Lesson #11 - A Few Tips and Tricks

This is Beginner Lesson #11 named "A Few Tips and Tricks".  In this lesson we will be discussing some of the more behind-the-scenes kind of things that can help you to understand the workings of PSP better. 

 

 

Did you know that you can float any palette to any area around the workspace?  True!  To move or undock a palette just drag the title bar to another position in the Workspace.  To Dock it back to it's original position just double click on the title bar. 

 

To see a list of the different palettes you can either go to VIEW / PALETTES and get a drop down menu like this.

 

  this shows all the different palettes that are available for use, the Shortcut for each Palette is shown to right.  So if you wanted to use the History Palette you could either click on it here or just hit the F3 key from the Workspace.  Try that now.  You can also change the sequence of the palettes just by dragging and dropping.

 

 

  You will notice that there are some added palettes such as the Organizer (which takes the place of the Browser). 

 

In PSP 9 you can find the palette list by right clicking on any palette you have open and choosing Palettes. 

 

****TIP****  You will find that with PSP there is always more than one way to do things.  This is true for creating as well as using the tools. I want to emphasize this fact, because you will find other ways of doing things that are more comfortable to you, do what feels right for you.  There is no right or wrong way as long as you end up with the product you wanted!

 

On the Materials Palette you are familiar with the Color Boxes, to chose a color or gradient or pattern you would left click on the box.  But you can also right click on the same box and it gives you the option of picking a color you just recently used by saving past choices.  It shows gradients and patterns as well. 

 

You may have already been experimenting with the materials palette and perhaps have seen or even played with the tabs under the Color Boxes.  There are three tabs, the first tab you can change from Color to Gradient to Pattern, the second tab is for textures,  Ah! Textures you can use a texture in any material you choose.  Let's take a look at that a little later.  I want to explore the third tab under the Color Box first.  This is the transparent tab or Null tab, where you can have a foreground color or not, you can have a background color or not. (this tab is not always available, grayed out, for some tools)   When using the Shapes Tool, for instance and drawing a circle you don't want the outline clicking on the transparent tab for the foreground color (outline) removes the outline.  In the example below we have red as the outline and black as the fill color in the first image.  In the second I used the transparent tab for the outline so all we see now is the black fill color.

 

 

 

 

Another little tip is the double arrow to the left of the lower color box, if you click on that arrow the boxes will switch materials.  Oh! Fun!

 

 

Let's go back to the Textures tab.  This will toggle the textures on and off.

Left Click on the Upper Color Box (Foreground) and choose a color.  On the upper right side of this window is a check box with the word Texture next to it.  Click on the box and the Texture drop down list appears. (it was grayed out before) Click on the drop down and there the makers of PSP have supplied you with different textures to use.  Chose one then close the window.  As with most things in PSP you can add your own textures, more on that later.

 As you can see I have added some to my files.  Next choose a color of your choice as well. Using our default image size with a white background, flood fill the image with your new texturized color.  Here is mine:

  Now try using a gradient, open another new image same size with white background, this time choose a gradient of your choice then flood fill our new image.  Again here is mine:

 

  Now see the texture show through the gradient?  It's the same texture as the solid color one.  OK Let's try a pattern!  Open another new image and then choose a pattern of your choice and flood fill this image.  Here is mine:

 

  My subtle pattern now takes on new life with the added texture.  It is a great tool and you should experiment with it.  If you find that you are using the same combination of colors and textures over and over you can give yourself a shortcut by adding it to your color choices.  In the Materials Properties Window (the window that comes up when you left click a Color Box) at the lower right hand is a button called Add to Swatches.  Click this button, A new window appears asking you to name the Swatch, name your swatch whatever you like and click ok.  Next to the two thumbnails called Current and Previous there is a little box I have marked view in the image below, click on this box

this will bring up a small window where you can see and choose your swatches.  See below that my new swatch has been added.  As with many things in PSP the makers have already added a few swatches for you. 

 

  Going back to our Materials Pallette, look above the color wheel where we have our three tabs for viewing choices.  The tabs are named Frame, Rainbow and Swatches, click on the Swatches tab and there you have the same window as above showing all your saved swatches.  This makes it easy to choose your swatches that you tend to use a lot. 

 

While still on the Swatch tab you will see below the swatch grid we see a series of buttons .  Click on the first of these buttons and it gives us the choice to show only certain types of swatches, color, gradient, pattern or all. Click on pattern and you will see only the pattern type swatches that have been added.  The next button is the create swatch button, instead of going to the materials property window you can create a swatch from any selected image in your workspace.  The next button in our series is the Delete Swatch.  Self-explanatory, it deletes any swatch of your choice.  The next button is called "More Options"  This gives us even more choices, we can rename our swatch, we can change how they are viewed, and we change how they are sorted here as well. 

 

 

As in Palettes there are different toolbars as well.  You can see all the different Toolbars available by going to VIEW / TOOLBARS and a list of the available toolbars comes up similar to the Palettes. 

 

  PSP 9       PSP XI

 

Again you can see that there are some differences in the toolbars in these two versions.  You should have at least the Standard Toolbar and The Tools Toolbar showing the rest is up to you. 

 

The other toolbars are used for specific jobs, for example the Web Toolbar has specific tools used for making web images.  There is an image splicer and a buttonizer on this toolbar for making web pages. 

 

Another might be the Photo Toolbar which has specific tools used in enhancing photos such as red eye remover, and sharpen tool.  In each case these Toolbars are used for a specific job, so can be toggled on and off when not needed.  As with the Palettes, Toolbars can be docked and undocked in the same way by double clicking the title bar to dock and dragging into the Workspace to undock. 

 

 

We have already used some effects, mostly the drop shadow effect.  But there are many others that can be used and each one creates a different

rendering to the image. It would be impossible for me to go through each and every effect that is offered in the program in one sitting.  This is something that I prefer you discover for yourself. 

 

Open an image, a picture does nicely but not something that is too big, make it easy on yourself and use a smaller image that is easier to work with.  find an image here for one that you can use or use one of your own.

 

Open this image and then start testing the effects in the Effects Menu.  Go to Art Effects / Colored Pencil  click the ok button and see what this does to our image.  OK, Undo that one and try another like Distortion Effect / Curlicues,  then undo that one and try another, keep going.  Just see the different effects and what they do.  Have some fun with it.  Use your creativity and see what you can make out of them.  Sometimes this is the best way to learn. 

 

These effects are created using filters.  PSP has added many to our program but you can add more.  Outside filters are called "Plugins".  There are many plug-in filters available.  Some are quite complicated and pricey (I might add) while others are very simple and free.  The Plugins that are compatible with PSP have .8bf after the file name.  There are other filters that are made for other Image Programs like Photoshop that have to be converted to be used with Paint Shop Pro.  And you can find programs that will do the conversions for you.  The one I suggest is Plugin Commander Light.  It is free and is better and easier than some that you have to pay for. 

 

We will be discussing more about filters in future lessons.  For now get used to the ones offered in the PSP Program. 

 

In this lesson you learned about:

 

In our next lesson we will be discussing more about our Tool choices.