Lesson #1 - The Beginning

Welcome to PSP 101, this is the first lesson in Paint Shop Pro and Named

The Beginning - 001. I use Jasc Paint Shop Pro 9 for instructions, I also have Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo XI and will give the necessary changes for X and XI versions.

And in the program screen The darker area in the middle is called the "Workspace". At the top are all the normal menu options you see in most programs such as; File, Edit, View, etc . . . On the left hand side you will see what is called the "Toolbar", here is where you will find all the tools that we use in a fast easy format for use. On the right is our Working Palettes, We have the Materials Palette, Layers Palette, Histogram and others, these are aids and can be used or turned off according to your needs.

Below is a picture of what your Workspace should look like, take a look at all the menus, tools and palettes, get yourself familiar to where everything is.

Lets Begin: Go to Your top Menu and choose File / New this will bring up another window called "New Image" Set your Image Dimensions to 300 x 300 Units in Pixels, Resolution to 200 dpi Raster Background, Making sure that the Transparent check box is checked, it will look like the one below.

Click ok and you now have a new image in your workspace. This is the default settings for any new image in the course. If I don't specify the settings these are what you will be using. Here is what your image will look like now.

Doesn't look like much right? Well Lets try something here, In your Tool Bar (on the left hand side) Find the Flood Fill tool.

. Now going over to our Materials Palette on the Right side choose a color of your choice by clicking inside the color wheel.

The block in the upper part of palette is for the Foreground Color, the lower block is the Background color. There are three tabs above the color wheel where you can get a look at different ways to pick a color. You can also double click on the color block and it will bring up a new window with a color wheel and more information as well.

Ok, once you have chosen the color of your choice, go back to your new image on your workspace and click inside the space. You should now have an image with a solid color inside the space, like this.

If your image looks like this you did a great job. Now going back to your Tool Bar, select the Picture Tube Tool

, looks something like this. This will give you a drop down menu where you can find different images called tubes. These images are pictures or parts of images that have a transparent background that you can use over and over again. Some come preloaded in your PSP program, but you can also add new tubes, we will get into that in a further class.

Choose a tube from the drop down menu, your choice then click inside your new image with the colored background. Each time you click you leave another image, I chose Jelly beans as my tube, see below that I clicked four times and got four different jelly beans, this is called a multiple tube where there are more than one image in the tube, as seen below in the small thumbnail image there are many different jelly beans in this tube. Some tubes are a single image and will show up in the thumbnail as a single image.

Click on the slider bar of the Scale settings, or you can use the up and down arrows if you like. This will change the size of your tube smaller or larger accordingly. Give that a try and see what you come up with.

You should continue to "play" with the flood fill tool, and the picture tube tool until you are completely familiar with them. We will be discussing more of what each tool and palette can do in further classes.