Beginners Getting to Know PSP 7, page 2

Looking for some great tubes? Click on this button

Getting To Know PSP 7: It's Features & Layout

Page 2

When you open a new image or open a saved image, it will sit within what is called the "workspace" area.

Your image has a minimize, maximize and restore buttons on it's title bar that work the same as discussed earlier for the main PSP window.

If you're working with a previously saved image, the name you saved it as will be displayed in the image "title bar" on your image. If it's a new image it will be named Image1, Image2, etc., in the order you created them. The more images you make the higher the number gets, until you close PSP and continues back with Image1 when the program is reopened. The progression continues regardless of whether or not you saved an image. In other words, if you open Image3 and don't like it so you close it without saving, the next image you open will be Image4.

Again this window is normal Windows stuff. You can drag the image around the workspace by holding down the left mouse button while placed on the title bar of the image. You can increase the size of the window by dragging the borders horizontally and/or vertically. An image is active if the title bar is blue (or another color in your monitor settings). If an image is inactive the title bar will be gray. You activate an image by clicking on its title bar.

How much of the blank workspace you have empty depends on the size of of the image that is opened within the workspace.

This image was 600 pixels wide and 1000 pixels in height, and there was plenty of workspace still showing.

7. STATUS BAR: This is located at the bottom left of your Main Window.

The Status bar displays information about images, features, and procedures depending on which tool or feature you have selected. When no image is open, all it will show is "For Help, press F1", and "Image: None" on the far right side.

This one is on the far left bottom in your status bar.

With an image open in the workspace, the Image Coordinates Display will display the X,Y coordinates of your cursor when placed over an image. I find this useful when making seamless tiles and working with the clone brush among other things. How you use it might be different, but as you progress you'll see this referred to in tutorials and I wanted you to know where it was. You will most likely see it used when a tutorial has you starting at different points within the image....this is called "coordinates".

The Image Information Display is in the far right bottom of your window, and is a quick way to view the image information. It contains the most pertinent information that's available to you by clicking View/Image Information (or Shift I) but it's right there for you whenever your cursor's over an open image. This display shows you the width and length (in pixels) of the image, the color depth, and the size. You'll find this useful in lots of instances, especially the size info.

This one is on the far right bottom of your status bar . You will see this when you have no image open within your workspace.

Once you have created a new image or open an image and the mouse is not touching the image or on any of the tool buttons or options then this is what you will see:

"Image: 300 x 1000 x 16 Million - 1.7 KBytes"

What does all this mean? It shows: "Image: width x height x by color palette - size of image in byte size.

Place your mouse over the Arrow tool and look at the status bar on the far left side. See what it says?

This is telling you what you can do with this tool.

Now, open an image if you don't already have one open. Click it to make it active, and slowly move your mouse over the image. While moving your cursor over the image, look in the bottom left of your window. See how it has changed again? What you are seeing is the different coordinates as you move your mouse around the image.

I find this useful when making seamless tiles and working with the clone brush among other things. How you use it might be different, but as you progress you'll see this referred to in tutorials and I wanted you to know where it was.

As you can see from the image below, my coordinates were 345, 309 when I placed my mouse over the girls hands that are in the "praying" position. I have the coordinates circled.

The first set of numbers is the width from the left and the second set of numbers are the height from the top. These will continue to change as you move your mouse around.

8. CONTROL Icon: The Control Icon on the Title Bar. It's the little paint palette in the very left of the Title Bar, to the left of text that says "Jasc Paint Shop Pro"

The Control menu contains commands used for positioning and resizing the Paint Shop Pro window. To open the Control menu, click the Control icon.

TOOL OPTIONS: The Tool Options palette displays the options for the active tool you have selected. You can have this palette within you workspace at all times by clicking on this icon in your top tool bar.

The options change as you change tools. Some tools have two or three tabs with options, while others only have one. The palette has a permanent tab for modifying the appearance of the cursor and the settings for a pressure sensitive tablet.

To give you example of what the tools options looks when opened, I have selected the "selections" tool, which is in the "left" tool bar and opened the "tools options" window. See image below.

As you can see, it says "Tool Options - Selections in the status bar of this image, and you can then click the arrow to select a square, rectangle, etc., for the shape you want and how much "feather" you want. We will get into this more later.

9. LAYER PALETTE: These are computer versions of transparent sheets.

I keep this open in my workspace as well, because I do a lot of layer work. This is strictly optional....having it open within the workspace.

As you can see from the image below, layer palette is blank when there is no image open.

When you do open an image then options in the palette become available.
Now it looks like this. You can now see that in the left side is has a layer named "background". If you hold your mouse over the layer, you will see the image that you have opened in your workspace.

Also, while you have an image open, you can right click the name of that layer and another window will open giving you the menu options.

Note the glasses on the right side of the layer tool options, that I have circled in red.

If you click on the glasses, an "X" will be put in the glasses place and your image on that layer will be hidden, and your image that you have open will disappear and you will have a transparent image showing. To show your image on that layer again, just click on the "X". Now you can see the image again. Neat, huh? :-)

If you add a second layer, the section with the 100 (% Opacity) and Normal (Layer Blend Mode) will become available, but we aren't going to get into that at this time. That will come later.

That's is for this tutorial. I hope you have learned from this and you are now familiar with the different tools that we have covered and with the layout of PSP.