entry dialog box don’t change—what you see there is always plain black text. As you type, though, look at your actual image. There the text appears with all the characteristics you specify in the Tool Options palette and the Materials palette.
Enhancing Text with 3D Effects So far we’ve looked at text as you enter it. By varying the settings for the Text tool on both the Tool Options palette and the Materials palette, you can get quite a few different text effects. You aren’t limited to effects that can be achieved with the Text tool alone. You can also create greatlooking text by using 3D Effects on text selections or text that appears on its own raster layer. These effects are available from the 3D Effects menu option of the Effects menu. For example, to make your text appear to float above the background, you can add a drop shadow with Effects > 3D Effects > Drop Shadow. To make your text itself appear to have some depth, you can bevel the text with Effects > 3D Effects > Inner Bevel. Let’s look at an example. Figure 7.5 shows a text selection as it was first created with the Text tool, with Create as set to Floating.
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Figure 7.5 Some floating text
CHAPTER 7 With the floating text selection active, apply a bevel with Inner Bevel, then apply a drop shadow with Drop Shadow. After applying the drop shadow, turn off the selection by right-clicking with the Text tool or by pressing Ctrl+D. The result will look something like Figure 7.6. Figure 7.6 Text enhanced with Inner Bevel and Drop Shadow
You can also produce some interesting effects with text that was made with Create as set to Selection. Suppose, for example, that you start out with a text selection on a stone-patterned background. You can make the text appear to be carved into the stone, as in Figure 7.7. With the text selection active, choose Effects > 3D Effects > Cutout, with Horizontal and Vertical offsets both set to 9, Opacity set to 75, Blur set to 12.5, Shadow color set to black, and Fill with interior color unchecked. Then apply Effects > 3D Effects > Drop Shadow, with Horizontal and Vertical offsets both set to 2, Opacity set to 100, Blur set to 6.5, Color set to white.
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Figure 7.7 Carved text created with Cutout and Drop Shadow
NOTE You can’t use Paint Shop Pro’s Effects on vector text—or on any vector object. If you want to add Paint Shop Pro’s Effects to text that you’ve created as vector, you’ll first need to convert the vector layer containing the text to a raster layer. On the Layers palette, right-click the Layer button of the vector layer containing the vector text and choose Convert to Raster Layer. You can simulate some effects using vector objects. For example, to make a vector drop shadow, copy your vector text by right-clicking its Object button on the Layer Palette and choosing Copy, then paste a new copy by rightclicking again and choosing Paste New Vector Selection. Position the new vector selection so that it is just offset a bit from the original text. Double-click the Object button of the original text, and in the Materials palette, set the Stroke to Transparent and the Fill to either Solid Color or Gradient, depending on the effect you want for your shadow. Set the color of the Fill to grey (or to whatever color or gradient you want for your drop shadow). The result will look something like what’s shown in Figure 7.8. Figure 7.8 A simulated vector drop shadow
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Warping and Deforming Raster Text In this section, we’ll look at a couple of interesting ways to deform raster text. We’ll work through an example that makes use of the Deform tool and the Warp Brush, both of which were examined in Chapter 2, “The Painting Tools.”
Figure 7.9 A floating text selection
Now promote this floating selection to a layer either by choosing Selections > Promote Selection to Layer; by right-clicking on the floating selection’s layer button on the Layers palette and choosing Promote Selection to Layer in the context menu; or just by pressing Ctrl+Shift+P. Then turn off the selection with Selections > None or by pressing Ctrl+D. Now choose the Deform tool and use it to resize, rotate, and deform your text, as in Figure 7.10. Figure 7.10 Text on the promoted layer modified with the Deform tool
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What you’ll want is a string of text on its own raster layer. Start off by choosing the Text tool, then select Floating in the Create as drop-down list on the Tool Options palette. After applying your text, you’ll have a floating selection, as in Figure 7.9.
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Then choose the Warp Brush and go wild. With the Warp Mode set to Noise, run the brush along the edges of the text. (The higher the setting in the Noise JNE, the more ragged the text edge will become.) Use Push as the Warp Mode to push out some of the edges of the text. Try Expand in the white space inside the letters to make those areas larger. Use Iron Out or Unwarp if you want to selectively undo any warping you’ve made. The final result will look something like what’s shown in Figure 7.11. Figure 7.11
The completed warped text
Modifying Vector Text Vector text can be modified in two ways. First, you can modify the standard vector properties by right-clicking the text’s object button on the Layers palette and choosing Properties. This brings up the Vector Properties dialog box, just as for any vector object. Second, you can call up the Text dialog box by double-clicking the text’s object button or by double-clicking with the Text tool on the text itself. You can modify any of the settings in the Text tool’s dialog box—including the Font, Size, Kerning, and Leading—or on the Materials palette.
Creating Text on a Path To make text conform to a path, first define a path by drawing a vector line or preset vector shape and then “attach” the vector text to the path. 1.
Begin by creating a path. For this example, we’ll draw a horizontal S-shaped curve for the path. Choose the Pen tool, and on the Materials palette, set the Stroke style to Solid Color, with the color set to anything other than the image canvas color. In the Tool Options palette, select Point to Point as the segment type, and be sure that Create as vector is selected.
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To begin the path, click about halfway down on your image canvas a few pixels to the right of the left edge. Drag straight down until the head of the arrow control is within a few pixels of the bottom edge. Then click near the right edge of the image canvas and drag again straight down until the head of the arrow control is within a few pixels of the bottom edge (see Figure 7.12).
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Figure 7.12 Defining the path
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Choose the Text tool. On the Tool Options palette, set Create as to whatever you like—Selection, Floating, or Vector. Choose the font and font size you want. You also can select Antialias here, if you like. Set the styles and textures on the Material palette to get the Stroke and Fill that you want for your text.
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Choose the alignment for your text. For text on a path, Align Left positions your text so that it begins at the point you click on, Center centers the text around the point you click on, and Right Align positions the text so that it ends at the point you click on.
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Click on the vector curve. (You’ll know that the cursor is positioned so that it will follow the path when it changes to an A with a curve below it.) The Text Entry dialog box then appears.
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Enter the text you want in the Text Entry dialog box and click Apply. You’ll then see something like the image shown in Figure 7.13.
Figure 7.13 Text conforming to a path
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If you created your text as vector text, both the curve and the text are now selected. You can move, resize, or deform them with the Object Selection tool just as you can any other vector objects. You also can modify the curve with Node Edit (see Chapter 6). 7.
You probably don’t want the curve itself to be visible. There are a couple ways to make the path invisible. If you expand the vector layer information on the Layers palette, you can just click the Visibility toggle on the curve’s Object button. Another alternative is to access the curve’s Properties dialog box and deselect Visible.
NOTE In the example above, Warp Text was selected in the Tool Options palette. With this option, the shape of each text character is warped to better conform to the path. When this option is not selected, each text character retains its normal shape. Compare the two examples in Figure 7.14.
Figure 7.14 Warp Text selected (top) and unselected (bottom)
TIP Notice how in the bottom example in Figure 7.14 (where Warp Text was unselected) the text along the curve is squashed together between the v and the e. You can correct problems like this by adjusting the spacing of the whole string of text, or character by character, with kerning. Figure 7.15 shows the version of our text-on-a-path example where Warp Text is unselected, with the kerning between the v and e adjusted. You can also adjust how close the text on the path is to the path. To move the text above the path, set Leading to a positive value. To move the text below the path, set Leading to a negative value.
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Figure 7.15 Warp Text unselected and kerning adjusted
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Converting Text to Curves Text that is created as a vector can be converted to curves. The text can be converted as one multipath object or as individual objects for each character in the text string. To convert vector text to a curve, select the text and right-click on the image canvas with the Object Selection tool. On the pop-up menu, select either Convert Text to Curves > As Single Shape or Convert Text to Curves > As Character Shapes. (Alternatively, right-click the vector text’s object button on the Layers palette, and select Covert Text to Curves in the context menu.) Figure 7.16 shows a text character converted to a character shape. Once a character is converted to a shape, it can be edited with the Pen tool in Node Edit mode. Figure 7.16 shows the converted character with its nodes revealed, in the middle of being modified in Node Edit. Figure 7.16 A character shape being edited with the Pen tool in Node Edit mode
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NOTE Immediately after you convert text to a curve as individual character shapes, the entire vector layer containing the character shapes is selected. If your converted text has more than one character, all of the characters are selected. To enter Node Edit mode with the Pen tool, you first need to select only a single character: Click the character’s Object button on the Layers palette or select the character with the Object Selection tool.
Examples In this section, we’ll look at just a couple of other effects you can achieve with the Text tool. Both of the techniques here are particularly useful in a business setting.
Creating a Logo There are several ways you could go about creating the basic shape for a logo: draw the logo by hand with the Pen tool, create the logo by combining Preset Shapes, or use a dingbat text character. Let’s try the last of these alternatives, using a dingbat character to create the logo’s basic shape and then adding some text. Figure 7.17 shows the logo for the fictitious Corolla Corporation. Figure 7.17 A logo created with a dingbat character and text
To create this logo, begin by opening a new 300-by-300 pixel image with a white background, then select the Text tool, and in the Tool Options palette, set Create as to Vector. Click in the center of the image canvas with the Text tool. In the Tool Options palette, select the dingbat font that contains the dingbat character that you want to use (ButtonButton, a free font from Astigmatic One Eye, is used in this example). Set the size to 100 by typing that value in the Size box, and set the Stroke to 0. In the Materials palette,
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set the Fill to Solid Color, setting the color as you like. In the Text Entry dialog box, type the letter key that is associated with the character you want (c is used in the example). The dingbat character appears in the image canvas, as in Figure 7.18.
Click Apply. While the vector text is selected, drag on the selection handles if you want to adjust the size of the dingbat. You can also center the dingbat in the image canvas by choosing Objects > Align > Center in Canvas. When the dingbat is sized and positioned correctly, copy the text object by right-clicking the dingbat’s Object button on the Layers palette and selecting Copy. Right-click the dingbat’s Object button again and select Paste New Vector Selection. Position the pasted-in copy so that it covers the original dingbat character. Next, click the copied dingbat’s Object button to bring up the Text Entry dialog box. Highlight the character in the Enter text here text box. On the Materials palette, change the Fill to white. Click Apply. With the Object Selection tool, drag the now-white dingbat character to the right, creating the effect shown in Figure 7.19. Figure 7.19 Partially overlapping the original dingbat with a white copy of the dingbat
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Figure 7.18 Entering a dingbat character as a vector
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Now you’re ready to enter the text. Choose the Text tool and set Create as to Vector. Click anywhere in the image canvas that is outside the vector selection boundary of the dingbat characters. (If you click inside the selection boundary, the text that you enter will replace the dingbat.) Choose the font, size, and color for the text. Then click Apply. If you need to, drag the text to the position you want. Select both copies of the dingbat and the text by clicking the Object button of the text and then hold down the Shift key while clicking the Object button of each copy of the dingbat. With the Object Selection tool, hold down the Shift key and drag on one of the vector selection handles to slant the logo to the right. Drag with the top selection handle and the bottom selection handle to compress the logo vertically. The logo is then complete. Save the image in PSP format. That way, whenever you want to, you can easily resize the logo with the Object Selection tool or recolor the logo by calling up the Vector Properties dialog box. When you want to use the logo in a print document, you can save it in a suitable format, such as BMP or TIFF, using Save Copy As. When you want to save the logo for display on the Web, save a copy as GIF with Save Copy As or with File > Export > GIF Optimizer.
Making Text Stand Out on a Complex Background If you’re adding text to a landscape in order to make a travel poster or placing text on a photo of bunches of bananas for an advertising sign, you might find that no matter what color you choose for the text, the text just doesn’t show up very well in at least some parts of the image, as illustrated in Figure 7.20. Figure 7.20 Less than easily readable text on a complex background
This problem is very easy to solve, though: add a contrasting glow around the text. You’ve probably seen this technique used many, many times without realizing it—in television ads, on sales posters in supermarkets and department stores, and on magazine covers. Just follow these simple steps:
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Open the image you want to use as the background for your poster or ad. Then choose the Text tool, set Create as to Floating, and enter your text, using whatever color and other settings are appropriate.
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Now add the glow. Choose Effects > 3D Effects > Drop Shadow. In the Drop Shadow dialog box, set both the Vertical and Horizontal offsets to 0. Set Color to a color compatible with the image as a whole but that is either much darker or much lighter than your text color. Checking the results in the preview window, set Opacity and Blur to whatever gives you good results. There’s no reason to go overboard—only a very subtle edging is needed. In this example, I used a dark grey color with Opacity set to 100 and Blur set to 5, then added a second Drop Shadow with Opacity set to 28, Blur set to 5, and this time with the offsets each set to 4.
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Turn off the selection with Selections > None or by pressing Ctrl+D. Then save your image. The results should be something like what’s shown in Figure 7.21.
Figure 7.21 Enhanced readability with little effort
And that’s all! What could be easier? Yet the difference in appearance and readability between the original and the enhanced text is striking. These examples and others given in this chapter should give you an idea of what you can do with text in Paint Shop Pro. Try modifying raster text with other 3-D effects, and explore what can be done with vector text. You’re sure to come up with some exciting uses of text in your graphics.
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Chapter 8 Paint Shop Pro includes numerous tools and filters to help you retouch and repair your digital photos. In this chapter, you’ll examine all of these: Photo-editing commands and adjustment layers The Clone Brush, retouching tools, and the Scratch Remover tool Tools and commands for cropping, resizing, and rotating your images Tools and commands for correcting perspective and lens distortion At the end of the chapter, you’ll also take a look at a real-world photo and see how Paint Shop Pro can be used to enhance it.
Overview of Enhance Photo Commands Let’s begin with a brief overview of the photo-editing commands available in the Enhance Photo drop-down list on the Photo toolbar. (If the Photo toolbar is not currently displayed in your workspace, choose View > Toolbars > Photo. These commands are also available in various submenus of the Adjust menu.) The commands available in Enhance Photo are shown in Figure 8.1. Figure 8.1 The Enhance Photo options available on the Photo toolbar
The easiest and quickest of the commands here is One Step Photo Fix. Open your photo in Paint Shop Pro, apply One Step Photo Fix, and in most cases, your image will be noticeably improved. This method is definitely one you should try, especially if you’re new to photo editing.
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The next six commands on the list should be used together, and in the order listed. Automatic Color Balance adjusts the overall color of your photo. Automatic Contrast Enhancement adjusts the contrast of your photo. Clarify sharpens your photo, bringing out details—especially in shadow areas—and further affecting the photo’s contrast. The contrast adjustments can wash out the colors in photo. If you’re editing a color photo, you’ll want to finish up with Automatic Saturation Enhancement to put some life back into your colors. If your photo is noisy (that is, has excess graininess), Edge Preserving Smooth can be helpful. That smoothing can reduce the sharpness of the photo, though, so following it with a touch of Sharpen is usually a good idea. The default settings for all of these commands will probably be just fine. In fact, if you apply these commands in the order given and with their default settings, you’ll pretty much be duplicating One Step Photo Fix. Having the interactive commands gives you some control over your adjustments; these commands do a lot of calculations automatically, but you can tweak them a bit. Automatic Color Adjustment. This command automatically adjusts your photo’s color. If you want to use the automatic adjustment functions on a photo, begin with this one. Also available from Adjust > Color Balance > Automatic Color Adjustment. Automatic Contrast Adjustment. This automatically adjusts your photo’s contrast. Do any color adjustment that you want before applying this command. Also available from Adjust > Brightness and Contrast > Automatic Contrast Adjustment. Clarify. This command sharpens blurred images. This one is especially good for improving the definition of textured areas, such as hair, or for revealing details hidden in shadow. Apply after Automatic Contrast Adjustment. Also available from Adjust > Brightness and Contrast > Clarify. Automatic Saturation Adjustment. This automatically adjusts the saturation of your photo. It’s usually best to apply this command after you’ve already made any necessary adjustments to color and contrast. Also available from Adjust > Hue and Saturation > Automatic Saturation Adjustment. Edge Preserving Smooth. This eliminates noise in your photo without blurring edges. Keep the setting for this one pretty low if you want a realistic look. Higher values are good if you want to make your image look like a painting rather than a photo. Also available from Adjust > Add/Remove Noise > Edge Preserving Smooth. Sharpen. This command counteracts blurring that might be present in your photo or that is introduced by image editing effects such as blur filters or noise reduction filters (discussed later in this chapter). The Sharpen filter is very simple—it has no controls. As we’ll soon see, there is a more sophisticated sharpening filter available in Paint Shop Pro: Unsharp Mask. Sharpen is fine for most snapshots, but when you want some control, you’ll want Unsharp Mask.
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Also available from Adjust > Sharpness > Sharpen. Red-eye Removal. The last option in the Photo Enhance drop-down list is Red-eye Removal, which is also available from Adjust > Red-eye Removal.
Red-eye Removal removes red-eye from photos of people and animals. Red-eye can be corrected by hand using the Adjust > Hue and Saturation operations, but the Redeye Removal function does an excellent job quickly and easily. Figure 8.2 shows Redeye Removal being applied to a snapshot of a cat. Figure 8.2 Applying Red-eye Removal using the Auto Animal Eye method
To apply Red-eye Removal, select the method you want to use and then click in the left window on a pupil. A selection box appears around the pupil, and the results are shown in the preview window on the right. You can move the selection box by clicking inside the selection and dragging. You can resize the selection by dragging on any of the handles along the selection boundary. If there’s more than one pupil that needs correction, click on the next pupil in the left window and make whatever adjustments you need. Repeat until you’ve corrected all the eyes that need correction, then press OK. Now let’s take a quick look at each of the other photo editing commands available on the Photo toolbar.
Correcting Lens Distortion Wide-angle, fish-eye, and telephoto lenses sometimes produce characteristic distortions in your photos. Wide-angle lenses often produce a type of distortion called “barrel distortion,” which
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“Red-eye” is the shiny red or silvery coloring of pupils that can appear in photos where a flash was used. You can get those pupils back to a more natural look with Red-eye Removal.
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makes the edges of your photo look a bit like the photo has been wrapped around a barrel. Fisheye lenses produce a similar but more extreme distortion (and sometimes photographers use fish-eye lenses purposely to get precisely this effect). Telephoto lenses sometimes produce a type of distortion called “pincushion distortion,” which make the photo look a bit like someone stuck a pin into the middle of it, pushing the middle down and pulling the edges into the middle. Paint Shop Pro has commands for correcting each type of distortion. For example, Figure 8.3 shows Barrel Distortion Correction in action. Figure 8.3 Barrel Distortion Correction at work
Notice in the left preview window that the edge of the eave is obviously bowed. As the right preview window shows, this distortion can be easily and cleanly eliminated. The lens distortion filters are also available under Adjust > Lens Correction.
TIP If you need to correct lens distortion in a photo, be sure that this is the absolute first thing you do to the photo. In particular, do not straighten, rotate, or crop your photo before correcting the lens distortion.
NOTE Paint Shop Pro also provides you with a way to simulate the various types of lens distortion. Try Effects > Distortion Effects > Lens Distortion. Adding Barrel Distortion can be useful, for example, when you want to simulate a television screen.
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Basic Color Correction The commands in the next group on the Photo toolbar are for correcting the color in your images. These commands are also available under Adjust > Color Balance.
The second of these color correction commands is Black and White Points. Black and White Points, whose dialog box is shown in Figure 8.4, can be used to correct color only or to correct color and tone simultaneously. Figure 8.4 The Black and White Points dialog box
When you’re first exploring this filter, keep the Preserve lightness check box selected; otherwise, you might accidentally degrade areas of shadow and/or highlight. Perhaps the most useful mode for this filter is with Balance to Grey selected. In this mode, you can tell Paint Shop Pro what colors in your photo should be pure black, pure white, or neutral grey. For example, click the dropper icon in the Black column, then position the cursor in the left preview on the color that should be pure black, and click. Notice that the Original color in the Black column is then set to the color you just sampled. Do the same thing, if you like, for White and Grey. If you make a mistake and want to undo a color selection, right-click on the appropriate dropper. The last of these color correction commands, Manual Color Correction, is somewhat more complex but also the most powerful of the three. Manual Color Correction shifts the colors in your image. In the Manual Color Correction dialog box (shown in Figure 8.5), make a selection in the left preview window to define a source color or set of colors, then choose a target color. The colors in your image are then shifted toward the target color.
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The first, Fade Correction, is for fixing color photos whose dyes have faded because of age. Some faded photos will have lost too much data to benefit from Fade Correction, but it does a surprisingly good job in most cases.
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Figure 8.5 The Manual Color Correction dialog box
By default, you make a rectangular selection by dragging in the right preview. You can also select Freehand if you want to make a nonrectangular selection. Then choose how to do the color shift and what color to shift to. With Preset target color, you can choose from a variety of natural and pure colors, with the option of preserving the lightness and saturation of the original image. The other option for the color shift is Manual target color, where you select the hue, saturation, and lightness by hand.
Histogram Adjustment and Adjust HSL The next group of commands includes one for adjusting the brightness and contrast of your photo (Histogram Adjustment) and another that allows you to adjust hue, saturation, and lightness (Adjust HSL). As mentioned in Chapter 1, “Paint Shop Pro 8 Basics,” in the discussion of the Histogram window, a histogram is a representation of the color and tonal data of an image. The left side of the histogram represents the data at the shadow end of the tonal range. The right side represents data at the highlight end. And the middle of the histogram represents the midtones. The Histogram Adjustment filter, which is also available from Adjust > Brightness and Contrast > Histogram Adjustment, presents you with the histogram for your image, along with a set of controls for correcting the image. You can correct the Red, Green, or Blue color channels or the Luminosity (the tonal or brightness values). Until you become adept at Histogram Adjustment, I recommend you stick with adjusting only the Luminosity. The Histogram Adjustment dialog box is shown in Figure 8.6.
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Figure 8.6 The Histogram Adjustment dialog box
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The histogram occupies the center of the dialog box, below the preview windows, surrounded by various controls. The histogram of the original image is presented in grey. In addition, you can choose to view the adjusted histogram as a red overlay over the original histogram. The first step you should take is to examine the ends of the original histogram. If there’s a gap at the left end, drag the Low arrow to the right. This darkens the image, creating true black in the darkest areas of the image. If there’s a gap at the right end, drag the High arrow to the left. This lightens the image, creating true white in the lightest areas of the image. Below the Low and High arrows are a pair of numeric edit controls, one member of each pair showing a value between 0 and 254 and another showing a percentage value. These values update as you drag the arrows, or you can fine-tune the adjustments by entering values directly in the boxes. In general, try to keep the Low and High percentage values within the range of 0.000 to 0.100 percent. After you’ve adjusted the Low and High values, examine the adjusted image in the right preview window. If the overall image is too dark, drag the Gamma arrow to the right. If the overall image is too light, drag the Gamma arrow to the left. Be careful with Gamma adjustment, though. When you reveal details in the shadows, you may lose detail in the highlights. Conversely, when you reveal details in the highlights, you may lose detail in the shadows. The final step is to examine the adjusted histogram. If there are peaks at the ends and a depression in the middle, then drag the Midtone slider up toward compress. If there is a peak in the middle and little data at the ends, then drag the Midtone slider down toward expand. In general, you’ll want to keep these adjustments rather small. For normal photo adjustments, that’s pretty much all you’ll need to know about Histogram Adjustment. Histogram Adjustment is really the only brightness and contrast filter you’ll ever need other than Automatic Contrast Adjustment and Clarify. If you have only enough time to concentrate on one photo adjustment function, put your efforts into mastering Histogram Adjustment.
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Adjust HSL (also available from Adjust > Hue and Saturation > Hue/Saturation/Lightness) gives you control over your image’s hue, saturation, and lightness—either individually or in concert. Its dialog box is shown in Figure 8.7. Figure 8.7 The Hue/Saturation/ Lightness dialog box
With Hue/Saturation/Lightness, you can adjust both the color and the brightness of your image. Color is made up of hue and saturation. Hue is close to what you might normally think of as color. Saturation is the intensity or “purity” of the color. Adjustments to Hue shift the hue from red to yellow to green to cyan to blue to magenta and back to red as you travel counterclockwise along the color wheel. Adjustments to Saturation take you from high intensity to total desaturation (grey). Adjustments to lightness increase or decrease brightness. You can also use Adjust HSL to tint your image, in order to give it the look of a duotone. For this, select the Colorize check box. Then adjust the Hue, Saturation, and Lightness sliders to get the effect you want. For example, try Hue 210, Saturation 43, and Lightness 0 to get a cyanotype effect.
JPEG Artifact Removal and Unsharp Mask The last two commands on the Photo toolbar have nothing in common, except that each is quite useful. JPEG Artifact Removal minimizes JPEG artifacts. Artifacts are blurry blocks of color produced by JPEG compression, especially when an image is over-compressed. JPEG Artifact Removal smoothes out these murky areas and sharpens the results up a bit. Be careful with JPEG Artifact Removal, though, since it can also eliminate image detail. Unsharp Mask is a sharpening filter whose name confuses many people. The name refers to a darkroom method that uses blurred versions of a negative and sandwiches them together to produce a sharpened print—surprising, perhaps, but very effective.
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Unsharp Mask is the sharpening filter of choice in Paint Shop Pro. It has controls for Radius (the number of pixels affected), Strength (the intensity of the sharpening), and Clipping (the amount of contrast between pixels necessary in order for the sharpening to be applied). Figure 8.8 shows the dialog box for Unsharp Mask.
Values between 0.50 and 2.00 are usually best for Radius. For Strength, 100 or lower usually produces good results. For Clipping, start out with the default value and adjust to get just the right degree of sharpening. Keep in mind that you’ll need relatively little sharpening for an image that will be displayed on a video screen and appreciably more sharpening for an image you intend to print.
Some Other Adjust Menu Commands In this section, we’ll very briefly look at some of the commands accessed from the Adjust menu that adjust things other than color and brightness/contrast. In the next section, we’ll look at the remaining Adjust commands.
Blur Filters The Blur filters blur your image and can be used to reduce the graininess or soften the background of a digital photo. You apply the Blur filters by choosing Adjust > Blur > the effect, where the effect is one of the seven available Blur effects. Blur and Blur More. These effects are applied immediately—there are no settings for these filters. Average, Gaussian Blur, and Motion Blur. Each of these effects has a dialog box in which you can adjust settings, giving you more control over how much the blur is applied. Figure 8.9 shows the dialog box for Gaussian Blur.
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Figure 8.8 The Unsharp Mask dialog box
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Figure 8.9 The Gaussian Blur dialog box
Sharpness Filters The Sharpness filters do the opposite of blurring. They heighten the contrast between pixels and can be used to give the effect of sharpening the focus in a blurry photo. Apply the Sharpen filters with Adjust > Sharpness > effect, where effect is one of the three Sharpness effects. We’ve already looked at Sharpen and Unsharp Mask. The only remaining Sharpness filter is Sharpen More. Like Sharpen, the Sharpen More filter is applied immediately—it has no settings. Sharpen More gives a more pronounced sharpening effect than Sharpen.
Softness Filters The Softness filters produce soft, blurry effects. Apply the Softness filters with Adjust > Softness > effect name, where effect name is one of the Softness effects. Soften and Soften More. These are applied immediately—there are no settings for these filters. Soft Focus. This filter simulates the effect of a photographic soft focus filter. Use it to produce dreamy, romantic effects. It seems to soften the focus, and it optionally adds a haloing effect.
Add/Remove Noise Filters The Add/Remove Noise filters enable you to add or remove noise from a photo. Apply the Add/Remove Noise filters with Adjust > Add/Remove Noise > effect name, where effect name is one of the Add/Remove Noise effects. Add. This effect adds noise to an image, increasing graininess. (The rest of the Noise filters are used to remove noise and so decrease graininess.)
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Use Add Noise when you’ve reworked an area of a photo with the Paintbrush or Clone Brush, losing texture as a result. Select the textureless area with the Freehand selection tool, feather the selection, and then add a bit of noise. You might also want to blur the area slightly after adding the noise.
Deinterlace. This effect removes scan lines from images captured from a television or video tape. Moiré Pattern Removal. This minimizes moiré effects produced when a printed image is scanned. Despeckle and Salt and Pepper. Despeckle, which has no controls, removes singlepixel specks, and Salt and Pepper removes specks that are larger than a single pixel. For Salt and Pepper, you tell Paint Shop Pro the size of the specks and what level of tolerance to use in deciding what is to be considered a speck. You can also set whether Paint Shop Pro treats dark and light areas smaller than the size you set as specks and whether Paint Shop Pro should be especially aggressive in deciding what is to be considered a speck. Median. This removes noise one pixel at a time by taking the median of the colors surrounding a pixel and then setting the color value for the pixel to that median value. By setting Median’s Filter Aperture control, you control how large of an area the filter considers when it calculates the median. Edge Preserving Smooth and Texture Preserving Smooth. We’ve already looked at Edge Preserving Smooth, which removes noise while maintaining detail along edges. Also available is Texture Preserving Smooth, which removes noise while maintaining texture detail. Another Add/Remove Noise filter is JPEG Artifact Removal, which we already looked at earlier in this chapter.
Negative Image Negative Image does just what its name implies, producing a version of your image that resembles a photographic negative. White becomes black, black becomes white, and each color is changed to its complementary color (for example, blue becomes yellow, red becomes cyan).
Color and Contrast Adjustment As was mentioned earlier in this chapter, several of the basic photo-enhancement functions available in the Adjust menu can help you adjust the color and contrast of your images: Automatic Color Balance, Automatic Contrast Enhancement, Automatic Saturation Enhancement, Clarify, Fade Correction, Black and White Points, and Manual Color Correction. In addition to these, Paint Shop Pro provides several other color and contrast adjustment operations, also available in the Adjust menu.
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Automatic Small Scratch Removal. This removes small scratches automatically. You might want instead to try the Scratch Remover tool (discussed later in this chapter).
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In this section, we’ll briefly look at these commands, but if you’re just beginning with photo correction, you can safely ignore most or all of these commands until you feel more comfortable using the basic photo effects. Let’s begin with the Color Balance commands other than Automatic Color Balance, Black and White Points, Fade Correction, and Manual Color Correction, which we’ve already looked at: Channel Mixer. One way to represent color is the Red/Green/Blue color model, where each color is a combination of different levels of red, green, and blue. Each of the three basic colors has a channel, a greyscale bitmap representing the data for that color. The Channel Mixer lets you increase or decrease the amount of red, green, or blue in your image’s color by directly adjusting the color channels. Color Balance. Here’s another means of adjusting the overall color of your image. In this case, you can adjust the color for different tonal ranges—shadow, midtones, and highlights—separately. With Color Balance you increase the amount of a color by moving the appropriate slider toward that color. To decrease a color, move the appropriate slider toward the color’s complementary color. For example, to reduce the amount of red in an image, move the Cyan-Red slider toward Cyan. Grey World Color Balance. This is very much like Automatic Color Balance except that the algorithm it employs makes use of the Grey World assumption (that for images of the natural world the colors in the image will average to a shade of grey). This filter has many uses, one of which is to correct as much as possible the color of an underexposed photo, as in Figure 8.10. Figure 8.10 Using Grey World Color Balance to revive an underexposed photo
Red/Green/Blue. This filter provides you with another means of adjusting the Red, Green, and Blue channels of your image. Here you can increase or decrease the brightness of each of the channels.
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Next, let’s examine the Brightness and Contrast commands other than Automatic Contrast Enhancement, Clarify, and Histogram Adjustment:
TIP When you increase brightness, your image can become washed out. Generally, when you increase brightness, you’ll also want to increase contrast to counteract this effect.
Curves. This filter provides one of the best means of adjusting brightness and contrast. With Curves, you begin with a plot of your image’s brightness values that looks like a straight line. You can add points to this line in order to make a curve, adjusting the curve by dragging the points. Pulling up on a point increases brightness, and pulling down on a point decreases brightness. Points on the left side of the curve affect shadows, points on the right affect highlights, and points in the middle affect midtones. Increasing the slope of the curve increases contrast. Histogram Equalize and Histogram Stretch. These modify your photo’s histogram. Equalize evens out the values along the whole tonal range, from shadow to highlight. Stretch “stretches out” the histogram so that the image includes true black and true white. Both of these filters are rather crude. You’ll get much better results with Histogram Adjustment. Gamma Correction. With Gamma Correction, you adjust the brightness of any or all of the three color channels (Red, Green, and Blue). Increasing the brightness of one channel increases the amount of that color in your image. This operation provides a better means of increasing the brightness of your image than Brightness/Contrast does, but you’ll get even better results with Histogram Adjustment. Highlight/Midtone/Shadow. This filter provides two methods of adjusting the brightness values of your image: the Linear adjustment method and the Dynamic adjustment method. Both methods let you adjust shadows, midtones, and highlights separately. Levels. Like Curves, Levels provides a sophisticated means of adjusting the brightness and contrast of your image. You can adjust the entire image (by choosing RGB in the Channel drop-down list) or any one of the basic color channels (Red, Green, or Blue). Click the Help button in the Levels dialog box for more information on this filter.
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Brightness/Contrast. As the name says, this operation enables you to adjust the brightness and contrast of your image. Brightness/Contrast is very easy to use. However, for more control and better results, you’ll want to use one of the other adjustment filters, such as Curves, Levels, or Histogram Adjustment.
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Threshold. This filter changes all of the pixels in your image to pure black and pure white. You select the brightness threshold; everything below that threshold is converted to black, and everything above the threshold is converted to white. Now let’s look at the Hue and Saturation commands other than Automatic Saturation Enhancement and Hue/Saturation/Lightness: Colorize. This is an alternative to the Colorize mode of Hue/Saturation/Lightness, although the Colorize filter gives you control only over hue and saturation, not lightness. Note also that the scales for Hue and Saturation in Colorize do not match the ones used in Hue/Saturation/Lightness, so the values used in one of these two filters cannot be directly transferred to the other to get the same results. Hue Map. The top line of the Hue Map shows color swatches that are like slices of the color wheel that have been laid out in a straight line. You can change the color of your image within one of the ranges represented by these swatches by adjusting the relevant slider. The resulting shift is represented on the corresponding swatch at the bottom of the slider. Hue Map also lets you adjust overall saturation and overall brightness.
Adjustment Layers Several of these adjustments are also available as adjustment layers. The advantage of using an adjustment layer, rather than applying these adjustments directly, is that you can readily modify the adjustment—even in a later edit after you’ve saved your file to disk. To add an adjustment layer, choose Layers > Add New Adjustment Layer > adjustment name, where adjustment name is the particular adjustment you want to make. The adjustment layer affects all layers lower than the adjustment layer in the layer stack. If you want to restrict the adjustment to just some of the lower layers, make one of the layers that isn’t an adjustment layer the active layer, create a layer group by selecting the New Layer Group icon on the Layers palette toolbar, then move the adjustment layer and whatever layers you want to be affected into that layer group, placing the adjustment layer highest in the group. (See Chapter 4, “Working with Layers and Masks,” for information on layer groups and moving layers in the layer stack.) Adjustment layers are like other layers in that you can adjust their opacity (and blend mode) and edit them. Like a mask, an adjustment layer is represented as shades of grey, black, and white. If you want to keep an adjustment from applying to a particular area, paint over that area on the adjustment layer with black. If you want the adjustment to apply more subtly to a particular area, paint over that area on the adjustment layer with grey. To make editing the adjustment layer easier, turn on the adjustment layer’s overlay by pressing the adjustment layer’s Mask Overlay toggle on the Layers palette. The result will look something like Figure 8.11. After editing, what you’ll see is something like what is shown in Figure 8.12. To turn the overlay off, just click the Mask Overlay toggle again.
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Figure 8.11 A Threshold adjustment layer with its Mask Overlay toggle on
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Figure 8.12 The mask overlay after editing the adjustment layer
Cloning, Retouching, and Scratch Removal The Clone Brush, retouching tools, and the Scratch Removal tool are all handy for repairing damaged or marred photos. With the Clone Brush, you paint copies of pixels from one portion of your photo onto another part of your photo. With the retouching tools, you can retouch parts of your image in a variety of ways, including lightening, darkening, softening, sharpening, and much more. The Scratch Removal tool does just what its names implies: removes scratches and other narrow imperfections.
The Clone Brush The Clone Brush set to Aligned mode is great for covering imperfections in photos. For example, suppose that you wanted to remove the clamshell from the rail in the photo shown in Figure 8.13. All you need is the Clone Brush.
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Figure 8.13 An image that includes an object you’d like to remove
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Open the original photo image. Choose the Clone Brush tool and set the brush shape to Round or Square, the size to about 30, and the step fairly low. (The size you should choose for the brush will depend on the dimensions of your photo and how restricted you want the application of the cloning to be.)
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Set all the other brush property controls on the Tool Options palette to their maximums, set Blend mode to Normal, and choose Aligned mode. On the Materials palette, be sure that the Foreground texture is toggled off.
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Right-click several pixels away from the object or imperfection that you want to remove and carefully start painting over it. If you make a mistake, click the Undo button on the Paint Shop Pro toolbar or press Ctrl+Z. Because you’re in Aligned mode, you’ll pick up your paint in the right place when you start to paint again. Clicking the area you want to cover, rather than dragging, will probably yield the best results.
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Continue in this way until the whole object or imperfection is painted out. If you need to adjust the source point at any time in the process, just right-click again at the point where you want to start picking up paint. The finished product for the example photo is shown in Figure 8.14.
Figure 8.14 The corrected image
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This method is useful not only for painting out intrusive objects, such as the clamshell in the previous example or a mole on the subject’s face in a portrait, but also for correcting other imperfections in a photo, such as dust spots or scratches. It can even be used to make strange fantasy images (for example, by cloning an animal’s head onto a human body).
There are two groups of retouching tools. The first group includes Dodge, Burn, Smudge, Push, Soften, Sharpen, and Emboss. The second group includes Lighten/Darken, Saturation, Hue, and Change To Target. Most of the tools in these two groups—including Dodge, Burn, Soften, Sharpen, and all the ones affecting color or brightness—are useful for retouching photos. (And many of these tools— including Soften, Sharpen, Emboss, Smudge, and Push—are good not only for retouching digital photos, but also for creating interesting effects in digital drawings and paintings.)
TIP You can use the Smudge and Push tools to convert a photorealistic image into a painting or to create your own freehand paintings.
Consider, for example, the photo shown in the upper-left area of Figure 8.15, where the background is in sharp focus. To give the image a feeling of depth, use Soften to blur the background. In the retouched version, in the lower-right area of Figure 8.15, Soften was used in several passes at 100 percent Opacity on the wall and in a single pass at about 30 percent on the floor, to create a gradual fading of detail from the foreground to the background. Figure 8.15 Creating some depth with Retouch
Lighten/Darken was also applied at a very low opacity along some of the edges of the ear, head, and elsewhere to add a little more definition. (Used with the left mouse button, Lighten/Darken lightens areas you paint on. Used with the right mouse button, Lighten/Darken darkens areas you paint on.)
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The Scratch Remover Use the Scratch Remover to repair scratches and similar long, narrow imperfections in your digital photos. For example, you can remove the hair lying across the photo shown in Figure 8.16. Figure 8.16 A photo that could be repaired with the Scratch Remover
In the Scratch Remover’s Tool Options palette, set the Width and the Selection Box. Then drag the tool along a segment of the imperfection, as in Figure 8.17. When you release the mouse button, the pixels within the selection box are replaced with colors like those of the pixels just outside the selection box. Repeat the process for any remaining segments of the imperfection. Figure 8.17 Segments of the imperfection being removed with the Scratch Remover
NOTE The Scratch Remover works best on areas with relatively little texture. For repairing areas with more texture, you’ll usually get much better results with the Clone Brush. For the image shown in Figure 8.16, you could use the Scratch Remover to good effect in the areas of the sky and sand, but for the wavy ocean, the Clone Brush would work better. Something else to keep in mind is that the Scratch Remover is available only with nonlayered images. If the Scratch Remover is greyed-out, you’ll need to merge the layers of your image before you can use this tool. (See Chapter 4, “Working with Layers and Masks,” for information on merging layers.)
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Correcting Perspective
Figure 8.18 shows the photo of the chapel windows we saw earlier in the barrel distortion example. This photo also has a problem with perspective; because it was shot from a point well below the level of the windows, the windows seem to contract from bottom to top. Figure 8.18 A photo in need of perspective correction
This problem is easy to correct with Paint Shop Pro’s Perspective Correction tool, found in the Deform family of tools. With this tool, a bounding box is superimposed on your image. You drag the corners and sides of this bounding box so that it surrounds what should be rectangular, as shown in Figure 8.19. The result is something like what you see in Figure 8.20. Figure 8.19 The Perspective Correction tool in action
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We’ve already looked at correcting lens distortion (distortion introduced by the optical characteristics of a photographic lens). Another sort of distortion often found in photographs involves perspective. For example, if you take a photo of a tall tower from ground level, the tower will seem to contract toward the top. You can, however, correct the perspective in cases like this, making the tower appear more or less as it would if you had taken the photo directly at its middle.
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Figure 8.20 The corrected photo
Cropping, Resizing, and Rotating You’ll sometimes find that your photo’s composition could benefit from cropping. Maybe a photo you took with your digital camera is too large for display on your Web page, or maybe a photo you scanned was a bit crooked on the scanner bed and now you’d like to straighten it out. In these cases, cropping, resizing, and rotating can come to the rescue.
Cropping Crop an image to eliminate elements that detract from the area that you want to focus on. For example, in Figure 8.21, compare a photo’s cropped version on the right with the uncropped version on the left. The busy background is eliminated in the cropped version, drawing the viewer’s attention to the main figure. Figure 8.21 Compare the cropped photo on the right with the uncropped version on the left
One of the easiest ways to crop is to choose the Crop tool and drag it around the part of the image that you want to keep. The Crop tool defines a rectangular area, from one corner to its diagonally opposite corner. After you define the crop area, you can move it by clicking and dragging inside the crop area with the Crop tool. You also can adjust the boundaries of the crop area by positioning the mouse on any of the sides or corners of the boundary and dragging to enlarge or shrink the area. To crop to the boundaries of the crop area, either double-click within your image or click the Apply icon on the Crop tool’s Tool Options palette.
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NOTE If you want to set the crop area precisely, set the dimensions and the positioning in the Crop tool’s Tool Options palette.
CAUTION In general, you want to be sure that Antialias is unchecked and that Feather is set to 0 before you make a selection that you want to crop to. If you accidentally have Antialias or Feather set for your selection and then crop to that selection, you’ll get an edge of pixels (in the current background color) surrounding your cropped image.
If you want to crop to a nonrectangular selection while maintaining the data inside the crop boundary that is outside the selection, make your selection, then choose the Crop tool, and on the Tool Options palette press the Current Selection button (the leftmost of the three icons labeled Snap crop rectangle to).
Resizing Images and Layers You can either resize an entire image, whether that image is flat or layered, or resize a single layer in a layered image. In either case, choose Image > Resize (or press Shift+S) to access the Resize dialog box, as shown in Figure 8.22. Figure 8.22 The Resize dialog box
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Another easy way to crop is to crop to a selection. This method is especially handy if you already have a selection (particularly a nonrectangular selection) and simply want to crop to the edges of it. To use this method, with a selection active, choose Image > Crop to Selection. Paint Shop Pro defines a rectangular crop area that includes the entire selection and then crops to that area. Cropping to an irregular selection replaces any areas remaining outside the selection with the current background color, as set in the Materials palette (on a Background layer) or with transparency (on a real layer).
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Begin by looking at the bottom of the Resize dialog box, starting with the Resample using dropdown list, which includes five types from which you can choose: Smart Size. Allows Paint Shop Pro to choose which type of resizing to use. Bilinear. Makes interpolations based on the colors of adjacent pixels along the horizontal axis. This method is best for reducing the size of 24-bit and greyscale images, such as digital photos. Bicubic. Makes interpolations based on the colors of all pixels surrounding a pixel. This method is best for increasing the size of 24-bit and greyscale images, such as digital photos. Pixel Resize. Adjusts the size of the pixels in the image. This is the best method for line art. It’s the only resizing type available for color images with color depths less than 24-bit. Weighted Average. Similar to Paint Shop Pro 7’s Bicubic resample. Unless you have already used Paint Shop Pro 7 and prefer the results you get there, you should use Bicubic instead.
TIP If you want to use a resizing method other than Pixel resize on a color image that has a color depth less than 24-bit (such as a GIF), temporarily increase the color depth by choosing Image > Increase Color Depth > 16 Million Colors (24 bit).
If you want to change the actual dimensions of your image, be sure that Resample using is selected and then choose one of the resizing types. If you want to change the resolution of your image without changing the image dimensions, be sure that Resample using is not selected. Two other options located at the bottom of the Resize dialog box are Resize all layers and Lock aspect ratio. Select Resize all layers if you want to resize your entire image; leave this check box unchecked if you want to resize only the currently active layer. Select Lock aspect ratio if you want to restrict the relative dimensions of your resized image to the width-to-height ratio of the original image. This is almost always what you’ll want, because altering the aspect ratio distorts your image. Now examine the three upper panes in the Resize dialog box: Original Dimensions. Provides (noneditable) information on the original dimensions of your image. Pixel Dimensions. Specify the new Width or Height, or both, in terms of either pixels or percentage (selectable from the drop-down list). If you have the Lock aspect ratio check box checked, then you need to change only one of the dimensions—the other dimension will be calculated appropriately by Paint Shop Pro.
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Print Size. Choose units for the dimensions (either Inches or Centimeters) and for the resolution (either Pixels/Inch or Pixels/Centimeter). Then change either the dimensions or the resolution. The options in this pane are most useful if you’re going to print your image.
An alternative to using Resize to adjust the size of an image that you want to print is to choose File > Print and adjust the size of the printed image there. That way, the image file itself remains unchanged because you’re only making your printer do the resampling.
Flip, Mirror, Rotate, and Straighten Paint Shop Pro provides several operations for reorienting figures in your images, all of which are available on the Image menu. Two of these operations, Flip and Mirror, are quite simple: Image > Flip flips an image, layer, or selection vertically, making the top become the bottom and the bottom become the top. Image > Mirror gives you the mirror image of the original. The third operation for reorienting figures in your images, Image > Rotate > Free Rotate, enables you to rotate a figure any number of degrees to the left or right. This operation is only slightly more complex than Flip and Mirror. Figure 8.23 shows the controls that you can set in the Free Rotate dialog box. Figure 8.23 The Free Rotate dialog box
Keep in mind that Rotate will create new areas in the image canvas. On a nonlayered image or on a background layer, these areas will be filled with the current background color as set on the Materials palette. On a layer, these areas will be transparent. Also available under Image > Rotate is Rotate Clockwise 90 and Rotate Counterclockwise 90. Each of these rotates the entire image in the direction indicated a full 90 degrees. These are very handy for changing a photo’s orientation from landscape to portrait or from portrait to landscape.
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TIP To minimize distortion, rotate your figure fully in a single step. The fewer rotations that you apply to a figure, the less distortion that occurs. Also, if you’re editing an 8-bit image (such as a GIF), you can minimize distortion by temporarily increasing the color depth to 24-bit before using Rotate. To increase the color depth, choose Image > Increase Color Depth > 16 Million Colors (24 bit).
In past versions of Paint Shop Pro, you’d use Rotate to straighten out a crooked scan or a photo that was taken at a slight angle. In Paint Shop Pro 8, there’s an even easier way: use the Straighten tool. Choose the Straighten tool from the Deform family of tools on the Tool palette. Then adjust the tool’s guideline so that it lines up with what should be true horizontal or true vertical, as in Figure 8.24. Click the Apply button on the Tool Options palette, and the result will be something like what you see in Figure 8.25 (where the Crop Image option was chosen in the Tool Options palette). Figure 8.24 The Straighten tool in action
Figure 8.25 The straightened photo
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Example: Enhancing a Photo Now let’s work through a real-world example. Suppose you start out with the horse photo we’ve seen in some of the previous examples in this chapter, shown again in Figure 8.26. This image is a scan of an old slide, a photo taken with a wide-angle lens.
Although you can’t tell from the black-and-white figure, this slide also needs some color adjustment: There’s a blue cast and the saturation is rather high, giving the photo an unnatural look. A couple things you can see, even in black-and-white, is that the photo is pretty dark and perhaps in need of a little cropping. If your photo needs both color adjustment and cropping, it’s sometimes a good idea to do the cropping first, since then you eliminate areas of color that won’t be contributing to the finished photo. So choose the Crop tool and drag it around the area that you want to crop to. If you don’t get the crop selection quite right, position the mouse cursor over the crop border and drag the border as needed (or adjust the dimension and positioning controls on the Tool Options palette). When the crop selection is as you want it, click the Apply button on the Tool Options palette or double-click anywhere in the image canvas. The result will look something like Figure 8.27. Figure 8.27 The cropped photo
The next step is to correct the color. The easiest way to get the color more in line with nature, while still giving yourself a bit of control, is to choose Adjust > Color Balance > Automatic Color Balance. For an outdoor photo like this one, set Illuminant temperature to 6500K, Sunlight. And since part of the problem is that the photo has a bluish cast, check Remove color cast. The next step is to adjust the brightness and contrast. The easiest way to get good brightness and contrast is to choose Adjust > Brightness and Contrast > Automatic Contrast Enhancement. The default settings of Bias: Neutral, Strength: Normal, and Appearance: Natural are almost always the settings you’ll need, and those are the ones used to get the results shown in Figure 8.28.
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Figure 8.26 A scan of a slide that could use a little work
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Figure 8.28 The photo after Automatic Color Adjustment and Automatic Contrast Enhancement
To bring out the details in shadow areas and to further adjust the contrast to make the figure “pop” from the background, apply Adjust > Brightness and Contrast > Clarify next. How strong to set Clarify will depend on the individual photo, and sometimes you’ll get best results from applying Clarify twice at lower settings than once at a high setting. After the contrast and brightness have been adjusted, you might find that the colors have become a bit washed out. If that’s the case, or if the saturation is off for some other reason, the next step is to choose Adjust > Hue and Saturation > Automatic Saturation Enhancement. The default settings, where Bias and Strength are both set to Normal, are usually just what you need, and are the ones appropriate for this example. (We won’t show the results here, though, since saturation changes won’t show up in black and white.) If your photo is a portrait, you’ll probably also want to check Skintones present. If there are any slight imperfections in the image, eliminate them with the Clone Brush. In this example, I removed a few specks in the horse’s face and cloned out the cloud falling off the upper left edge of the image. The example is now complete. Save it in PSP format or in some other format that supports lossless compression or no compression, such as TIFF or PNG, for archiving or printing purposes. If you need a copy for the Web, use File > Export > JPEG Optimizer to make a JPEG version from your archive copy. Of course, there are other enhancements you might make, too. You might add a border with Image > Add Borders or a Picture Frame with Paint Shop Pro’s Picture Frame Wizard, which you invoke with Image > Picture Frame. An example is shown in Figure 8.29, where first a border was added to simulate a mat and then a picture frame was applied outside the image. Figure 8.29 The photo enhanced with Add Borders and a Picture Frame
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Chapter 9 You can create print graphics for all sorts of things, from enhanced charts and graphs for business reports to custom-made greeting cards and T-shirt transfers. And now that photoquality inkjet printers are becoming more and more affordable, you can make your own photographic prints and enlargements as well. In this chapter, you’ll look at the basics of printing your graphics, to get you on your way: Preparing an image for printing Setting up your printer Printing thumbnails Printing photographs
Image Size and Resolution for Printing Your image’s resolution is measured in pixels per inch (ppi). You can determine the size of your printed image by dividing the number of pixels by the pixels per inch. The higher the image’s resolution, the smaller the image is when printed. So, for example, an image that is 200 pixels high and 400 pixels wide and that has a resolution of 100ppi prints at 2 inches high and 4 inches wide. An image with the same dimensions but a resolution of 200ppi prints at 1 inch high and 2 inches wide. Inkjet and laser printers print images by applying dots of ink on paper. A printer’s resolution is therefore measured in dots per inch (dpi). It takes more than a single dot to produce a particular printed color, so dpi is not equivalent to ppi. You can see, then, that the appropriate image resolution for a printer is not the printer’s resolution. Table 9.1 displays a few recommended image resolution ranges for particular printer resolutions. Table 9.1 Image Resolutions for Printing Printer Resolution Image Resolution 300 dpi
72 to 120 ppi
600 dpi
125 to 170 ppi
1200 dpi
150 to 200 ppi
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You can alter an image’s resolution with Image > Resize. As Figure 9.1 shows, the Print Size panel of the Resize dialog box has controls for Resolution. First, be sure that the check box located near the bottom of the dialog box and labeled Resample using is unchecked. Then choose the units (usually pixels per inch in the United States) and set the amount. The Width and Height will automatically be updated. As we’ll see shortly, though, you don’t need to use Resize in order to print your image at the proper size or resolution, since you can alter the image’s resolution temporarily by letting your printer scale the image. Figure 9.1 Set the image’s size and resolution using the Resize dialog box
CAUTION If Resample using is unchecked, the data in your image is not changed, and its quality will remain unchanged. However, if Resample using is checked, adjusting Resolution or Height or Width changes the data in your image. The image will be stretched or shrunken. Since this stretching or shrinking adds or subtracts pixels, the quality of your image could be adversely affected.
Choosing the Right Paper When you print your images, you’ll get widely different results depending on the paper you use. Porous paper allows the ink to bleed, producing blurry results. Colored paper affects the color of your printed image, with off-white paper reducing the vividness of the image’s colors. For this reason, you’ll almost always want to use paper that is labeled bright white, coated. There are all sorts of specialty papers, and your printer manufacturer will recommend different papers for different applications. For example, Epson recommends its Photo Quality Inkjet Paper or Photo Quality Glossy Paper for business graphics, but for photographs you want to frame, Epson’s Photo Paper, Matte Paper Heavyweight, or Premium Glossy Photo Paper is recommended. Papers differ in characteristics such as porosity, brightness, weight, and acid content (this last being particularly important for photographs that you want to last for years and years). Be sure to consult your printer manufacturer’s recommendations before choosing a paper for a particular application.
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Printing an Image
Figure 9.2 The Print dialog box
Most of these controls are self-explanatory, but let’s take a brief look at Scale. What scaling does is stretch or compress the data of your image so that you can get a different printed size. Scaling doesn’t affect your actual image, only the printed image. Scaling your image to a smaller size than its actual size will usually yield satisfactory results. However, scaling up to a larger size can be pretty disappointing, since the pixels of the image are likely to show up as noticeable individual rectangles of color. The result of scaling is similar to the result you’d get with Resize with Resample using unchecked. After you’ve chosen the settings you want on the Placement and Options tabs of the Print dialog box, you can press the Printer button or the Properties button. Pressing the Printer button opens a dialog box in which you can choose what printer to use (if you have multiple printers), as shown in Figure 9.3. Figure 9.3 The printer selector dialog box
Pressing the Properties button brings up a dialog box for your particular printer. Figure 9.4 shows the Properties box for the Epson Stylus Photo 870.
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To print a single image, you can begin by opening the image in Paint Shop Pro and choosing File > Print. In the Print dialog box (Figure 9.2), you choose the number of copies to print, the orientation of the paper, position of the image on the page, and any scaling that you want. On the Options tab, you can choose a few other options, such as whether to print in color or greyscale, or whether to print a negative of your image. (If you have more than one printer and want to switch printers, you can press the Printer button to call up another dialog box that includes a drop-down list of your available printers.)
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Figure 9.4 Choose the paper or other media type in your printer’s Properties dialog box
Your printer’s Properties box probably has more than one tab of controls. In this example, the Main tab has controls for choosing the media type, whether to print in color or black and white, and what mode to use, along with an indication of the current ink levels. Which controls you have available and the tabs they’re found on will depend on the make and model of your printer. Consult your printer’s documentation for more information.
Using Paint Shop Pro’s Print Layout Paint Shop Pro also enables you to print multiple images or copies of an image. For this, try Paint Shop Pro’s Print Layout. First, open all of the images you want to print and then choose File > Print Layout. Paint Shop Pro’s workspace is then temporarily replaced with the Print Layout workspace (Figure 9.5). Figure 9.5 The Print Layout workspace
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You can also use a printing template to print multiple copies of an image or a series of images. To load a template, choose File > Open Template, then select one of the categories listed in the Templates dialog box and choose one of the templates. Figure 9.6 shows the Wallets template from the Standard Sizes catalog selected. Figure 9.6 Choosing a template
Once you’ve selected a template, press OK to load the template to the page on the workspace. Then drag your image onto the page, where it will snap into position when you release the mouse button. You can fill the entire template with a single image (as in Figure 9.7) by pressing the Fill Template with Image icon on Print Layout’s toolbar or by choosing Template > Fill Template with Image.
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Thumbnails of the open images appear on the left, and a representation of the page to print appears on the right. To add an image to the page, simply double-click the image’s thumbnail or click and drag the thumbnail to the page. Click inside the image on the page and drag it to position it where you like. You can also resize an image in the page by clicking on the image to select it and dragging on one of the selection handles that appears in the image’s corners or by dragging one of the image’s edges. To move the image, click it and drag. To add another image, just click its thumbnail and drag it onto the page. (You can also add the same image again and again simply by repeatedly dragging its thumbnail onto the image canvas.) To remove an image from the page, click the image to select it and then press the Del key or choose Image > Remove.
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Figure 9.7 Filling the template with a single image
If the image doesn’t fill the template or isn’t placed correctly, select the image and choose one of the placement options available through the toolbar or under Template > Placement. Here are the available options: Free Size and Center Fit Cell Fit to Cell Centered Fit to Cell Left Fit to Cell Right Fit to Cell Top Fit to Cell Bottom With Free, you can resize the image and position it with the cursor just as you can when no template is loaded. With Size and Center, you can select the image and resize it, but Paint Shop Pro will automatically center the resized image in the template cell. With Fit Cell, Paint Shop Pro does all the work for you, resizing the image to fill the cell and centering the resized image in the cell. The other four options do exactly what their names imply, pushing the image over so that an edge lines up with the left, right, top, or bottom of the cell.
TIP All of Print Layout’s commands available in the File, Preferences, and Zoom menus are also available from a context menu. Right-click in an empty area of the workspace to access this menu. In another menu, you can access all of the commands available under Image, Zoom, and Template. Right-click anywhere in the print page displayed in Print Layout to get this menu.
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If your image has a different orientation than the template cell’s, don’t despair. Just select the image’s cell and choose Image > Rotate +90 or Image > Rotate –90 (or select their icons on the Print Layout toolbar). Figure 9.8 shows an example. Here the template is filled with a single portrait. The upper left cell shows the result of rotating the image in the cell and applying Fit Cell. The upper-right cell shows the result of rotating the image only.
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Figure 9.8 Rotating and fitting the image to the cells of the template
When everything’s placed, sized, and positioned as you like, press the Print icon or choose File > Print. To exit the Print Layout workspace and return to the Paint Shop Pro workspace, choose File > Close Print Layout or click the Print Layout window’s close button on the extreme right of its toolbar.
TIP If you need to change the printer, set printer properties, or make other printing changes such as adding crop marks while you’re in Print Layout, choose File > Print Setup. (The dialog box for Print Setup will give you access to various printer controls.)
For more information on the very handy Print Layout feature, consult Paint Shop Pro’s documentation and Help.
Printing from the Browser Paint Shop Pro’s Browser (Figure 9.9) is great for browsing images on your hard drive or other storage media and for opening, copying, or moving your images. Another handy feature of the Browser is that it provides you with a quick and easy way to print a digital contact sheet of all the images in a folder.
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Figure 9.9 Use Paint Shop Pro’s Browser to print a “contact sheet” for digital images
To print the image, open the Browser by choosing File > Browse (or press Ctrl+B), navigate to the folder you want, and choose File > Print (or press Ctrl+P). You’re then presented with the Browser Print dialog box, shown in Figure 9.10. Figure 9.10 The Browser Print dialog box
In the Browser Print dialog box, you choose the orientation of the paper, whether to use the Browser thumbnails, whether to use the standard Browser template or any of the templates available with Print Layout, and what pages to print. This dialog box also shows you a preview of what your printed page will look like.
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A Note on Printing Services A thorough treatment of professional printing is far beyond the scope of this book. However, here are a few things you should know if you want to send your images to a printing service:
Flatten any layered image before sending it to a print service. Choose a file format that is generally used for printed images. TIFF is common, but you should check with your print service to see what its needs are. Whatever the file format, be sure that your image is saved in the format’s uncompressed mode (or at the lowest level of compression if there is no uncompressed mode). If the print service requires CMYK Color Separations for your image, you can print them by choosing CMYK Separations in the Print Setup dialog box available in Print Layout (File > Print Setup). Be sure to consult your particular printing service to see what its requirements and recommendations are.
Examples Let’s look at a couple of printing examples. In the first example, we’ll create a simple newsletter, inserting a photo and adding a masthead. In the second example, we’ll make a greeting card using Print Layout.
Creating and Printing a Newsletter In this example, you’ll see how to create a newsletter using Microsoft Word. You’d follow similar procedures to create a newsletter using other word processing or desktop publishing applications. Start out by defining tables like the ones shown in Figure 9.11. The top single-column table will hold the newsletter’s masthead, while the two-column table below will hold the body of the newsletter.
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Some printing devices measure resolution in lines per inch, and this resolution measure is called the screen frequency. The resolution of your images should typically be about 1.5 to 2 times the particular device’s screen frequency, but check with your printer to be sure.
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Figure 9.11 Lay out the page format for the newsletter
Now position the cursor in the table for the masthead and choose Insert > Picture > From File. This opens Word’s Insert Picture dialog box, shown in Figure 9.12. Navigate to the folder that contains the image you want to insert and select the image. A preview is displayed in the window to the right of the file listing. When you’ve selected the picture you want, click Insert. Figure 9.12 Choosing the image to insert into your document
In the body of the newsletter, position the cursor where you want to add a picture and again choose Insert > Picture > From File. Select the file that you want and click Insert. If a picture is too small or too large, you can resize it right in Word. Select the image by clicking it, then drag one of the selection handles that appears. To maintain the image’s aspect ratio, drag one of the corner handles.
NOTE For text graphics like a masthead, create the text in Paint Shop Pro as vector text. Convert the text to curves by right-clicking the text’s Object button on the Layer palette and choosing Convert Text to Curves (either converting the text as a single shape or as character shapes). Modify the text shapes as you like. Delete any raster layers and then save the image in a vector format, such as WMF (Windows Meta File). When creating your text, do not select Antialias. For printed images, you’ll normally want to avoid antialiasing, since ink bleeds and smooths the edges of printed text and drawings. Antialiasing will make printed edges too blurry.
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You can also format images in your Word document, wrap text around images, and add borders around images. Consult Word’s documentation and Help for more information.
Figure 9.13 The newsletter is complete
Creating and Printing a Greeting Card You can also use Paint Shop Pro to create and print your own greeting cards. Let’s look at one method of making a quarter-fold card. You can use either regular 8.5-by-11-inch paper or special greeting card stock for inkjet printers. Since the paper will be folded twice—once lengthwise and once across—each external and internal face of the card will be approximately half the height and width of the original sheet (4.25 by 5.5 inches). Unless your printer can print to the edge of your paper, you’ll also have to make allowances for margins. For my Epson Photo Stylus 870, a nice workable image area for one face of a quarter-fold card is 4 inches wide by 4.5 inches high, and those are the dimensions we’ll use in this example. Begin by opening the image that you want to use on the front of your card. Make a duplicate of the image by pressing Shift+D, then close the original image. Select the Crop tool and on the copied image, drag to make a rough selection of the part of the image you want to use. Then on the Crop tool’s Tool Options palette, select the Specify Print Size check box and choose Inches for Units. Once you make these two settings, set Width to 4.00 and Height to 4.50. Now if you resize the crop area, the aspect ratio of 4.00 to 4.50 will always be maintained. Any resizing of the crop box will not affect the print size of your image; instead, the image’s resolution is changed. See Figure 9.14.
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Figure 9.13 shows the first page of the completed newsletter, with the table borders turned off and with a shaded cell added as a separator bar. Try adding images you’ve created to your own newsletters and business documents. You may find that clip art is a thing of the past.
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Figure 9.14 Preparing the image for the front of your card
Reposition the crop area if you need to by dragging inside the crop area. When everything’s in place, click the apply check mark on the Tool Options palette or double-click in the image canvas to apply the crop. Do any photo correction work that’s needed. For this example, One Step Photo Fix and a little touch-up with the Clone Brush and Lighten brush is in order. Then you’re ready for adding any effects and any text that you want on the front of the card. Now let’s add a decorative edge to the image. Add a new layer with Layers > New Raster Layer. Then fill this layer with white with the Flood Fill tool. Next, select an edge mask Layers > Load/Save Mask > Load Mask From Disk. Select the mask that you want in the Load Mask From Disk dialog box, shown in Figure 9.15. Figure 9.15 Loading a mask that’s stored on disk
The result should look something like Figure 9.16.
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Figure 9.16 The image with the edge mask loaded
CHAPTER 9 If the edge isn’t quite the right size, you can adjust it with the Deform tool. With the mask layer as the active layer, maximize the image window by clicking the Maximize button in the image’s title bar. Then choose the Deform tool. Drag the control on the Deform tool’s bounding box, as shown in Figure 9.17, until you have the effect you want. Then click the image’s Restore button on its title bar to return to normal image viewing. Figure 9.17 Adjusting the mask with the Deform tool
Now you’re ready to add some text to your image. Make the layer group header that contains the mask the active layer. Then add a new vector layer with Layers > New Vector Layer. Choose the Text tool. On the Tool Options palette, set Create As to Vector, select whatever font and size you want (Arial, 72pt is used here), and set the Stroke width (pixels) to 1.0. Set Font Style if you like (bold is used here). And if your text will span more than one line, set Alignment to however you want those lines of text to be aligned. For the colors on the Materials palette, set the Foreground to a dark color that matches the color scheme of your image; this will be the stroke for the text. Set the Background to a light color that
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matches the color scheme of your text; this will be the fill color of your text. Then click where you want to place your text in the image, and type your text in the Text tool’s Text Entry box. The result will be something like what you see in Figure 9.18. Figure 9.18 Adding text to the image
If the text isn’t positioned exactly where you want it, drag it into place. If you want to center the text horizontally in the image, choose Objects > Align > Horz. Center in Canvas. The front part of the card is now done. If you like, you can save the image and then minimize it to get it out of your way for now. Then open a new image on which you’ll add your inside text. Choose File > New, and set Units to Inches, Width to 4.000, and Height to 4.500. Choose Vector Background and set Color depth to 16 Million Colors (24 bit). Choose the Text tool. On the Tool Options palette, select your font, size, and any other options that you want. On the Materials palette, set Foreground to Transparent (so that the text has no stroke) and set Background to black. Enter your text in the Text tool’s Text Entry box, then click Apply. Drag the text to position it if you need to. If you want to center the text horizontally in the image canvas, choose Objects > Align > Horz. Center in Canvas. The result will look something like Figure 9.19. Figure 9.19 Text for the inside of the card
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Save the image if you like, and minimize it to get it out of your way while you work through the next step.
With the Text tool, set the font and size that you want. The size should be relatively small here—maybe 12pt or so. In the Text Entry box, type what you want for the copyright notice (as in Figure 9.20). Figure 9.20 A copyright notice for your card
Drag the text to position it and center it horizontally if you like. You’re now ready to put the pieces of your card together and print the results. With all three of the images open in Paint Shop Pro, choose File > Print Layout. In the Print Layout window, drag the image for the front of your card to the lower right corner of the layout sheet and drag the copyright notice to the lower left corner, as shown in Figure 9.21. Figure 9.21 Placing the front image and copyright notice in the layout
Drag the inside text into the upper-left corner. In order to orient the text correctly so that it appears right-side up after you make the folds for the card, you need to flip the text. To do this, choose Image > Rotate +90, then again choose Image > Rotate +90. The result will look like Figure 9.22.
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Now let’s make a copyright notice to put on the back of the card. Open a new image with File > New. Set Units to Inches, Width to 4.000, and Height to 1.000. Choose Vector Background and set Color depth to 16 Million Colors (24 bit).
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Figure 9.22 Positioning and orienting the inside text
You’re now ready to print your card. Just choose File > Print. After the ink dries, fold your card, and there you are!
NOTE If you’re using special paper stock or you need to select a printer other than your default printer, remember that you can access your printer setup from within Print Layout through File > Print Setup. No need to make these selections until you really have to.
If you think that in the future you’ll want to make other cards like the one you just put together, save your layout as a custom print template. Choose File > Save Template. In the Save dialog box, enter a name for your template. You also have the option of saving either the template with the images or just the template with no images. Choose Save with images if you want to print this exact same card again in the future. Leave that check box unchecked if you want a general greeting card template that you can drag other images into the next time you want to print a greeting card. When you want to print a new card, call up your template with File > Open Template. You might never send a store-bought card again.
TIP Paint Shop Pro has some ready-made templates for making greeting cards, business cards, and brochures. To load one of these templates in Print Layout, choose File > Open Template and select the appropriate template from the Avery category. Head over to the Avery website at http://www.avery.com/ for information on their specialized paper stock.
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Chapter 10 Paint Shop Pro includes many handy features to help you create elements for your Web site, from simple headers and buttons to complex rollovers. Here’s what you’ll be exploring in this chapter: Techniques for creating Web graphics Optimizing images for the Web Image slicing and image mapping
What Makes a Graphic Suitable for the Web? Not all graphics are Web graphics. First, if you want your images to be displayable in a Web browser without requiring your visitors to download a plug-in, you’ll need to save your images in a Web-readable format. As of this writing, there are two file formats that can be read by any Web browser: GIF (pronounced “jiff”) and JPEG (pronounced “jay-peg”). There’s a third format— PNG (pronounced “ping”)—that is supported by nearly all new browsers to at least some extent, but not by older ones. Which of these formats you choose should depend on the specific image you’re saving: GIF. GIF is the format of choice for images that contain large areas of solid color and sharp edges, such as simple drawings or text graphics. The GIF compression method is lossless—that is, no data is lost when you save a GIF, open it, save it, and so on. However, the GIF file format supports a maximum of only 256 colors. One handy feature of the GIF format is that one of the 256 in an image’s palette of colors can be translated to transparency, producing so-called transparent GIFs. JPEG. JPEG, which supports 16.7 million colors, is the format to choose for images that contain subtle gradations of color, such as digital photos. The JPEG compression method is lossy—that is, data is lost each time you save the file, open it, and save it again. For suitable images, JPEG’s lossy compression is usually not a problem. However, overcompression can be a problem, especially with images that are more suitable for GIF format. Either overcompression or use of JPEG where GIF is called for can produce murky areas called JPEG artifacts (see Figure 10.1). PNG. This format can support either 16.7 million colors or a palette of up to 256 colors. PNG’s compression method is lossless, and PNG also supports transparency.
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Figure 10.1 JPEG artifacts
Another requirement for a Web graphic is for it to have as small a file size as is practical, without seriously compromising the image’s quality. You want to keep file size to a minimum so that download times are kept in check. You want your images to add to your visitors’ enjoyment of your site, but most folks will click on to something else if they have to wait and wait for your pages to load. Later in this chapter, you’ll learn how to optimize your images for the Web. The last requirement of a Web graphic requires the most judgment. Your graphics should add to your visitors’ experience, not detract from it. A page full of animated banners, mismatched buttons and bars, and a background tile so busy that it’s impossible to read the text on the page is sure to send people running off to a more sedate Web site. When creating your Web graphics, work toward creating a unified look that makes your pages a place that people will want to return to again and again.
Creating Buttons, Bars, and Bullets Paint Shop Pro provides you with many tools and operations to help you create great-looking Web elements. For example, the Preset Shapes include several ready-made button and bullet shapes that you can use as-is or modify as you please. Figure 10.2a shows a button drawn from a preset shape, placed on a white background, and Figure 10.2b shows the same button with text added with the Text tool. Figure 10.2a A button drawn with Preset Shapes
Figure 10.2b The button with text added
If you create the button in vector format and save it as a PSP file, you can use it again and again, resizing it or changing its attributes as you like. For example, you can easily eliminate the drop shadow by making the Drop Shadow part of the vector shape invisible by toggling off the Visibility toggle on the Layers Palette, as shown in Figure 10.3.
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Figure 10.3 You can toggle the Drop Shadow off before saving a Web-ready version
In any case, when you have the button the way you want it, you can save it in a Web-readable format either with File > Save Copy As or with one of the Web optimizers available under File > Export (discussed later in this chapter).
Handmade Buttons You can also make your own raster button and bars by hand, using the 3-D effects available under Effects > 3D Effects. For a rectangular button, you can use Buttonize, which adds simple beveled edges to a rectangular image, as shown in Figure 10.4. Figure 10.4 Using Buttonize to make a simple rectangular button
The other 3D Effects all require a selection or surrounding transparency. If you want to apply Inner Bevel to a rectangular image, you begin by selecting the entire image with Selections > Select All, then apply Inner Bevel with Effects > 3D Effects > Inner Bevel, choosing whatever settings for Inner Bevel that you like. Since Inner Bevel can be applied to any selection or to a figure surrounded by transparency on a true layer, you can also use it to create nonrectangular buttons, as shown in Figure 10.5.
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You could also change the color of the vector button by clicking the Color part of the button’s vector group, calling up the vector Property dialog box, where you can click the Fill box to call up the Material dialog box.
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Figure 10.5 Using Inner Bevel to create a nonrectangular button
Separator Bars Separator bars can be created just like buttons, except that they are longer and narrower than buttons. Another method for creating separator bars is to draw a straight line with the Pen tool, using a styled line, as in Figure 10.6. Figure 10.6 A styled line makes a nice separator bar
Choose a line style on the Pen tool’s Tool Options palette, then draw a straight line using Line Segments as the segment type. You can choose one of the line styles that comes with Paint Shop Pro or you can create your own. To create your own line style, open the Line Style drop-down list, click the Custom button, and then in the Styled Lines dialog box, choose the various parts of your line, saving the new line style by clicking Save As New and entering a name for your new style. (See the Paint Shop Pro documentation or Help for more information on creating your own line styles.) Yet another method for making separator bars is to use the Picture Tube tool. Choose the tube that you want in the Tool Options palette, setting the Scale and the Step as appropriate for the size and density that you want for your line of tube elements. Set Placement Mode to Continuous, so that the tube elements are spaced evenly across the line. Then click near one edge of your image canvas, far enough away from the edge so that the tube element is entirely within the image canvas. Undo to remove the tube element you just placed on the image canvas. Then hold down the Shift key and click near the opposite edge of the image canvas, again leaving yourself plenty of room so that none of the tube element falls off the edge of the image canvas. (To help in placing the ends of your separator bar, you might want to turn on the Grid with View > Grid. To turn the grid off, just choose View > Grid again.) The result will look something like what you see in Figure 10.7.
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Figure 10.7 A separator bar created with the Picture Tube tool
It’s also easy to create bullets in Paint Shop Pro. The Preset Shapes include some nice looking spheres that you can use for bullets. Picture Tube elements that are scaled small can be used as bullets, and you can also make bullets by hand. Here’s how to make a simple spherelike bullet using the Balls and Bubbles effect: 1.
Open a new file with a transparent background or with a background color that matches the Web page on which the bullet will appear. Make the image canvas 200 pixels high by 200 pixels wide and choose 16.7 million colors as the Image Type.
2.
Choose Effects > Artistic Effects > Balls and Bubbles (shown in Figure 10.8). If you like, double-click the title bar of the Balls and Bubbles dialog box to maximize it.
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Click the Reset button to get the default settings. Then on the Shapes tab, select Single ball or bubble. Check the check box labeled Maximum possible size.
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On the Surface tab, click the Material box to bring up the Material dialog box. Choose whatever material you’d like for your bullet. A solid color or a pattern would work well. Set Opacity to 100, and set Shininess and Gloss to whatever values give you the effect you’d like. See Figure 10.9 for the results I got with a woodgrain pattern.
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For this example, leave the settings on the Maps and Illumination tabs at their default values. Click on OK.
Figure 10.8 The Shape tab of the Balls and Bubbles dialog box
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Figure 10.9 A Surface tab of the Balls and Bubbles dialog box
6.
Save the image as a PSP file. You can then resize the bullet to whatever size you like with Image > Resize. Save the resized bullet in a Web-readable format using either File > Save Copy As or one of the Web optimizers available under File > Export. You can use the PSP file at a later date to create a bullet of a different size.
Creating Background Tiles You can create an elegant, attractive site with a solid-colored background for your pages. However, many Web designers find that an appropriate textured background or repeating watermark adds a nice touch to their sites. Consider the page shown in Figure 10.10, from a fictitious site devoted to coffee. The background here is a faded repeating tile. Figure 10.10 A site devoted to coffee might use a background like this
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Here’s how to make a tile like this one: Open a new file with a white background that is 200 pixels high by 200 pixels wide and that supports 16.7 million colors. Choose white as the background color.
2.
Choose the Picture Tube tool, and in the Tool Options Palette, select the Coffee Beans tube. Set the Scale to 60.
3.
Click in a couple places in the image canvas. In each case, be sure that all of the coffee bean and its drop shadow fall completely within the image canvas. If you make a mistake, press Ctrl+Z or click the Undo icon on the Standard toolbar to go back, then try again. (You might want to turn on the Grid to help you position the beans. To turn on the Grid, choose View > Grid, or press Ctrl+Alt+G. To turn the grid off, choose View > Grid again, or press Ctrl+Alt+G.) Add more beans if you like, but be sure that no part of any bean or its drop shadow falls outside the boundaries of the image canvas.
4.
Add a new adjustment layer with Layers > New Adjustment Layer > Hue/Saturation/Lightness. Click the Reset button to be sure that all the settings are set to their defaults. Then increase the Lightness until the tile is faded to the extent that you want. Click OK. (Remember that if you save your file in PSP format, you can always go back and change your adjustment later on by doubleclicking the adjustment layer’s Layer button in the Layers palette.)
5.
Save the image in PSP format if you think you’ll want to edit it sometime in the future. Then save in a Web-readable format using either File > Save Copy As or one of the Web optimizers.
To embed this tile or any tile in a Web page, you use the BACKGROUND attribute of the BODY tag. For example, suppose the coffee beans file was saved as BEANS.GIF. You’d embed this tile in your HTML file like this:
TIP To ensure that your page is readable even before the background tile loads, you should also set BGCOLOR to a color that matches the dominant color of your tile. For the coffee beans tile, you could use either this:
or this:
BGCOLOR can always be specified as three pairs of hex codes preceded by the # character, as in the first example. For the 16 standard named colors, BGCOLOR can be specified with the color name instead: aqua, black, blue, fuschia, gray, green, lime, maroon, navy, olive, purple, red, silver, teal, and white.
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This example will tile seamlessly because all of the edges of the tile are a solid color. For abstract seamless tiles, you might also want to check out some of the plug-in filters—many of them free—that are available for that purpose. Paint Shop Pro’s own Balls and Bubbles effect with Shape set to Automatic multiple balls creates seamless tiles. The Patterns effect also can be used to create seamless tiles, as can Kaleidoscope with Edge Effect options set to Reflect, Wrap, or Color. You might also want to try using Paint Shop Pro’s Reflecting Mirror effect to make abstract seamless tiles. For tutorials on using these effects to make tiles, go to the How To page of Lori’s Web Graphics at http://loriweb.pair.com and follow the links there. There you’ll also find a tutorial on making your own seamless tiles by hand using Paint Shop Pro’s Offset effect. Yet another means of creating seamless tiles is with Effects > Image Effects > Seamless Tiling. This effect is great for making seamless tiles from natural textures, for example, like the stony tile shown in Figure 10.11. Figure 10.11 Use the Seamless Tiling effect to create a seamless tile of a natural texture
Explore the various settings of Seamless Tiling to see what sorts of tiling effects you can create. And be sure to preview your tile before exiting Seamless Tiling—just select the Show tiling preview check box below Seamless Tiling’s preview windows. Whatever method you use for your seamless tile, be sure to save the new tile in a Web-readable file format using Save Copy As or one of the Web optimizers available under File > Export.
Optimizing and Previewing Web Graphics Web designers are sure to be pleased with Paint Shop Pro’s Web graphics support. Besides its Web file format optimizers, Paint Shop Pro provides you with the ability to preview your images in a Web browser without leaving Paint Shop Pro. It includes built-in functions that enable you to create image maps and sliced images for your Web pages. Let’s begin by working through some examples using the button image shown in Figure 10.12.
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Figure 10.12 A button for a Web page
Keeping file size small while maintaining good image quality is the central challenge for any Web graphics designer. Paint Shop Pro helps you out in this regard with the file format optimizers for JPEG, GIF, and PNG available under File > Export. To export an image as a JPEG, choose File > Export > JPEG Optimizer. This opens the JPEG Optimizer dialog box to its Quality tab, shown in Figure 10.13. Figure 10.13 The Quality tab of the JPEG Optimizer
Here the original image is shown in the image window on the left, with a preview of the image’s optimized version shown on the right. In general, it’s best to leave Chroma subsampling at its default setting. To adjust the compression level for your image, set the value in the box labeled Set compression value to. When the compression level gives you a small enough file size and acceptable image quality, you’re ready to go on to the other tabs in the dialog box. If your image contains a figure surrounded by transparency, you should click on the Background Color tab, shown in Figure 10.14. (This tab does not appear if there is no layer transparency in your image.)
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Figure 10.14 The Background Color tab of the JPEG Optimizer
The JPEG file format does not support any kind of transparency, so you’ll need to tell Paint Shop Pro what color to use in place of transparency for your JPEG. Click the color box labeled Background color to call up the Color dialog box and select the color that matches the color of your Web page. Click OK to set the color and exit the Color dialog box. Now click the Format tab, shown in Figure 10.15. Figure 10.15 The Format tab of the JPEG Optimizer
On this tab, you choose whether you want to save your JPEG with Standard encoding or Progressive encoding. For most images, you’ll choose Standard, but for large images that download slowly, you’ll probably want to choose Progressive. With Progressive encoding, your image will load in stages, with the image becoming more and more distinct. (You may be surprised to learn that for many images, the Progressive JPEG version has a smaller file size than the Standard version.)
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The last tab in the JPEG Optimizer is the Download Times tab, shown in Figure 10.16. Click this tab to see estimates of the download times of your image at various connection speeds. If the estimated download times aren’t acceptable, you can click on the Quality tab again and try increasing the compression level.
If you’d prefer to be stepped through the optimization process, you can bypass the controls on the JPEG Optimizer’s tabs by pressing the Use Wizard button at the bottom left of the JPEG Optimizer window. Whether you use the wizard or not, when you’re finished optimizing, you’re prompted to save your image. You then have an optimized JPEG version of your image on disk, as well as the original version of the image open in Paint Shop Pro.
GIF Optimizer You can also export your image as a GIF, optionally choosing one color to translate to transparency. To export your image as a GIF, choose File > Export > GIF Optimizer. The first tab you’ll see in the GIF Optimizer window is the Transparency tab. GIF Transparency deserves a section of its own, so for now just select None and skip over the Transparency and Partial Transparency tabs. The tab that you’ll use most often—since it’s where you’ll do your GIF optimizing whether your GIF is to have a transparent background or not—is the Colors tab (see Figure 10.17).
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Figure 10.16 The Download Times tab of the JPEG Optimizer
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Figure 10.17 The Colors tab of the GIF Optimizer
On the Colors tab, you choose what palette creation method to use for your GIF, how many colors to use, and whether to use dithering. In general, you’ll get the best image quality with Optimized Octree as the creation method. And you’ll get the smallest file sizes with a low number of colors and no dithering. The selection that gives you the best image quality might give you an unacceptable file size, and the one that gives you the file size you’d prefer might give you unacceptable image quality, so be prepared to make compromises. You might be surprised, though, at how small your file size can be while still maintaining good quality. The Format tab (shown in Figure 10.18) enables you to choose whether to save your GIF in Standard format or Interlaced format. An interlaced GIF loads on a Web page in stages, one set of lines loading before the next set until the image is loaded completely. This doesn’t decrease the load time of your GIF—in fact, an interlaced GIF typically loads more slowly than its standard analog and its file size is larger—but most visitors to your Web page will feel as if the image is loading at an acceptable rate, since they have some of the image to look at while they’re waiting. Figure 10.18 The Format tab of the GIF Optimizer
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In addition, the GIF Optimizer has a Download Times tab. If you’d prefer some help rather than making all the settings on your own, you can forgo all these tabs and click on the Use Wizard button to call up the GIF Optimizer wizard instead.
The GIF file format enables you to choose one color in the image’s palette and translate that color to transparency when the image is viewed in a Web browser. This feature is usually used to change a solid-colored background to transparency so that the foreground figure shows up as if it were floating on your Web page. Transparent GIFs are particularly handy for nonrectangular buttons, bars, and headers. All images are rectangular, but GIF allows you to give the appearance of having a nonrectangular image by translating the area surrounding a nonrectangular figure to transparency on your Web page. To export your image as a transparent GIF, choose File > Export > GIF Optimizer. You then see the GIF Optimizer dialog box open to its Transparency tab, shown in Figure 10.19. Figure 10.19 The Transparency tab of the GIF Optimizer
If you don’t want any transparency, select None. If your image has layer transparency that you’d like to translate to GIF transparency, or if your image already is a transparent GIF and you’d like to retain its transparency, select Existing image or layer transparency. If you have a selection, you can choose either Inside current selection or Outside current selection, whichever defines the area where you want transparency. Another alternative is to select Areas that match this color. For this option, either accept the current background color, which is shown in the color swatch to the right of this option, or change the color by clicking the color swatch to call up the Color dialog box or right-clicking the color swatch to call up the Recent Colors dialog box. You can also set the Tolerance, telling Paint Shop Pro whether you want to match the color exactly or within some tolerance level. In addition to being able to translate a color to transparency, you can tell Paint Shop Pro how to handle pixels that are partially transparent. Controls for this are located on the Partial Transparency tab, shown in Figure 10.20.
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Figure 10.20 The Partial Transparency tab of the GIF Optimizer
GIF doesn’t support partial transparency, so if you have any partially transparent pixels in your image, you need to decide which of these pixels should be translated to full transparency and which should be made fully opaque. You also need to decide whether to blend the partially transparent pixels with a background color. If you choose to blend with a background color, be sure to set that color to the color of your Web page.
PNG Optimizer The third available optimizer is the PNG Optimizer, which you open with File > Export > PNG Optimizer. You then see the PNG Optimizer dialog box open to its Colors tab, shown in Figure 10.21. Figure 10.21 The Colors tab of the PNG Optimizer
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On the Colors tab, you choose whether to save your PNG with paletted color (like a GIF), as a greyscale (with 256 shades of grey), or with 16.7 million colors (like a JPEG). If you choose Palette-Based, the controls for choosing a palette and setting the number of colors and amount of dithering become active.
Figure 10.22 The Transparency tab of the PNG Optimizer
In addition, the PNG Optimizer has a Format tab (like the one for the GIF Optimizer) and a Download Times tab. If you’d prefer to forgo all these tabs, click on the Use Wizard button to call up the PNG Optimizer wizard instead.
Preview in Web Browser A very handy feature for Web designers is the ability to preview your image in your Web browser without leaving Paint Shop Pro. To preview your image, choose View > Preview in Web Browser, which opens the dialog box shown in Figure 10.23. Figure 10.23 The Preview in Web Browser dialog box
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The Transparency tab, shown in Figure 10.22, lets you choose whether to translate areas of your image to transparency. Be careful here: Although PNG allows you to create transparent areas using alpha channels, most Web browsers do not support alpha channel transparency. Your safest bet if you want transparency is to use paletted color and set a single color as a fully transparent color, just as you would with GIFs.
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Here you choose the formats in which you want your image to be displayed, the dimensions at which to display the image, the background color of the Web page, and what Web browser to use.
NOTE The first time you use Preview in Web Browser, you’ll need to click on the Edit Web Browser button and then choose whatever Web browsers you have available. You can choose up to three different browsers to appear in the Preview in Web Browser list.
When you click the Preview button, Paint Shop Pro will run the appropriate optimizers and then display your image. Each version of the image, along with information on the file format and file size, is displayed in the browsers you selected.
NOTE The Image Mapper and Image Slicer, discussed below, also allow you to preview your image map or sliced image in your Web browser. Just click on the Preview button in the Image Mapper or Image Slicer dialog box. The Preview button is labeled with an image that looks like an eye.
Using the Image Mapper Paint Shop Pro has a built-in image mapping utility, the Image Mapper (Figure 10.24). Figure 10.24 Using the Image Mapper
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To run the Image Mapper, choose File > Export > Image Mapper. You then see the Image Mapper dialog box, which has several tools.
Polygon, Rectangle, and Circle tools. Define clickable areas for the image by choosing one of the three area-defining tools: the Polygon, the Rectangle, or the Circle tool. With the Polygon tool, define a clickable area by clicking with the tool in the preview window and dragging to form a straight line. Click again when you reach the end of the line segment you want to make, and then continue clicking and dragging to make the other line segments for your polygonal area. To close the polygon, click on the starting point or simply right-click anywhere in the preview window. Define a rectangular area by dragging in the preview window with the Rectangle tool. Define a circular area by dragging with the Circle tool. The Rectangle tool draws from one corner of the rectangle to the diagonally opposite corner. The Circle tool draws from the center of the circle out. The remaining tools let you modify and/or select your clickable areas. The Mover tool. Use the Mover tool to move an area by dragging the area in the preview window. Click an area with the Eraser to remove that area. (To remove all of the clickable areas you’ve defined, just click on the Clear button.) The Arrow tool. Use the Arrow tool to resize the areas you’ve defined (and in the case of polygons, to reshape the areas). The Arrow tool is also used to select a clickable area that you’ve defined. Once you select an area, you can enter the appropriate URL for that area, along with a value for the ALT attribute and a value for TARGET, if you like. To optimize your image map, choose a file format in the Format section of the dialog box and then click on the Optimize Image button.
TIP If you want to save your settings for later use on the same image or on another image, click on the Save Settings button. To load previously saved settings, click on the Load Settings button.
To save the HTML code for your image map, click on the Save or Save As button to call up the HTML Save As dialog box. In that dialog box, enter a name for the HTML file that contains the code for your image map. Click on the Save button in the HTML Save As dialog box, which saves the HTML file and opens the Image Map Save As dialog box. Navigate to the file folder that you want and enter the name for the optimized image map image.
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The Pan tool. This tool, which looks like a hand, lets you move the preview image around in the preview window. Simply select the Pan tool and drag in the preview window.
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To include the image map on your own Web page, copy the map code from the HTML file that Image Mapper created and paste it into the HTML file for your Web page. (Alternatively, instead of Save or Save As, you can choose Save To Clipboard, then just paste your saved code into your HTML file from the clipboard.) After adding your new code, upload your newly edited HTML file for your page, along with the optimized image map image, to the proper folders on your Web server.
NOTE In addition to creating simple image maps, you can create JavaScript rollovers for your image map. Rollovers, which can also be created for sliced images, are beyond the scope of this book. For information on creating rollovers, see the Paint Shop Pro Help.
Using the Image Slicer Use the Image Slicer to slice a large image into pieces that can then be reassembled on your Web page in an HTML table. To open the Image Slicer, choose File > Export > Image Slicer. You’ll then see the dialog box for the Image Slicer, with its various tools. As with the Image Mapper, you can use the Pan tool to move the preview around in the preview window. To slice your image into evenly spaced rows and columns, choose the Grid tool and click in the preview window. In the Grid Size dialog box, enter the number of rows and columns. After you click OK, you’ll see grid lines showing the cells into which your image will be sliced, as shown in Figure 10.25. Figure 10.25 Slicing an image with Image Slicer
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You can readjust the position of the grid lines by dragging on them with the Arrow tool or the Slicer tool. The Slicer can also be used to add cells. In the preview window, drag up or down with the Slicer to make a vertical slice or drag right or left to make a horizontal slice.
To make a particular cell clickable, click in the cell with the Arrow tool and then set a URL in the Cell Properties pane. You can also set ALT text and a TARGET, if you like.
TIP If you want to save your settings for later use on the same image or on another image, click on the Save Settings button. To load previously saved settings, click on the Load Settings button.
You can optimize the entire set of slices in a single file format or optimize individual slices separately. To optimize the entire set of slices at once, choose the file format that you want in the Format pane and check the Apply optimization to entire image box, then click on the Optimize Cell button, which starts the appropriate Optimizer. To optimize an individual cell, select the cell with the Arrow tool, then set the Format as you like, and click on the Optimize Cell button, being sure that Apply optimization to entire image is not checked. To save your slices and the HTML file containing the code for the table used to reassemble the slices, press the Save As button. Navigate to the appropriate folder and enter the name you want for the table’s HTML file. By default, each of your slices will have a name that begins with the name of your original image file and that ends with a string of the form _nxm, when n is the row number and m is the column number of the table in which your sliced image is reassembled. If you’ve previously checked the Prompt for image folder on Save or Save As check box in the Slicer Preferences dialog box (accessed with the Preferences button), you can specify a string different from the name of the original image to use in the names of your slices. To include the sliced image on your own Web page, copy the table code from the HTML file that Image Slicer created and paste it into the HTML file for your Web page. Or if your HTML file already exists and you don’t want to save a separate HTML file for your sliced image, choose Save to clipboard and then paste the HTML code from the clipboard directly into your HTML file. Upload your newly edited HTML file for your page, along with all of the sliced images, to the proper folders on your Web server.
Example: Creating a Unified Site You’ll want to give your Web site a unified look. A unified site is pleasing to visitors, can help them navigate the site, and makes your site memorable and easily identifiable. Begin by choosing a color scheme and laying out your basic page design, even before you start designing your graphics. Once you’ve decided on your basic design, it’s time to add your Web images.
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You can delete cells with the Eraser tool. Just click on a slice segment with the Eraser to delete a particular segment. (To erase all the grid lines, press the Clear button).
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Let’s take a look at my Web site, Lori’s Web Graphics. The splash page of this site, shown in Figure 10.26, includes a large mandala-like object, with the site’s title wrapped around the top of that object. It also has several graphics text buttons along the bottom of the page. Figure 10.26 The splash page for Lori’s Web Graphics
The elements on this page were made using several of the commands and operations discussed in this chapter and elsewhere in this book. The text was wrapped around the mandala using text on a path (discussed in Chapter 7, “Text Solutions”). The large mandala-like object was sliced into several pieces and reassembled in an HTML table (as you can do with the Image Slicer). The buttons were made from text enhanced with a plug-in filter (as discussed in Appendix A, “Paint Shop Pro Effects”). The text images were saved as transparent GIFs and embedded in the HTML file with the IMG tag. Each button is surrounded with an A tag and its end tag to make the button clickable. The BORDER=0 attribute is included in the IMG tag of each button to suppress the link border around the buttons. There is no background tile on the page. Instead, BGCOLOR is set to a greenish off-white color that matches the mandala. Other pages on the site echo the colors and graphics of the splash page. For example, consider the section page shown in Figure 10.27.
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Figure 10.27 Section pages echo the color and graphics of the splash page
CHAPTER 10 Here a smaller version of the mandala appears in the upper left of the page, serving as the site’s logo. The navigation buttons from the splash screen are repeated along the left edge of the page under the mandala, although on the section pages, the button for the current page is green rather than gold and is not clickable. The page’s BGCOLOR is the same as on the splash screen, but the content pages also contain a table whose own BGCOLOR is set to white. Try similar techniques—maintaining a basic color scheme and repeating graphics—to give your own site a pleasant, unified look.
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Appendix A Paint Shop Pro includes many built-in special effects and enables you to add additional effects with both its User Defined Filter function and with plug-in filters. In this appendix, you’ll briefly examine all of these: Built-in effects User Defined Filters Plug-in filters
NOTE The photo-editing filters and adjustments (such as Sharpen, Blur, and Automatic Contrast Enhancement), all available in the Adjust menu, are not included here but are discussed in Chapter 8, “Photo Editing Solutions.” Paint Shop Pro 7 users should note that the photographic enhancing filters are now found in the various submenus of the Adjust menu.
As mentioned in Chapter 1, “Paint Shop Pro 8 Basics,” all of the built-in effects that have dialog boxes have certain controls in common. Each dialog box has a pair of preview windows, one on the left showing the original image and another on the right showing the result of applying the effect with the current settings. Above the preview windows is the Presets drop-down list, a Save Preset button for when you want to save an effect’s settings as a preset, a Delete Preset button for when you want to delete a preset from the drop-down list, and a Reset button. Use the Reset button to return the values for the effect’s factory default settings. Hold down the Shift key while clicking the Reset button to return the effect’s settings to what they were when you opened the effect’s dialog box. Below the preview windows are zoom controls and a control for changing the view area of the preview. Just to the right of those controls is a toggle to hide and display the preview windows; an Auto Proof button, with a label that looks like an eye and a lock; and a Proof button, with a label that looks like an eye. Click the Proof button if you want to see what the effect will look like on the actual image with the current settings. Click the Auto Proof button if you want the effect on your image to change dynamically as you adjust the controls in the dialog box.
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To the right of the Proof button is a Randomize button. Click this button and Paint Shop Pro generates pseudo-random settings for the effect. Along the bottom of the dialog box are three buttons: OK, Cancel, and Help. Click OK to apply the effect. Click Cancel to exit the dialog box without applying the effect. Click Help to get information about the effect. Controls specific to the effect appear in the middle of the effect’s dialog box, between the preview windows and these three buttons. Now let’s take a look at the individual filters and effects.
Built-in Effects These operations, built into Paint Shop Pro, apply various special effects to your images. Some of them add a 3-D effect, others simulate natural materials or art media, and still others distort your image or add perspective. You could spend a lifetime experimenting with Paint Shop Pro’s built-in effects. Be sure to explore them, both singly and in combination with each other.
TIP As mentioned earlier, built-in effects allow you to save your favorite settings as presets, which you can load again whenever you want them. When you’re first trying out an effect, be sure to try out any presets that are supplied with Paint Shop Pro. That way, you’ll get a feel for the various results possible. You might also want to try out the Randomize button for an effect. You won’t always get useful results, but sometimes this can help you discover more about an effect.
3-D Effects As the name says, these effects create various 3-D looks. Apply these with Effects > 3D Effects > effect name. Buttonize. This creates simple rectangular buttons. Chisel. This creates a chiseled effect outside the edges of a selection. Cutout. This creates a cutout effect inside a selection. Drop Shadow. This creates a drop shadow outside a selection.
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Inner Bevel. This creates a beveled effect inside a selection. You can use Inner Bevel to create nonrectangular buttons and 3-D text.
TIP Chisel, Cutout, Drop Shadow, and Inner Bevel can be applied to a figure surrounded by transparency on a layer, as well as to a selection.
Art Media Effects These effects create the look of various art media. Apply them with Effects > Art Media Effects > effect name. Black Pencil and Colored Pencil. These emphasize the edges in your image and lighten other areas, so that the image resembles a pencil drawing. Brush Strokes. Use Brush Strokes to give your image the look of various types of paintings, including oils and watercolor. Charcoal and Colored Chalk. These create an effect much like that produced with Black Pencil and Colored Pencil, but with edges that are thicker and rougher. Pencil. This is another effect that can make your image look like a pencil drawing. Good results can usually be achieved with black as the Color and a high Luminance setting or with white as the Color and a low negative Luminance setting.
NOTE While some of these effects—such as Brush Strokes—work quite well with both drawings and photos, you might find that you get the best results from Black Pencil, Color Pencil, Charcoal, Colored Chalk, and Pencil on drawings. With photos, you might want first to eliminate a busy background or other unimportant details before applying one of the Art Media effects.
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Outer Bevel. This creates a beveled effect outside a selection and can be used to make the selected area appear to rise out of the background. (Note that Outer Bevel is unavailable with floating selections.)
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Artistic Effects These produce quite a few special effects, some of them quite complex. Apply them with Effects > Artistic Effects > effect name. Aged Newspaper and Sepia Toning. Both of these give a yellowed or sepia tint to your image. In addition, Aged Newspaper slightly blurs the image. Balls and Bubbles. This is an incredibly versatile addition to Paint Shop Pro 8. You can make almost anything that is vaguely sphere-shaped using this effect, from a cloud of bubbles to snow, balls, planets, eyeballs, and even various kinds of fruits and vegetables. Figure A.1 shows just a few of the things you can make with Balls and Bubbles. Figure A.1 A few things made with Balls and Bubbles
To make something that is not quite spherical, begin with Balls and Bubbles and then deform the result with the Warp Brush or one or more of the Geometric effects. Figure A.2 shows a strawberry and the unwarped sphere from which it began. Figure A.2 A strawberry (left) created from a ball (right)
Head over to the How To page of Lori’s Web Graphics at http://loriweb.pair.com/howto.html for more on Balls and Bubbles. Chrome. This gives your image a metallic look. Colored Edges. This enhances the edges in your image. Colored Foil and Enamel. These give your image a shiny, 3-D look. Try out the presets to see the different sorts of effects you can create with these.
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Contours. This gives your image a look that resembles a contour map. Glowing Edges and Neon Glow. Both of these emphasize the edges in your image and affect the color. These effects have the same controls that you find with Black Pencil, Colored Pencil, Charcoal, and Colored Chalk.
Hot Wax Coating. This seems to coat your image with melted wax, the “wax” having the same color as the current foreground color. This effect can darken your image considerably. For best results, use a light color for the wax. Magnifying Lens. The basic use for this effect is to produce round or rectangular lenses, with or without a frame. If you set Opacity, Shininess, and Gloss on this effect’s Properties tab to 0, you can also create a frame without a lens. Figure A.3 shows both a framed lens and a lensless doughnut shape created with Magnifying Lens. Doughnut shapes can be used for rings, links of a chain, even inner tubes. Figure A.3 A framed lens and a doughnut shape, both made with Magnifying Lens
Posterize. This reduces the gradations of color in your image, giving the image the look of an old-fashioned print poster. You control how much the color gradations are flattened using this effect’s Levels control. Solarize. This converts the colors in an image or selection to their inverse. You control the range of colors that get inverted using the effect’s Threshold control. Only colors whose lightness values exceed the threshold are inverted. (The lightness scale ranges from 0 for black to 255 for white.) Topography. This makes your image look a bit like it was made up of hills and valleys, seen from a bird’s-eye perspective.
Distortion Effects As you would expect, each of these distorts your image. Apply them with Effects > Distortion Effects > effect name.
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Halftone. The basic use of this one is to simulate halftone, making your photos resemble photos printed on newsprint. You can also create other effects, such as scan lines or wild abstract patterns, with this effect. (See Figure A.4 later in this appendix for an example of scan lines created with Halftone.)
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Curlicues. This warps your image in a series of rows and columns of curls. Lens Distortion. This simulates three types of lens distortion: barrel distortion, fisheye distortion, and pincushion distortion. Figure A.4 shows an example where Lens Distortion and Halftone were used together to simulate an image on a video screen. Figure A.4 A video screen made with Lens Distortion and Halftone
Pinch and Punch. Pinch seems to push your image in, Punch seems to push it out. Pixelate. This paints your image in solid-colored square or rectangular blocks. Polar Coordinates. Use this to change a normal image on a rectangular plane to its polar coordinates equivalent, as in Figure A.5, or to warp a generally circular figure from polar coordinates to rectangular coordinates, as in Figure A.6. Figure A.5 From rectangular coordinates to polar coordinates
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Figure A.6 From polar coordinates to rectangular coordinates
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Ripple. This makes your image appear as though it’s reflected in water that is rippling as if a small object has just been dropped into it. Spiky Halo. This creates a spiky corona around the edge of your image, radiating from a focus point in the image (which is the center of the image when Horizontal Offset and Vertical Offset are each set to 0). The smaller the Radius (%) setting, the closer to the focus point the effect begins. Twirl. This seems to swirl the colors of your image together, as if the image were a thick liquid being stirred with a circular motion. Warp. This seems to push your image in (somewhat like Pinch) or push it out (somewhat like Punch). For a pushed-in effect, set Strength to a negative value. For a pushed-out effect, set Strength to a positive value. Wave. This displaces the pixels of your image in vertical and/or horizontal waves. Wind. This produces a directional blurring effect somewhat like a horizontal Motion Blur. (Motion Blur is available under Adjust > Blur.)
Edge Effects The Edge Effects enhance the contrast along the edges of the figures in your images. Apply these with Effects > Edge Effects > effect name. Each of these effects is applied immediately, with no controls. Dilate and Erode. Dilate enhances the light areas of the image, while Erode enhances the dark areas. Enhance and Enhance More. These increase the contrast along the image’s edges, with Enhance More providing stronger contrast.
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Find All, Find Horizontal, and Find Vertical. Find All darkens the image and highlights the edges. Find Horizontal does the same thing except that the highlighting is limited to the horizontal edges, and Find Vertical behaves similarly except that the highlighting is limited to the vertical edges. Trace Contour. This traces a line around areas of contrast and turns the rest of the image white. Figure A.7 shows a drawing of a pear, and Figure A.8 shows the same drawing after Trace Contour and then Erode are applied. Figure A.7 An unfiltered image
Figure A.8 The same image after Trace Contour and Erode are applied
Geometric Effects These apply simple but useful deformations to your images. Apply them with Effects > Geometric Effects > effect name. Circle and Pentagon. These warp your image into a circle or a pentagon. How the edges of the resulting image appear is dependent on the Edge mode setting that you choose. Cylinder—Horizontal and Cylinder—Vertical. Each of these seems to wrap your image around a cylinder either horizontally or vertically, as indicated by the particular effect’s name.
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Perspective—Horizontal and Perspective—Vertical. Perspective—Horizontal adds perspective to your image by narrowing the right or left of the image. Perspective— Vertical adds perspective by narrowing the top or bottom of the image. How the edges of the resulting image appear is dependent on the Edge mode setting that you choose.
Skew. This skews your image either vertically or horizontal. How the edges of the resulting image appear is dependent on the Edge mode setting that you choose. Spherize. This seems to wrap your image around the inside or outside of a sphere or flattened sphere.
NOTE Several Effects that move pixels from the edge of an image have Edge Mode controls. Which controls are available depend on the specific Effect and on whether the Effect is being applied to a Background layer or a layer that supports transparency. Wrap wraps one edge of the image to the opposite edge. Repeat repeats the pixels that had been at the edge of the image. Reflect fills in around the edges with mirrored sections of the image. Color fills in around the edges with a selected color. Transparent leaves the area around the edges transparent.
Illumination Effects These two add lighting effects to your images. Apply them with Effects > Illumination Effects > effect name. Sunburst. This adds an effect that resembles a lens flare. Be sure to try out the presets for Sunburst to get a feeling for this effect. Lights. This lets you add all sorts of lighting effects. You have five “lights” to work with, each of which has its own settings. To use a particular light, depress its button on the lower left of the Lights dialog box (Figure A.9), then check the On check box in the Light Source pane. You can then select whatever settings you want for that light. Repeat the same procedure for any of the other lights that you want to use. To turn a light off, click its button and then uncheck the On check box.
APPENDIX A
You can use either of these effects on a round object—such as the result you get from Balls and Bubbles or Circle—to create an egg-shaped object.
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Figure A.9 The Lights dialog box
Image Effects This group is a grab bag of some very useful effects. Apply these with Effects > Image Effects > effect name. Offset. This has several uses. One is to swap the quadrants of your image, as indicated in Figure A.10. In this case, Edge Mode is set to Wrap. Figure A.10 Offset (Wrap) swaps quadrants of an image
This is helpful when you want to make a seamless tile by hand: apply Offset, then cover the seam that appears where the previous edges of your image meet, running horizontally and vertically along the middle of the filtered image. Another use of Offset, this one with Edge Mode set to Repeat, is to produce an effect like the one shown in Figure A.11.
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Figure A.11 Offset (Repeat) seems to drag colors from the image horizontally or vertically
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Page Curl. This does just as its name implies, adding a page curl effect to any of the corners of your image. Seamless Tiling. This is a much improved replacement of Paint Shop Pro 7’s Convert to Seamless Pattern. For more information on using this effect, head over to http://loriweb.pair.com/howto.html.
Reflection Effects These effects repeat elements of your image to produce their results. Most of these effects are useful in creating abstract tiles. Feedback. This creates repetitions of your image, laid one on top of the other, with the image shrinking with each repetition. Kaleidoscope. This uses your image as the source for creating a kaleidoscopic effect. Figure A.12 shows the dialog box for Kaleidoscope.
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Figure A.12 The Kaleidoscope dialog box
Pattern. This can be used to create an abstract seamless tile that is made up of a repeating pattern. You may need to adjust the Scale and various Pattern Settings in order to make your pattern seamless. For the source image, I’ve found that good results are usually produced when the image’s height and width are each evenly divisible by 32. Try a section of a photo or an image canvas that you’ve filled using the Picture Tubes tool. Rotating Mirror. This reflects your image around its center along an axis whose angle you set.
Texture Effects The Texture Effects emboss your image, make it appear to be painted on a textured surface, or simulate natural textures such as fur and stone. Apply them with Effects > Texture Effects > effect name. Blinds. This makes your image appear to be painted on vertical or horizontal window blinds. Emboss. This makes your image appear to be embossed on the image canvas. Most of the image colors turn to shades of grey, although high-contrast areas will still show a hint of color. Fine Leather and Rough Leather. Fine Leather makes your image look as though it’s dyed into fine-grained leather. Rough Leather makes your image look as though it’s embossed on rough-grained leather. Fur. This uses your image as the basis for creating a furry effect. You control the length and density of the “hairs,” along with the softness of the hairs (set with Blur) and how transparent or opaque the furry effect on the image is (set with Transparency).
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Mosaic—Antique. This gives your image the look of old mosaic tiles. Mosaic—Glass. This makes your image look like it’s being viewed through glass blocks. Polished Stone. This makes your image look like it’s been carved from hard stone.
Sculpture. This seems to carve your image into whatever texture you select. Soft Plastic. This makes your image appear to be molded from plastic. Straw-wall. This gives your image the texture of a straw-plastered wall, with the colors of the image seeming to tint the wall. Texture. This adds a texture to your image, making the image look as though it’s painted on a textured surface. Tiles. This makes your image look like it’s made from triangular, square, or hexagonal tiles. Weave. This makes your image look as if it’s painted on a woven basket or woven fabric strips. Let’s look at some of the effects you can create with the Texture Effects. Figure A.13 shows an unfiltered image, and Figure A.14 shows the same image with Fine Leather, Polished Stone, and Straw-wall applied. Figure A.13 An unfiltered image
Figure A.14 The same image with a few Texture Effects applied: Fine Leather (left), Polished Stone (center), and Strawwall (right)
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Sandstone. This makes your image look like it’s been carved from soft stone.
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User Defined Filters You can create your own simple filters with the User Defined Filter facility. To start a new filter, choose Effects > User Defined. You’ll then see the User Defined Filter dialog box, shown in Figure A.15. Figure A.15 The User Defined Filter dialog box
For information on how to use the filter matrix to define your own filters, see the UDF tutorials at http://loriweb.pair.com/howto.html.
Plug-in Filters There are many plug-in filters available for Paint Shop Pro, some for free and some for sale. Two popular commercial plug-in packages are Super Blade Pro from Flaming Pear (http://www.flamingpear.com) and Eye Candy 4000 and Image Doctor from Alien Skin (http://www.alienskin.com). To install commercial plug-in filters, follow the manufacturer’s directions. To install free, downloadable filters that have no installer, put the filters in the folder where you want to store them. If you put the filters in your Paint Shop Pro PlugIns folder, there’s nothing more you need to do. If you put the filters in some other folder, be sure that that folder is specified in your file location preferences: in Paint Shop Pro choose File > Preferences > File Locations. In the File Locations dialog box (shown in Figure A.16), choose Plug-ins in the selection list. Click the Add button and then the Browse button. Choose the folder in which you’ve placed your filters. Click OK after choosing the folder. Repeat for any other folders where you want Paint Shop Pro to look for plug-ins, then click OK again to return to Paint Shop Pro.
Paint Shop Pro 8 Effects — Appendix A
265
Figure A.16 The Plug-in Filters tab of the File Locations dialog box
NOTE Plug-ins require MSVCRT10.DLL to be in your Windows System folder. If you don’t have this file, you can download it from nearly any filter download site or from the Jasc FTP site at ftp://ftp.jasc.com. You can access the Jasc site via anonymous FTP. Some Filter Factory plug-ins also require PLUGIN.DLL to be in your System folder (Windows\System or Winnt\System). If you have one of Adobe’s graphics products, you probably already have this file and simply need to copy it to your System folder. If you don’t have this file, don’t despair. Just head over to The Plugin Site (http://www.thepluginsite.com) and download a free copy of Harry Heim’s Plugin Commander Light or purchase Plugin Commander Pro. PiCo (as it’s called by its fans) lets you translate the old plugins to a form that Paint Shop Pro can use. PiCo also has several other handy functions, including some specifically for Paint Shop Pro, so you might want to check it out even if you have a copy of PLUGIN.DLL.
APPENDIX A
To apply a plug-in filter, choose Effects > Plug-in > filter family > filter name. For example, to apply the Eye Candy 4000 filter called Wood, you’d choose Effects > Plug-in > Eye Candy 4000 > Wood.
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Paint Shop Photo Album — Appendix B
267
Appendix B If you have a lot of digital photos to keep track of, there’s another Jasc Software product you should take a look at: Paint Shop Photo Album. Don’t think that Paint Shop Photo Album is useful only for folks who don’t need the power of Paint Shop Pro. Because Paint Shop Photo Album enables you to enhance, catalog, and share your digital photos and other images, it’s a great application for Paint Shop Pro users, too. Here are just some of the features of Paint Shop Photo Album: Get photos from your camera. Import photos directly from your camera to Paint Shop Photo Album. Paint Shop Photo Album supports cameras that have a USB driver that makes Windows treat the camera like a mounted drive, cameras that make use of a WIA (Windows Image Acquisition) device driver or that support Picture Transfer Protocol, cameras that store images on removable media, and TWAINcompliant cameras. Image enhancement features. Adjust your photo’s color, contrast, sharpness, and more; add enhancements such as frames, borders, and photo edges; add text to your photos; produce photographic effects such as sepia tinting or convert color photos to black and white. Integration with Paint Shop Pro. If your photo editing requires the power of Paint Shop Pro, load your photo from Paint Shop Photo Album, edit the image in Paint Shop Pro, and return to Paint Shop Photo Album, quickly and easily. Photo stitching. Stitch together a series of photos to create a seamless panorama. E-mailing images. E-mail either your original photos or optimized versions directly from within Paint Shop Photo Album. Image cataloging. Organize your images into albums that you can search by file name, subject, or description. Creation of digital slideshows. Make digital slideshows that can be stored on a CD-R or CD-RW disc that can be run on a PC or a DVD player that supports VCD (Video CD) format. This enables you to share your photos with your friends and family easily, even if they don’t have a computer, and it’s a handy way to archive your photos.
APPENDIX B
Paint Shop Photo Album
268
Paint Shop Photo Album — Appendix B
An evaluation version of Paint Shop Photo Album can be found on the CD version of Paint Shop Pro and is also available for download at the Jasc Software Web site, http://www.jasc.com. You’ll also find more information on Paint Shop Photo Album on the Jasc site. Check out the many features of Paint Shop Photo Album and give it a try.
Resources — Appendix C
269
Appendix C This appendix lists URLs for a number of resources that can help you create graphics with Paint Shop Pro. The list is far from exhaustive, but it’s sure to be helpful. Please think of this as just a starting point—you’re certain to find many other helpful sites. Remember, too, that nothing on the Web is permanent, so it’s possible that some of these links might change or be deleted.
Paint Shop Pro Tips and Tutorials Jasc Software, Inc. http://www.jasc.com
Paint Shop Pro’s Very Frequently Asked Questions http://campratty.com/questions.html
Lori’s Web Graphics
http://loriweb.pair.com
Making Graphics http://www.bysarah.com/mg
PSP Art Resources http://www.digitalartresources.com/PSP/ArtResources.htm
PSP Toy Box http://www.psptoybox.com
APPENDIX C
Resources
270
Resources — Appendix C
State of Entropy: Paint Shop Pro Graphics http://www.state-of-entropy.com For tutorials and collections of links to these and other Paint Shop Pro tutorial sites, head over to Jasc Software Learning Center at http://www.jasc.com/learncenter.asp and to PSP Links at http://www.psplinks.com.
Plug-in Filters Alien Skin (Eye Candy, Xenofex, Image Doctor, and Splat!)
http://www.alienskin.com
Auto F/X http://www.autofx.com
The Filter Factory Galleries
http://www.netins.net/showcase/wolf359/plugins.htm
Flaming Pear (Super Blade Pro and other filters)
http://www.flamingpear.com
The Plugin Site (PlugIn Commander and much more)
http://thepluginsite.com
Simple Filters http://www.btinternet.com/~cateran/simple
Freeware and Shareware Fonts The Astigmatic One Eye Typographic Institute http://www.astigmatic.com
The Dingbat Pages http://www.dingbatpages.com
Resources — Appendix C
271
Font Garden http://www.fontgarden.com
http://www.fontsnthings.com
Newsletters and User Groups PSP Power newsletter http://www.psppower.com
PSP Interactive Zone http://www.pspiz.net
Miscellaneous Wayne Fulton’s Scan Tips http://www.scantips.com
MyFonts.com (font info galore) http://www.myfonts.com
5th Street Studio (graphics goodies galore) http://www.fortunecity.com/westwood/alaia/354
Muska & Lipman Publishing (publisher of this book) www.muskalipman.com
APPENDIX C
Fonts & Things
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Index
273
Index NUMERICS 3D effects, 61, 174–176
A
Background Eraser tool, 37–38 backgrounds colors, setting, 6, 20 raster, 20 with text, example of, 184–185 transparent, 20 vector, 20 barrel distortion, 189 Black and White points, 191 blend modes Flood Fill tool, 38 layers, 86–88, 91–92 paint, 32 blending layers, with gradient masks, 102–105 Blur and Blur More filters, 195 blur effects, 107, 195–196 brightness control Flood Fill tool, 40 Magic Wand tool, 117 Browse command (File menu), 18–19 browsers, printing from, 219–220 Brush Variance palette jitter control, 35–36 option controls, list of, 35 overview, 14 setting controls, 35–36 viewing, 34 brushes, setting controls for, 31–34 bullets, creating, 233–234 burning effects, 42–43, 88 buttons, creating, 230–231
C CD, installing Paint Pro Shop from, 1–2 Channel Mixer feature, 198
INDEX
Add/Remove Noise filters, 196–197 adjustment layers, 200–201 Adjustment menu commands, 195–197 Airbrush tool, 29 Aligned Mode, Clone Brush tool, 44–46 alignment text, 172 vector objects, 152 all opaque control Flood Fill tool, 40–41 Magic Wand tool, 117 altitude setting control, Brush Variance palette, 35 angular settings, Picture Tubes tool, 50, 53 antialiasing, 62–63 Preset Shapes tool, 62 text, 172 artifact removal, 194–195 Auto Actions prompt, Background Eraser tool, 37–38 auto kern feature, 173 Auto Rollup feature, 16 Automatic Color Adjustment option, Enhance Photo feature, 188 Automatic Contrast Adjustment option, Enhance Photo feature, 188 Automatic Saturation Adjustment option, Enhance Photo feature, 188 autorun program, Paint Shop Pro, 1 Average Blur filter, 195 azimuth setting control, Brush Variance palette, 35
B
274
Index
Clarify option, Enhance Photo feature, 188 Clear command (Edit menu), 123–124 clearing selections, 123–124 Clone Brush tool, 201–203 Aligned Mode, 44–46 overview, 43 Sample Merged Mode, 44 color and contrast adjustment, 197–200 Color Blend control, Brush Variance palette, 35 Color Replacer tool, 48–49 colors background, setting, 6, 20 color value match mode option, Flood Fill tool, 39 correcting, 191–192 depth of, setting, 20 foreground, setting, 6 Colors tab (Materials palette), 6, 8 commands adding to menus, 24–25 adding to toolbars, 24 deleting from menus, 25 deleting from toolbars, 24 contrast and color adjustment, 197–200 Copy Merged command (Edit menu), 90, 120 copying layers, 80 selections, 119–123 Create as vector check box, Preset Shapes tool, 64 creating bullets, 233–234 buttons, 230–231 images, new, 19–20 masks, 96–97 menus, new, 24 separator bars, 232 shortcuts, keyboard, 25 text, on paths, 178–180 tiles, 234–236 vector objects, 148–149 cropping images, 206–207
curves curved text, 181 freehand, 68 with no fills, 65 point to point, 67–68 single, 64 without fills, 65 customizing menus, 24–25 toolbars, 23–24 Cut command (Edit menu), 119 cutouts, 68–69, 158–160
D darkening images, 42, 87 dashes, 71 Deform tools, 56–60 deforming deformed text, 177–178 vector objects, 151 Delete Layer icon, 76–77 deleting commands from menus, 25 commands from toolbars, 24 masks, 98–99 Density control, Brush Variance palette, 32, 35 difference blend mode, 88 dimension of images, setting, 19–20 direction setting control, Brush Variance palette, 35 dissolve blend mode, 88 distortion barrel, 189 lens, correcting, 189–190 perspective, 205 docking palettes, 15–16 dodge blend mode, 88 drawing tools. See Pen tool; Preset Shapes tool; Text tool
Index
E
logo example, 182–184 pears, 161–166 stained glass, 140 Effects toolbar, 15 Electronic Software Distribution (ESD), 1 ellipses, 61 Enhance Photo feature, 187–189 Eraser tool, 37–38 ESD (Electronic Software Distribution), 1 expand control, Warp Brush tool, 54 Export command (File menu), 52
F Fade Correction feature, 191 fade in setting control, Brush Variance palette, 35–36 fade out setting control, Brush Variance palette, 35–36 FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions), 28 feathering selections, 110, 134 fills, 65 fingerwheel and z wheel setting control, Brush Variance palette, 35 Flip feature, 209 floating palettes, 15–16 floating selections, 111–112 floating text, 170 Flood Fill tool Match Mode, 39–41 overview, 38 Sample Merged check box, 42 fonts, 171 Foreground and Background Materials Properties box, Materials palette, 7 foreground colors, 6 Freehand Selection tool, 110, 114–116 Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), 28 From Mask command (Selections menu), 139
G Gamma Correction feature, 199 gaps between lines, 71 Gaussian Blur filter, 195–196
INDEX
edge masks, 99–102 Edge Preserving Smooth option, Enhance Photo feature, 188 edge seeker selection type, 114 Edit Selection command (Selection menu), 128–129 editing masks, 97 solutions to Add/Remove Noise filters, 196–197 adjustment layers, 200–201 Blur filters, 195–196 cloning, 201–203 color correction, 191–192 contrast and color adjustment, 197–200 cropping images, 206–207 Enhance Photo feature, 187–189 Flip feature, 209 histogram adjustment, 192–194 JPEG artifact removal and unsharp mask, 194–195 lens distortion, 189–190 Mirror feature, 209 Negative Image feature, 197 perspective distortion, 205 photo enhancement example, 211–212 red-eye removal, 189 resizing images and layers, 207–209 retouching tools, 203 rotating images, 209 scratch removal, 204 Sharpness filters, 196 Softness filters, 196 straightening images, 210 vector objects node editing, 153–156 node types, changing, 157 overview, 152 selected nodes, transforming, 157–158 effects 3D, 61, 174–176 cutouts, 68–69, 158–160
275
276
Index
GIF file format, 229 GIF Optimizer, 239–241 gradient masks, blending layers with, 102–105 Gradient tab (Materials palette), 8 greeting cards, creating and printing example, 223–228 Grey World Color Balance feature, 198 grouping layers, 85
H hard light blend mode, 88 hardness, of brushes, 31 Help menu commands Help Topics command, 27 Learning Center, 2 Hide Marquee command (Selections menu), 128 hiding layers, 83 Learning Center, 2 Histogram Adjustment filter, 192–194 Histogram window, 14–15 horizontal lines, 66 hue blend modes, 39, 87, 117 Hue control, Brush Variance palette, 35
I Image Mapper, 244–246 Image Slicer, 246–247 images adding text to, 169–174 creating new, 19–20 cropping, 206–207 dimensions and resolution, setting, 19–20 opening, 18–19 printing, 215–216 resizing, 207–209 rotating, 209 saving, 21–22 sizes, printing solutions, 213–214 straightening, 210 incremental settings, Picture Tubes tool, 50, 53
Inside/Outside Feather command (Selection command), 134 installing Paint Shop Pro, 1–2 Invert menu command (Selection menu), 128 iron out mode, Warp Brush tool, 54 italic text, 171
J Jasc Numeric Editors (JNEs), 5 Jasc Software, Inc. Web site, 1, 27, 53 jitter control, Brush Variance palette, 35–36 JPEG artifact removal and unsharp mask, 194–195 JPEG Optimizer, 237–239
K kerning, 173 keyboard shortcuts, creating, 25
L layers adding new, 77–78 adjustment, 200–201 arranging, 80–81 blend modes, 86–88 blend ranges, 91–92 blending with gradient masks, 102–105 copying, 80 defined, 73 Delete Layer icon, 76–77 examples of, 74–75 grouping, 85 hiding, 83 layer buttons, 76 linked, 83–85 merging, 88–91 moving, 80–81 New Raster Layer icon, 76–77 opacity, 76, 86–87 resizing, 207–209 visibility and protect transparency, 82–83
Index
Visibility toggle, 76 Layers palette. See layers leading text, 173 Learning Center, Paint Shop Pro, 2 lens distortion, correcting, 189–190 lightening images, 42, 87 Lightness control, Brush Variance palette, 35 lines as dashes, 71 with fills, 65 freehand, 68 gaps between, 71 horizontal, 66 with no fills, 65 point to point, 67–68 single, 64 straight, 66 styles, 69–72 vertical, 66 width of, 65 linked layers, 83–85 Load/Save Selection command (Selection menu), 138–139 loading masks, 99 selections, 138–139 workspaces, 25–26 Lock Transparency toggle, Layers palette, 82, 93 logo text example, 182–184 luminance blend modes, 87
M
edge, 99–102 editing, 97 gradient, blending layers with, 102–105 loading, 99 overlays, 97–98 overview, 94–95 saving, 99 Match Mode Flood Fill tool, 39–40 Magic Wand tool, 117 materials, as swatches, 6 Materials palette Colors tab, 6, 8 Foreground and Background color boxes, 6 Foreground and Background Material Properties box, 7 Gradient tab, 8 overview, 5–6 Pattern tab, 9 selecting styles and textures with, 29–30 Swatches tab, 6 Texture check box, 9–10 Matting command (Selection menu), 130–131 menus accessing, 3 customizing, 24–25 list of, 3 merging layers, 88–91 Mesh Warp tool, 58–59 Mirror feature, 209 Motion Blur filter, 195 moving layers, 80–81 selections, 111 vector objects, 149
N naming menus, 24 Negative Image filter, 197 New command (File menu), 19 New Raster Layer icon, 76–77 newsletters, creating and printing example, 221–223
INDEX
Magic Wand tool, 90–91, 110, 117–119 Magnifier window, 14 Manual Color Correction feature, 191–192 marching ants, 110 marquees, defined, 110 masks converting to selections, 139 creating, 96–97 defined, 92–93 deleting, 98–99
277
278
Index
node editing, vector objects, 153–156 node types, changing, 157 noise mode, Warp Brush tool, 54–55 none value match mode option Flood Fill tool, 39 Magic Wand tool, 117 normal setting control, Brush Variance palette, 35
O One Step Photo fix, Enhance Photo feature, 187 opacity layers, 86–87 Layers palette, 76 Magic Wand tool, 117 paint applies, 32 Opacity control, Brush Variance palette, 35 Open command (File menu), 18 opening images, 18–19 oscillating face control, Brush Variance palette, 35 overlay blend mode, 88, 97–98 Overview window, 11–12
P paint blend mode, 32 opacity, 32 wet paint appearance, 33 Paint Brush tool overview, 29 tools options, selecting, 31–34 Paint Shop Pro, installing, 1–2 paper, printer, selecting, 214 Paste command (Edit menu), 120–123 pasting selections, 119–123 paths, creating text on, 178–180 Pattern tab (Materials palette), 9 pear effects, 161–166 Pen tool cutouts, creating, 68–69 freehand lines and curves, 68
line segments, 66 point to point lines and curves, 67–68 Simple Mode, 64–65 pentagons, 61 Perspective Correction tool, 205 perspective distortion, 205 Photo toolbar, components of, 4 Picture Tubes tool Selection Mode, 50–51 Settings button, 52–53 Placement mode, Picture Tubes tool, 50, 53 playing scripts, 22 PNG Optimizer, 242–243 point to point selection type, 114 preferences, setting, 26 Preset Shapes tool, 61–64 presets, defined, 17 pressure setting control Brush Variance palette, 35 Picture Tubes tool, 51, 53 previewing Web graphics, 243–244 printing from browsers, 219–220 greeting card example, 223–228 image size and resolution for, 213–214 images, 215–216 newsletter example, 221–223 paper for, selecting, 214 print layout, 216–219 printer services, 221 push mode, Warp Brush tool, 54 pushing effect, 42
R random settings, Picture Tubes tool, 50, 53 raster backgrounds, 20 raster text, warping and deforming, 177–178 recording scripts, 22 Recover Antialias command (Selection menu), 135 rectangles, 61 red-eye removal, 189 Remove Specks and Holes command (Selection menu), 135
Index
repeating fade in control, Brush Variance palette, 35 resizing. See sizing resolution of images, setting, 19–20 printing solutions, 213–214 Retain Style box, Preset Shapes tool, 62 retouching tools, 203 Clone Brush, 43–47 Color Replacer, 48–49 overview, 42–43 Picture Tubes, 49–53 Scratch Remover, 47–48 Reverse Contour command (Edit menu), 160 RGB value match mode option Flood Fill tool, 39 Magic Wand tool, 117 rotation of brushes, 32 images, 209 shapes, 58 vector objects, 150 Rotation control, Brush Variance palette, 35
S
Select None command (Edit menu), 160 Selection Mode, Picture Tubes tool, 50–51, 53 selections adding to and subtracting from, 124–127 clearing, 123–124 converting to masks, 139 copying and pasting, 119–123 defined, 109 edge seeker selection type, 114 edges of, softening, 110–111 Edit Selection command, 128–129 feathering, 110, 134 floating, 111–112 Freehand Selection tool, 110, 114–116 Hide Marquee command, 128 Inside/Outside Feather, 134 Invert menu command, 128 Load/Save Selection command, 138–139 loading, 138–139 Magic Wand tool, 110, 117–119 From Mask command, 139 Matting command, 130–131 moving, 111 point to point selection type, 114 Recover Antialias command, 135 Remove Specks and Holes command, 135 Select All menu command, 127 Select Color Range command, 132–134 Select None menu command, 127 Select Selection Borders command, 137 Select Similar command, 131 Shape Based Antialias command, 134 smart edge selection type, 114 smoothing, 136–137 stained glass effects, 140 standard, 111–112 text, 170 turning off, 113 separator bars, creating, 232 shadow effects, 43 Shape Based Antialias command (Selection menu), 134 shapes of brushes, 31
INDEX
Sample Merged check box Clone Brush tool, 44 Flood Fill tool, 42 saturation blend modes, 87 Saturation control, Brush Variance palette, 35 Save command (File menu), 21 saving images, 21–22 masks, 99 selections, 138–139 workspaces, 25 scale control, Picture Tubes tool, 50, 53 Scratch Remover tool, 43, 47–48, 204 Script command (File menu), 4 Script toolbar, components of, 4 scripting, 22–23 Select All command (Edit menu), 157 Select Color Range command (Selection menu), 132–134
279
280
Index
Preset Shapes tool, 62 rotation, 58 Sharpen option, Enhance Photo feature, 188 Sharpness filters, 196 shortcuts, keyboard, 25 Simple Mode, Pen tool, 64–65 Size control, Brush Variance palette, 35 sizes brushes, 31 text, 171 sizing images, 207–209 layers, 207–209 palettes and toolbars, 16 vector objects, 149 smart edge selection type, 114 smoothing selections, 136–137 smudging effect, 42 soft light blend mode, 88 softening effects, 42, 110–111 Softness filters, 196 stained glass effects, 140 standard selections, 111–112 Standard toolbar, components of, 4 status bar, 13–14 step values brushes, 31 Picture Tubes tool, 50, 53 straight lines, 66 straightening images, 210 stroke behaviors, brushes, 33 styled lines, 69–72 styles, selecting, 29–30 swatches, materials as, 6
T text 3D effects, 174–176 adding to images, 169–174 aligning, 172 antialiasing, 172 auto kern, 173 background example, 184–185
curved, 181 floating, 170 fonts, 171 italic, 171 kerning, 173 leading, 173 logo example, 182–184 on paths, creating, 178–180 raster, warping, and deforming, 177–178 selection, 170 size of, 171 vector, 170, 178 warp, 172 Texture check box (Materials palette), 9–10 textures, selecting, 29–30 Thickness control, Brush Variance palette, 32, 35 Threshold filter, 200 tiles, creating, 234–236 toggling palettes, 5 tolerance settings, Magic Wand tool, 117–119 Tool Options palette, components of, 4–5 toolbars customizing, 23–24 Effects, components of, 15 location of, 2 Photo, components of, 4 resizing, 16 Script, components of, 4 Standard, components of, 4 Tools, components of, 3 Web, components of, 15 Tools toolbar, components of, 3 transparency backgrounds, 20 Lock Transparency toggle, Layers palette, 82–83 turning off selections, 113 twirl modes, Warp Brush tool, 54 twist setting control, Brush Variance palette, 35
U Unsharp Mask filter, 194–195 unwarp mode, Warp Brush tool, 54
Index
V vector backgrounds, 20 vector objects alignment and distribution, 152 converting to raster layers, 147 Create as vector check box, Preset Shapes tool, 64 creating, 148–149 cutout effects, 158–160 deforming, 151 editing node editing, 153–156 node types, changing, 157 overview, 152 selected nodes, transforming, 157–158 moving, 149 pear effects, 161–166 properties, accessing, 151–152 resizing, 149 rotating, 150 text, 170, 178 velocity setting control, Picture Tubes tool, 51, 53 vertical lines, 66 Visibility toggle, Layers palette, 76, 82
281
tiles, creating, 234–236 unified look example, 247–249 Web toolbar, components of, 15 wet paint appearance, 33 width, of lines, 65 workspaces, loading and saving, 25–26
W
INDEX
Warp Brush tool, 54–56 warped text, 172, 177–178 warping tools Deform family of tools, 56–60 Warp Brush, 54–56 Web graphics bullets, creating, 233–234 buttons, creating, 230–231 GIF file format, 229 GIF Optimizer, 239–241 JPEG file format, 229 JPEG Optimizer, 237–239 PNG file format, 229 PNG Optimizer, 242–243 previewing, 243–244 separator bars, creating, 232
