Arrow - This tool is most useful when you have an image enlarged to work on a portion of the image. If you click on your image with the arrow tool and hold down the left mouse button, the cursor turns into a hand. Holding down the left mouse button, you can then drag your picture to move a new portion into the window.
Zoom - The zoom tool is used to zoom in and out on an image. Clicking on an image with the left mouse button, zooms in. Click the right mouse button and it will zoom out.
Crop Tool - This Crop tool is fairly straightforward. Just click on the tool; draw a selection on an image, then double click on the selection. It will instantly crop. Personally I still use the Image|Crop method most since you can use different selecting techniques with this crop method.
Mover Tool - This tool is one of my favourites. I move my selections frequently (either image selections or text selections) using this tool. All you need to do is to make a selection, right click on the selection with this tool and you can then drag your selection to a new position.
Selection Tool - This selection tool allows you to make rectangular, square, ellipse and circular selections. You can predetermine the size of square and rectangular selections by double clicking on the tool and entering co-ordinates. When you make a circular or ellipse selection, always have "antialias" checked. This smoothes the edges. Don't have "antialias" selected when you make rectangular and square selections. If you crop a selection with antialias on, you will end up with spare pixels around the edges. The selections for this tool are on the Tool Options Palette.
Lasso Tool - This tool is commonly called the "S" tool. With it you can make irregular selections. A new feature of this tool from Paint Shop Pro 6.0 and onwards, is the "Smart Edge" option. With this option selected, you can click along the edge of something and the selection will snap to the nearest colour. This tool is very useful for making preliminary selections (such as cutting a person out of a picture).
Magic Wand - This is another very handy tool. When you click on a solid colour with this tool, you get that colour selected. If you hold down the shift key and click on another part of a graphic, that part is added to the selection. Holding down the control key and clicking on a selection removes it from the selection. The controls for this tool are on the Tool Option Palette. This tool has many features of which we will learn as we go forwards.
Dropper Tool - This tool is commonly called the "Eye Dropper". If you left click on a colour with this tool, you will set the foreground colour whereas a right click sets the background colour. A good hint for using this tool is to zoom in on an image to choose a colour.
Paint Brushes - The paint brush tools in PSP have many features. You can adjust the size of the brush, the opacity, the texture and the shape. The manual has an excellent description of how to use the paint tools. You can create your own paintbrushes by creating a graphic (you can even use fonts). To create your own brush, have a black graphic selected, click on the Paint Brush tool, then click on the "Brush Tip" tab on the Tool Options Palette. Click on the "Brush Options" button, and then click "Custom". When the custom window pops up, click on Create. You can edit your custom brushes by clicking on the "Edit" button. The "step" entry means how far apart each "brush" stroke will be when you drag the brush. Set to 100, each brush stroke will be separate. You can also use Adobe PhotoShop brushes in Paint Shop Pro.
Clone Brush - This tool can be a lot of fun and is very useful. It allows you to clone part of a graphic to a new position. I use it frequently to "clone" skin on bright spots on people's faces or to replace reflections. Another common use for this tool is to create a "seamless tile". The manual has a very good section on using the Clone Brush.
Colour Replacer - This tool allows you to replace one colour in a graphic with another colour. To accomplish this, set the foreground colour to the colour you want to replace and the background colour to the replacement colour. Then dragging with the right mouse button replaces the foreground colour with the background colour and double clicking with the right mouse button replaces all instances of the foreground with the background. To reverse the process, left click and drag or left double-click.
Retouch or Soften Tool - This tool is used to apply photo-retouching effects to an image. It is a very complicated tool. The manual has a very good explanation of all its uses and features. Eraser Tool - This tool essentially erases all colours down to the base image. Using the tool on the original layer (usually called "background" when you open a new graphic) will replace the erased portion with the background colour. Using the tool on a graphic on a layer will remove the graphic down to the transparent layer. I use this tool a lot to touch up selections I have pasted as a new layer. If you zoom in on your image and keep your tip fairly small, you can successfully remove stray pixels easily with this tool. Another benefit to removing stray pixels with the eraser tool is that it smoothes the edges.
Scratch Remover - This tool is used to remove small scratches from your image. It finds and eliminates small, line-like defects that are either lighter than or darker than the surrounding area.
You can apply this effect to greyscale and 24-bit colour images. If necessary, increase the colour depth of your image to make the command available. To apply the effect to a selection, create the selection before choosing the effect.
Eraser Tool - This tool is used to replace colours in an image with the background colour or with a transparency. When you drag the Eraser across a raster layer, all the pixels in its path become transparent. When used on a background, the Eraser produces a different effect. It acts like a paintbrush, and it replaces the existing colour with the current foreground/stroke or background/fill style and texture.
The Eraser retains the information it has removed from a layer. To restore the erased image, right-click and drag the Eraser over the transparent areas.
Picture Tube - This tool is used with pre-made tubes. With it you, can scatter tube pictures over a graphic. You can make the tube images larger and smaller with the "scale" slider on the Tool Option Palette. Keep in mind, though, that scaling an image larger will dither the image the same way resizing an image larger will. Tubes are a lot of fun.
AirBrush - This tool is quite similar to the PaintBrush tool in that it is very complex and has a lot of settings. The manual outlines the use and settings for this tool very well.
Flood Fill or Paint Can - This is the one tool you will probably use the most. It is used to flood fill a selection with a solid colour, a pattern and various versions of colour fills using the background and foreground colours in combination. The settings are on the Tool Options Palette. I use the Sunburst Gradient to make spheres and the linear gradient to make buttons. To use the "pattern" feature, have a seamless tile pattern or texture open on the desktop. Set the flood fill to Pattern, then click on the "Options" button. Then where it says "New Pattern Source." In version 9, under Effects/Image Effects/ you can now create a seamless tile easily.
Text Tool - The text tool is used to place text on an image. A couple of important things to remember about this toolare firstly, always have "anti alias" checked, otherwise your text will have jagged edges. The second is that your text will be centred from where you have the cross-hairs when you place your text (i.e. if you click at 50 x 50, half your word will be to the left of that co-ordinate and half will be to the right. This is useful to know when placing text to help your alignment on your image. However, you can always move your text by left clicking on it and dragging it to a new position. Right clicking outside your text selection will place your text.
Line Tool - This tool is used to draw lines. It is most useful in drawing straight lines since angled lines end up pretty ragged. To draw a straight line, hold down the shift key while dragging the mouse. You can set the Line Type and Width on the Control Palette. I use the straight-line tool a lot to clean up straight edges on selections. You can also use the 'Bezier' selection to make curves and then place text so that your text is not on a straight line. To use this tool isn't that easy but we do have a tutorial on 'Adding Text on a Path.'
PreShapes Tool - This tool is used to create outline or filled shapes. It is useful for creating quick-filled circles, squares, etc. It is also useful for creating outline masks for dual-bevelled buttons.
Node Editor - This tool is to edit nodes on Vector Images
Should you have any questions relating to this tutorial then please feel free to email me, and I'll try to help :)
Arrow - This tool is most useful when you have an image enlarged to work on a portion of the image. If you click on your image with the arrow tool and hold down the left mouse button, the cursor turns into a hand. Holding down the left mouse button, you can then drag your picture to move a new portion into the window.
Zoom - The zoom tool is used to zoom in and out on an image. Clicking on an image with the left mouse button, zooms in. Click the right mouse button and it will zoom out.
Crop Tool - This Crop tool is fairly straightforward. Just click on the tool; draw a selection on an image, then double click on the selection. It will instantly crop. Personally I still use the Image|Crop method most since you can use different selecting techniques with this crop method.
Mover Tool - This tool is one of my favourites. I move my selections frequently (either image selections or text selections) using this tool. All you need to do is to make a selection, right click on the selection with this tool and you can then drag your selection to a new position.
Selection Tool - This selection tool allows you to make rectangular, square, ellipse and circular selections. You can predetermine the size of square and rectangular selections by double clicking on the tool and entering co-ordinates. When you make a circular or ellipse selection, always have "antialias" checked. This smoothes the edges. Don't have "antialias" selected when you make rectangular and square selections. If you crop a selection with antialias on, you will end up with spare pixels around the edges. The selections for this tool are on the Tool Options Palette.
Lasso Tool - This tool is commonly called the "S" tool. With it you can make irregular selections. A new feature of this tool from Paint Shop Pro 6.0 and onwards, is the "Smart Edge" option. With this option selected, you can click along the edge of something and the selection will snap to the nearest colour. This tool is very useful for making preliminary selections (such as cutting a person out of a picture).
Magic Wand - This is another very handy tool. When you click on a solid colour with this tool, you get that colour selected. If you hold down the shift key and click on another part of a graphic, that part is added to the selection. Holding down the control key and clicking on a selection removes it from the selection. The controls for this tool are on the Tool Option Palette. This tool has many features of which we will learn as we go forwards.
Dropper Tool - This tool is commonly called the "Eye Dropper". If you left click on a colour with this tool, you will set the foreground colour whereas a right click sets the background colour. A good hint for using this tool is to zoom in on an image to choose a colour.
Paint Brushes - The paint brush tools in PSP have many features. You can adjust the size of the brush, the opacity, the texture and the shape. The manual has an excellent description of how to use the paint tools. You can create your own paintbrushes by creating a graphic (you can even use fonts). To create your own brush, have a black graphic selected, click on the Paint Brush tool, then click on the "Brush Tip" tab on the Tool Options Palette. Click on the "Brush Options" button, and then click "Custom". When the custom window pops up, click on Create. You can edit your custom brushes by clicking on the "Edit" button. The "step" entry means how far apart each "brush" stroke will be when you drag the brush. Set to 100, each brush stroke will be separate. You can also use Adobe PhotoShop brushes in Paint Shop Pro.
Clone Brush - This tool can be a lot of fun and is very useful. It allows you to clone part of a graphic to a new position. I use it frequently to "clone" skin on bright spots on people's faces or to replace reflections. Another common use for this tool is to create a "seamless tile". The manual has a very good section on using the Clone Brush.
Colour Replacer - This tool allows you to replace one colour in a graphic with another colour. To accomplish this, set the foreground colour to the colour you want to replace and the background colour to the replacement colour. Then dragging with the right mouse button replaces the foreground colour with the background colour and double clicking with the right mouse button replaces all instances of the foreground with the background. To reverse the process, left click and drag or left double-click.
Retouch or Soften Tool - This tool is used to apply photo-retouching effects to an image. It is a very complicated tool. The manual has a very good explanation of all its uses and features. Eraser Tool - This tool essentially erases all colours down to the base image. Using the tool on the original layer (usually called "background" when you open a new graphic) will replace the erased portion with the background colour. Using the tool on a graphic on a layer will remove the graphic down to the transparent layer. I use this tool a lot to touch up selections I have pasted as a new layer. If you zoom in on your image and keep your tip fairly small, you can successfully remove stray pixels easily with this tool. Another benefit to removing stray pixels with the eraser tool is that it smoothes the edges.
Scratch Remover - This tool is used to remove small scratches from your image. It finds and eliminates small, line-like defects that are either lighter than or darker than the surrounding area.
You can apply this effect to greyscale and 24-bit colour images. If necessary, increase the colour depth of your image to make the command available. To apply the effect to a selection, create the selection before choosing the effect.
Eraser Tool - This tool is used to replace colours in an image with the background colour or with a transparency. When you drag the Eraser across a raster layer, all the pixels in its path become transparent. When used on a background, the Eraser produces a different effect. It acts like a paintbrush, and it replaces the existing colour with the current foreground/stroke or background/fill style and texture.
Picture Tube - This tool is used with pre-made tubes. With it you, can scatter tube pictures over a graphic. You can make the tube images larger and smaller with the "scale" slider on the Tool Option Palette. Keep in mind, though, that scaling an image larger will dither the image the same way resizing an image larger will. Tubes are a lot of fun.
AirBrush - This tool is quite similar to the PaintBrush tool in that it is very complex and has a lot of settings. The manual outlines the use and settings for this tool very well.
Flood Fill or Paint Can - This is the one tool you will probably use the most. It is used to flood fill a selection with a solid colour, a pattern and various versions of colour fills using the background and foreground colours in combination. The settings are on the Tool Options Palette. I use the Sunburst Gradient to make spheres and the linear gradient to make buttons. To use the "pattern" feature, have a seamless tile pattern or texture open on the desktop. Set the flood fill to Pattern, then click on the "Options" button. Then where it says "New Pattern Source." In version 9, under Effects/Image Effects/ you can now create a seamless tile easily.
Text Tool - The text tool is used to place text on an image. A couple of important things to remember about this toolare firstly, always have "anti alias" checked, otherwise your text will have jagged edges. The second is that your text will be centred from where you have the cross-hairs when you place your text (i.e. if you click at 50 x 50, half your word will be to the left of that co-ordinate and half will be to the right. This is useful to know when placing text to help your alignment on your image. However, you can always move your text by left clicking on it and dragging it to a new position. Right clicking outside your text selection will place your text.
Line Tool - This tool is used to draw lines. It is most useful in drawing straight lines since angled lines end up pretty ragged. To draw a straight line, hold down the shift key while dragging the mouse. You can set the Line Type and Width on the Control Palette. I use the straight-line tool a lot to clean up straight edges on selections. You can also use the 'Bezier' selection to make curves and then place text so that your text is not on a straight line. To use this tool isn't that easy but we do have a tutorial on 'Adding Text on a Path.'
PreShapes Tool - This tool is used to create outline or filled shapes. It is useful for creating quick-filled circles, squares, etc. It is also useful for creating outline masks for dual-bevelled buttons.
Node Editor - This tool is to edit nodes on Vector Images