This is Lesson #4 and the name is "Adding Patterns, Gradients and Tubes to PSP. In past lessons we used patterns, gradients and tubes that were supplied to us when we bought PSP. But we can add our own to each group. We will start with Tubes.

As you learned in previous lessons Tubes are images that have a transparent background that can be resized to fit our needs and can be placed over other tubes or elements in our designs. There are loads of tubes available for free on the internet. You can download many from my site alone, at http://www.catshoes.com/Tubes/tubeindex.htm

We are going to discuss how to open and save these tubes to our tube folders. You may have seen some tubes that were shared previously and may have even saved them, if not then use the tube here as an example and save it to a folder where you can find it. I suggest My Documents/My Pictures/PSP Tubes as a new folder you can save to. Some people would rather save it to their desktop, which is just a good make a new folder on your desktop for PSP Tubes and save it there.

This File is called FurryFriends_GfxClaudia.tub the .tub is the file type that was used in the Jasc Versions of PSP, the new file type for the Corel versions (9 and above) are .PspTube files. Either will work in any version 9 and above.

Once we have our image saved go to FILE / OPEN in our PSP Program and browse to your new folder and find a tube of your choice, click on it to open. Your image will look similar to the one shown below, the graphic is shown on a transparent background, the grey and white tiles are where the transparency lies. Not all programs can read this transparency so don't be surprised if you try to open these files in another program and see a solid color instead. It is not reading the transparency, but it is still there.

To save this tube to our tube files go to FILE / EXPORT / PICTURE TUBE this will bring up a new window called "Exporting Picture Tubes". This window is asking us questions about the tube, for the time being we are going to leave everything as it is except for the box marked "Tube Name" we must give our tube a name in order to save it. Name this tube to make it easy for you to find it, I named mine "Furry Friends" Then click the OK button at the bottom of the window.

Now we are able to use this tube over and over again. Open a new image the usual size. Then flood fill with a color, pattern or gradient of your choice. Next going to the Picture Tube Tool, find your new tube in the drop down menu. Using the sizing settings, resize your tube down to a smaller size, click inside your image box and see your new tube at work! Now raise the size and click again this time we added another image of a different size with the same tube.

Here is mine. Can you see how you might be able to use tubes? They work wonderfully when trying to create a 3D perspective. Having the Larger tube in the foreground and the smaller tube in the background gives it the feeling of depth in the picture. You can add as many tubes as you like, but just keep in mind that every time you open PSP and try to use a tube you will have to wait for the program to read each tube. The more tubes you have the longer you will have to wait. I only have the tubes that I use all the time loaded, and just add tubes as I need them. How to remove tubes from your list? Well in newer versions you can go to My Documents/My PSP Files/Picture Tubes and a list of all the tubes that you have added will appear there. Either move or delete the ones you no longer want to use, the next time you open your program they will no longer appear in the drop down menu.

Next we will discuss how to add patterns to your Materials Palette. here is a plaid background for you to use in this exercise. Save this image in your "PSP Lessons" folder. Now we are going to add it to our Patterns file. There are several ways of doing this, as with most things in PSP it gives us options to do the same things in different ways. We can open this file in PSP, do that now. Go to FILE/OPEN browse to where you saved the image and click on it to open.

Here is the file opened on our workspace. Then go to FILE / SAVE AS and now browse to your My Documents/My PSP Files/Patterns folder and save it as a .jpg there. You can also open your folder, either on your desktop or in you My Documents/My Pictures folder and copy and paste to the Patterns folder. Or move it with the Widows Explorer. Which ever way you find the most convenient.

Last we have gradients, You can download gradients from the internet as well but for now use the one here, (Banana Split.jgd) this file type is .jgd which stands for Jasc Gradient, newer versions of PSP (Corel Versions) use the file type .PSPGradient. either one works for PSP 9 and new versions. You will not be able to open these files in PSP, as they are only read by the gradient folder, so copy and paste or move this file to your My Documents/My PSP Files/Gradients.

Going back to your PSP Program open a new image, same as always. Then click on the Flood Fill Tool and go to the Materials Palette. Choose the Gradient tab and find your new gradient Named "Banana Split". Click inside your image box and you should have an image like this.

Now you can add the tubes, patterns and gradients you like, just remember the more you add the longer you have to wait for them to load. Depending on your system resources you can crash the program with too many of each. So just keep the ones you really love and use all the time.

You can remove them the same way as the tubes, find your My Documents/My PSP Files/Gradients (or Patterns) and just move or delete the ones you no longer want or use. Keeping your folders cleaned of unwanted files will save you time in the long run. So make it a habit of clearing them out once in a while.

As with many things in PSP there are more than one way to do most everything. You can delete individual tubes, gradients, patterns, etc by using the resource manager.

This is located at the top of your tube, etc. drop down menu, clicking on this icon brings up a new window where you can delete, rename, copy or move any of the files in that menu. A nice feature if you are deleting one or two of your files.