Table of Contents Getting Started...3 Bristol Village Computer Room Users...3 BVRES.ORG Web Site Users...3 The Paint Shop Pro Workspace... 3 Basic Drawing...4 Drawing Lines...4 Changing Paint Brush Colors...5 Change Paint Brush Shape...7 Delete All...7 Creating Text...7 Adding Text...7 Centering Text...9 Creating a Text Drop Shadow...9 Enhancing Photos...10 Cropping Images...11 Resizing Images...11 Enhancing Images... 13 Adjust, Brightness and Contrast...13 One Step Photo Fix...13 Smart Photo Fix...14 A Photo Restore Story...15 Retouching Pictures...16 The Scratch Remover...16 The Clone Tool...16 The Object Remover...17 Printing Images with Paint Shop Pro...18 Basic Printing...18 Using Print Layout...19 Creating a Custom Toolbar... 21 Save Workspace...22 Change Workspace Color...22
Using Paint Shop Pro by Len Nasman Getting Started Paint Shop Pro is a very powerful image processing and paint program. Although it has most of the common features of the much more expensive Adobe Photoshop, many users find Paint Shop Pro much easier to learn. This tutorial will focus on some commonly used features of Paint Shop Pro X3. Most of the features covered are also common to Paint Shop Pro X4. Bristol Village Computer Room Users Paint Shop Pro X3 is installed on the Glenn Center Computer Room workstations. Log on as a BVCC user. The Paint Shop Pro X3 settings for BVCC users include the custom Toolbar as used in this tutorial. Please do not modify this or other users will have trouble using the program. BVRES.ORG Web Site Users This tutorial assumes that Paint Shop Pro X3 has a custom Toolbar in place. To learn how to adjust the Paint Shop Pro X3 settings to match this tutorial, go to the Creating Custom Toolbar section at the end of this document. The Paint Shop Pro Workspace The secret to getting control of most software is learning the basic vocabulary used in the program. Let's start by opening the program and exploring the names for things on the Paint Shop Pro Workspace. Start Paint Shop Pro by double clicking on the desktop shortcut [or single click on a taskbar icon]. When Paint Shop Pro is first opened, no image will be present, and the tools will appear ghosted and will not be available. A new image will be created so that the tools can be reviewed. When Paint Shop Pro opens, start a new image by selecting the New tool in the upper left corner of the display. In the New Image dialog box, enter a Width of 1024 and a Height of 768. Then select the OK button. Page 3
Using Paint Shop Pro The display should now look similar to the following illustration. Review the different parts of the Paint Shop Pro workspace. The Titlebar shows the name of the program and the current active image file name. The Menubar contains words that, when selected, drop down additional options. The Toolbar has tools that operate on the current image. NOTE: The Toolbar used in this tutorial has been customized. The custom Toolbar is found on BVCC computers. If the Toolbar has been changed, ask how to load the Comp712 Workspace. If you are not working in the Bristol Village Computer Room and would like to have the same Toolbar used in the tutorial, go to the Creating a Custom Toolbar section of this document The Context tools area changes with the currently selected tool The Tools are in a column on the left side of the display. The Image area is where the current image is displayed. The mouse scroll wheel can be used to zoom in and out on the image. To the left of the image area there is a description of the currently selected tool. The status area on the bottom right of the workspace shows information about the current image. When multiple images are open in Paint Shop Pro X4, TABS are used to switch images. Basic Drawing Drawing Lines Let's start by drawing a few freehand lines NOTE: Select means to move the mouse pointer to a tool or object and then press the left mouse button once. Page 4
Basic Drawing Click and drag means to move the mouse pointer to a particular place, hold the left mouse button down, and move the mouse. When you move the mouse pointer over a tool and hover for a short time, a tool tip will briefly show the name or function of a tool. From the tools area, select the Paint Brush tool. As soon as you select the Paint Brush tool, the Context tools area will change to show options for the Paint Brush tool. To draw with the paint brush tool click and drag. Click and drag a few lines on the image. Note that when you release the left mouse button the paint brush stops painting. Changing Paint Brush Colors The illustration shows three scribbled areas, using the black, blue, and red material colors. To change color, simply select a new color from the Materials selector. Select a new color and draw some more lines. The default materials selector is set for 8bit color, which provides over 16 million colors to choose from. Here is how to select a standard color. Left click in the foreground color box in the Materials palette. Page 5
Using Paint Shop Pro This opens the Material Properties dialog box. There is a color wheel and shade patch area for selecting and fine tuning color selections. There is also a palette of standard colors to select from. Computer display colors are not created the same as traditional paint or printing ink colors. Because of the nature of how computer and TV screens use colored lights to make images, colors are composed of Red, Green, and Blue components, or Hue, Saturation, and Luminance components. The Material Properties dialog box shows the numerical values of these components for the currently selected color. Select a standard color from the Materials Properties dialog box, select OK, and draw a few lines with the new color. Note that the Materials selector area has boxes for foreground and background colors. You can draw with either color with the paint brush. Left click in the foreground color box and select a color. Left click in the background color box and select a different color. Add a few horizontal lines to your drawing. Now draw a few vertical lines, but use the right mouse button instead of the left mouse button. When you select the foreground or background boxes to open the Material Properties dialog box, the mouse cursor becomes a color picker (or Dropper) tool. You can move the Dropper to any color in an open image and select that color. The Dropper tool is also available on the column of tools. This provides a means for selecting a color that matches something in an image. Observe that the Paint brush context tools include a Size tool. There are several ways to change the brush size. You can enter a new size number in the Size text box, select the up or down arrows to increase or decrease the size, or click the large arrow and drag the cursor to a new size. Change the brush size and draw new lines. Page 6
Basic Drawing Change Paint Brush Shape Another common paint brush option is the brush Shape selector. The default shape is round, however, there are a variety of different brush shapes available. Select a new brush shape and draw some lines. Delete All By now your drawing is probably pretty messy. So, here is a quick way to clear the drawing area. Press Ctrl+A to select the entire drawing area, then press the Delete key. NOTE: When you delete an area, it will be replaced by the current background color. Change brush shape and color and experiment until you have an idea how the Paint Brush tool works. Play around with the Hardness, Step, Density, Thickness, and Opacity paint brush tool options to see how they work. Use the Ctrl+A, Delete trick to clear the drawing, or close the current image and start new one. After deleting, use the Select None tool remove any selected area. NOTE: The illustration shows the different tools for closing the current image or closing the Paint Shop Pro program. Creating Text Adding Text When the Text tool is selected, the context tools change to text formatting tools that are similar to most word processing programs. The illustration was created by entering the words Adding Text using a font named Boulder with the Size set to 24. Observe that there are tools in the context tools area for setting justification to left, center, or right, similar to word processing software. These settings affect multiple line text entries. You can enter several different lines of text in the same text entry box. An important difference from word processing software is that Paint Shop Pro text uses the foreground color for the border around the characters and the background for the body of the characters. More about that later. Page 7
Using Paint Shop Pro Select the Text tool, click at a location for the text, enter some text, then select the Apply changes tool. If you cannot place text, use the Select None tool to remove any selected area. As soon as the Apply changes tool is selected, the text will appear with a box surrounding it. There are grab points at the corners and mid points of this box. You can change the size and proportions of the selected text by dragging these grab points. At the center of the selected text, there is a drag point. This can be used to move the selected text to a new location. Create some text, select the Apply tool, and then experiment with the drag and grab points. Just to the right of the drag point, there is a rotate grab. Dragging this point will rotate the text. Next, you will see how the foreground and background colors affect the text. Select the Text tool. Set the font to Ariel, and the font size to 36. Enter the words Sample text, but do not select the Apply tool yet. Triple click on the text to select all characters. Change the foreground and background colors. Observe how changing the foreground and background colors affects the selected text. Also note that the stroke width controls the thickness of the text character borders. NOTE: When the selection box is visible, you can left click in the text to insert the edit cursor. Page 8
Creating Text Centering Text When the text selection box is visible, clicking the center tool on the Toolbar will horizontally center the text on the image. Creating a Text Drop Shadow A drop shadow added to text provides a 3D effect and can help the text stand out from colored or busy backgrounds. Create some new text and select the Apply tool. When the text is selected, select the Drop shadow tool. Adjust the shadow settings and then select the OK button. NOTE: the settings used in the illustration were 4 for the vertical and horizontal offsets, opacity 90, blur 4, and a black color. The Preview on image option was on. You can experiment with the settings to see how they work. Use the Undo tool to return to a previous drawing situation. Page 9
Using Paint Shop Pro Enhancing Photos A common use of Paint Shop Pro is enhancing digital photos. A few tricks for improving pictures are presented in this section. In Paint Shop Pro, select the Open tool. In the Open dialog box, adjust the Look in folder to the location of the desired image. Observe that the small arrow on the right side of the Look in text box will reveal more locations. When you hover the mouse pointer over an image in the Open dialog box, a pop up will appear that shows the properties of the image. Open your picture. Once the image is open, it will appear as a window in Paint Shop Pro. It is possible to have a number of different image windows open at the same time. To make a hidden open image active when there are multiple images in the display, press Ctrl+Tab. When multiple images are open in Paint Shop Pro X4, TABS can also be used to switch images. Page 10
Enhancing Photos Cropping Images The following illustration shows an image with a crop area in place. Observe the following features of the cropping tool. A cropping area is created by dragging a rectangle. Once a cropping area is established, grab points can be used to adjust the cropping boundaries. The Clear tool is used to remove a cropping area and start a new crop. The Apply tool is used to finalize the crop. The width and height of a crop can be precisely specified with context area tools. Once a crop boundary has been set, the Crop As New Image Tool can be used to create a new image without changing the current open image. After cropping an image, the Undo tool can be used to return to the earlier version. Open a picture of your choice and practice using the Crop tool. Use the Clear tool to start a new crop area. Use the Crop As New Image tool to create a new picture that uses the current crop area. (Use the File Save As tool to rename the new image.) Use the Apply tool (followed by the File Save tool) to modify the current image. Resizing Images New digital cameras, even some in the $100 class, can create high resolution images. For example the original image in the previous illustration was taken with a 12 megapixel camera and if you check the information area of the Paint Shop Pro window, you can see that the image is 4000 by 3000 pixels in size. Page 11
Using Paint Shop Pro If you are adding images to word processing documents, web pages, or if you are emailing images, a 4000 pixel image is overkill, will have an unnecessarily large file size, and result in slow email transmission times. Paint Shop Pro makes it easy to re-size your pictures to a manageable file size. Open a picture of your choice. Observe the image size in the info area. Note the two versions of the image in the illustration. The original has a resolution of 4000 x 3000. The cropped image is 3000 x 2047. Both of these are larger than needed for publication or email. The Resize tool will be used to reduce the image size. Select the Resize tool. This opens the Resize dialog box. There are several features to observe. The print size shows the dimensions of the image when it is printed at 100% magnification. The lock aspect ratio option should be checked on or the proportions of the new image will change. The illustration shows a new width of 1024. This is probably the largest size you should use for email or web images. Set the new width and then select OK. Changing image size has a dramatic effect on image file size. The file size of the 4000 3 000 version of the picture shown was 2,615 KB, while the 1024 pixel wide version was 262 KB. A 1024 resolution image attached to an email will look very good. Images of 1024 can be printed up to 8 10 inches with good results. The only times I need images of 4000 pixels is when I want to print a very large poster, or if I want to crop a small area out of an image and still have a presentable quality image. Page 12
Enhancing Images Enhancing Images Before and after enhancement with Paint Shop Pro Adjust, Brightness and Contrast Paint Shop Pro has a multitude of tools that can be used to enhance photos. The image above was cropped and the contrast was adjusted The illustration shows that the Adjust, Brightness and Contrast, Histogram Equalize tool was selected from the Menubar.. As you can see, it is possible to restore an old faded photo to near original condition. A more common (and easy to use option) will improve the color and sharpness of digital photos. One Step Photo Fix If you look closely, you can detect the difference between the before and after fall scenes. The options used was selecting Adjust, One Step Photo Fix from the Menubar. Page 13
Using Paint Shop Pro Before and after One Step Photo Fix There is a little more detail in the shadow area, and the red tree is a little brighter in the after image. The One Step Photo Fix option can be very useful in improving scanned pictures or slides. Smart Photo Fix For more control over the various image parameters, select the Adjust, Smart Photo Fix tool from the Menubar. There are too many features in this tool to discuss in detail here. You can easily experiment with your own photos by messing with the various control sliders and observing the results in the Before and After panels. If the Before and After panels do not appear in the Smart Photo Fix dialog box, select the word Preview in the box. If all the options shown in the illustration do not appear in the Smart Photo Fix dialog box, select the Advanced Options check box. Since every image has different characteristics, the trial and error approach must be used to achieve the desired result. Page 14
Enhancing Images A Photo Restore Story Here is a description of the process used to restore an old photo that was given to me on a flash drive. By reviewing this process, you might gather some hints for your own applications. The illustration shown here is probably a digital photo of the original picture. The first step is to rotate the image. There are rotate tools on the Toolbar, but the Menubar, Image option provides a list of available processes. Observe that the Image menu includes tools for rotating images left, right, or at a specified angle. There are also tools for adding plain borders to an image and for adding fancy picture frames. The image was rotated to the right. The source of the image was probably a digital photo of the original picture. If it had been scanned, the picture would have been rectangular rather than trapezoidal. Paint Shop Pro has a tool to straighten, or square up, this kind of image. The Perspective Correction tool was used to square the image. After Perspective Correction, the image was cropped. The Adjust, Brightness and Contrast tools were used to improve the image. The Image, Greyscale tool was used to remove any color artifacts. The Image, Picture Frame tool was used to add a gold frame. Here is the final result. The end result could have been better if the original image was scanned. If is is necessary to take a digital photograph of an old picture for restoring, here are some tips. Use a tripod to hold the camera steady and get a sharp image. Point the camera lens axis perpendicular to the plane of the photo to eliminate perspective. Try to make the light on the picture uniform to avoid bright areas (as seen in the framed example). Page 15
Using Paint Shop Pro Retouching Pictures It is not unusual for old pictures to contain spots and scratches. Color pictures sometimes have a 'red eye' problem. All of these problems can be fixed using Paint Shop Pro. The Scratch Remover Next, the Scratch Remover tool will be explored. There are actually 3 tools associated with the scratch remover; Clone, Scratch Remover, and Object Remover. Open a picture that has scratches or spots. Select the Scratch Remover tool. Drag the Scratch Remover over the scratch. When the scratch remover is dragged over a scratch, you will see a line with three areas; a wide area in the center and two parallel areas to either side. The way the tool works is that the system copies the side areas into the center area. The context tools area has an option for changing the width of the Scratch Remover tool. The scratch remover can be used to fix spots as well as long scratches. The Clone Tool The Clone tool is used to copy an area of the display and paint it over another area. This provides another way to remove spots. Using the clone tool is a little tricky. First a copy area is selected. Then the clone area is pasted into a new area. Here is how. Select the Clone tool. Right click to set the clone copy area, drag to a new location, and then release the right mouse button to set the clone paste area. Now left click to clone an area. It takes a lot of patience to clean up a picture as bad as the one shown here. But with some time, frequent changes of the clone brush size, and zooming in and out of the picture as necessary, you can clean up an old picture. It is possible to zoom in to individual pixels for very fine pixel by pixel changes. Page 16
Enhancing Images Before and after Clone Brush applications The Object Remover Another tool related to the Scratch Remover and Clone is the Object Remover. The Object Remover tool is used to sketch a line around the object to remove. Once the boundary is complete, the Edit, Copy and Edit Paste As New Image tools can be used to create a new image. The illustration shows the result of extracting Grandpa Nasman from the original picture, doing a bit of retouching, and creating a new portrait. Page 17
Using Paint Shop Pro Printing Images with Paint Shop Pro. Paint Shop Pro provides a lot of flexibility when printing pictures. The first step is simply to open the image or images to be printed. NOTE: In the Bristol Village Computer Room, all computers are networked to both color and monochrome laser printers. Basic Printing Open several pictures in Paint Shop Pro. Crop and/or re-size as desired. Select the Print tool This opens the Print dialog box. You can select a new printer from those installed on your system by clicking the Printer button. A preview area shows how the currently selected image will fit the page. If the Center on page, Upper left of page, or Custom offset position options are selected, the default Scale will be 100%. This scale can be edited. If the Fit space position option is selected, the image will be scaled to fit the page. Exactly how this will look will depend on whether the Portrait or Landscape orientation is selected. Adjust printer settings as desired and print your picture. Page 18
Printing Images with Paint Shop Pro. Using Print Layout Suppose you want to print more than one picture on the same page? A trick for doing this with Paint Shop Pro is to use the Print Layout option. The Print Layout tool uses properties settings from your printer. If you are printing on 8 ½ by 11 paper, and are using images from a high resolution digital camera or scanner (resolutions of more than 1024 pixels wide), you should re-size the images before opening Print Layout mode. Print Layout will allow you to scale images to fit the paper, but if you have several 4000 pixel wide images open at the same time, the computer response will be slow. The illustration shown here has three different images open at the same time. It also shows that the File, Print Layout option has been selected from the Menubar. When the Print Layout window opens it shows a column of thumbnail images of the currently open files. There is a large rectangle that represents the printed page. Before proceeding with the layout, you should select File, Print Setup and select the desired printer and page orientation. To create a layout, drag an image from the thumbnail area to the page area. If the image is too large for the space, a pop up will give you the option to scale the image. Once an image is in place, it can be re-sized and moved around. There are a number of layout tools available. A grid can be turned to help align images. Page 19
Using Paint Shop Pro There are also standard templates available. Templates make it easier to fit images into standard size boxes. There is an option for adding text to the layout. The illustration shows a layout that uses a template with two 4 6 image areas, and an added text box. When you close a layout, the system will return to the Paint Shop Pro window. It will give you the option for saving the template for future use. Page 20
Creating a Custom Toolbar Creating a Custom Toolbar Default Workspace Toolbar Custom Toolbar The Toolbar used in this document is available on all workstations in the Bristol Village Glenn Center Computer Room. If you are using Paint Shop Pro X3 outside of our Computer Room, and would like to have the same Toolbar on your computer, this section shows how to customize and save the toolbar. Paint Shop Pro Toolbars are saved as part of what is called the Workspace. The Workspace contains settings for various features of the program. Experienced users typically modify the Workspace to suit their personal preferences. The next section describes how to customize the Toolbar and save a Workspace. Right click on an empty part of the Toolbar, and select Customize from the pop up context menu. In the Customize dialog box, select the Image Category. Drag the Add Borders tool to the Toolbar just to a place between the Image Information tool and the Zoom Out tool and drop it there. Drag the Picture Frame tool to the Toolbar just to the right of the Add Borders tool and drop it there. Select the Adjust category, and then drag the Smart Photo Fix tool to the Toolbar just to the right of the Picture Frame tool and drop it there. Select the Effects category, and then drag the Drop Shadow tool to the Toolbar just to the right of the Smart Photo Fix tool and drop it there. Select the Objects category, and then drag the Horizontal Center in Canvas tool to the Toolbar just to the right of the Drop Shadow tool and drop it there. Page 21
Using Paint Shop Pro Select the Selections category, and then Drag the Select None tool to the Toolbar just to the right of the Horizontal Center tool and drop it there. Select the Layers category, and then Drag the Merge All tool to the Toolbar just to the right of the Select None tool and drop it there. Your Toolbar should look similar to the illustration. Observe that tools will be ghosted when they are not available for a particular operation. Now that you know how to customize the Toolbar, you may want to add your own frequently used tools. Save Workspace Next, a new Workspace will be created that has the current customized Toolbar. From the Menubar, select File, Workspace, Save. Observe that the Save Workspace dialog box has an option for including open images. This option is usually left off. In the Save Workspace dialog box, enter a name for your new Workspace. It is possible to have a number of different Workspace configurations. If you become a frequent Paint Shop Pro user, you will probably develop different Workspaces for different types of projects. Change Workspace Color Paint Shop Pro X3 has two color options, Graphite and normal. Paint Shop X4 has four color options. To change the Workspace color, select the View option from the Menubar, and then select your preferred color. This version was created by Len Nasman on Tuesday, August 21, 2012 Page 22