Paint Shop Pro 5 Tutorial

Chapter One

The first thing you should do is get familiar with all the menu's and tools. So this first section is going to cover what are in those menu's, a brief description of them, and a brief description of the tools and what they do.

So, to follow along with the tutorial you may want to open PSP5 and toggle back and forth. When you open PSP5, may want to open an image, File/Open/ then find an image on your hard drive. We will not be doing anything to the image, you just need one open to see all the menu options.

FILE
The first menu option is File and it includes these options:

New, Open, Browse, Close, Revert
Save, Save as, Save Copy as, Delete, Send
Import, Export
Page Setup, Print Preview, Print
Batch Conversion, Preferences
Exit

EDIT
Undo, Undo History
Cut, Copy, Copy Merged, Paste, Clear
Empty

View
Full Screen Edit, Full Screen Preview, Normal Viewing, Zoom In, Zoom Out
Image Information
Grid, Ruler, Toolbars

Image
Flip, Mirror, Rotate
Add Borders, Crop To Selection, Canvas Size, Resize
Arithmetic, Deformations, Effects
Filter Browser, Blur, Edge, Noise, Sharpen, Other
User Defined Filters, Plug-In Filters

Colors
Adjust, Colorize, Greyscale, Hystogram Functions, Negative Image, Posterize, Solarize
Edit Pallette, Save Pallette, Load Pallette, Set Pallette Transparency, View Pallette Transparency
Count Colors Used, Decrease Color Depth, Increase Color Depth

Layers
New, Duplicate, Delete, Properties, Matting
Arrange, View, Merge

Selections
Select All, Select None, From Mask, Invert, Matting, Modify, Hide Marquee
Convert to Seamless Pattern, Promote to Layer
Load From Disk, Load From Alpha Channel, Save to Disk, Save to Alpha Channel
Float, Defloat

Masks
New, Delete, Invert, Edit, View Mask
Load From Disk, Load From Alpha Channel, Save to Disk, Save to Alpha Channel

Capture
Setup, Start

Window
New Window
Cascade, Tile Horizontally, Tile Vertically, Close All
Duplicate, Fit to Image

Help
Of course has the help menu.

Now you know what are in the menu's. You can print this page so you can find the things that I make reference to easier. For the actual toolbars, I will try to give a description of the icon that matches the tool name. If you have PSP5 open you can run your mouse over the tool bars also, to find the tool I may be talking about.

CREATING A NEW IMAGE

There are two ways to create a new image. I use the "white paper icon" to create new images. You can also create new images from the file menu. File/New

Let's just start out by getting used to using the icons. Click on the "white paper icon". A window will pop up asking you for some basic info about the new image you want to create.

1. Width (in pixels or inches)
2. Height (in pixels or inches)
3. Resolution (in pixels)
4. Background Color (several choices, white is best to start with)
5. Image Type (color depth)

What we are going to do is make several of the same type of image with different properties.

Click on the "white paper icon".

Then in the width box type 400. Make sure that "pixels" is the choice for measurement.

Then in the height box type 100. Make sure that "pixels" is the choice for measurement.

In the resolution box type 100.

In the Background Color box, choose white.

In the Image Type box, choose 16 million, 24 bit color.

Now on one of your toolbars is the capital letter "A". Click on that. Nothing spectacular will happen, it will just look "depressed".

Look on the right side of your screen and move your cursor over the place where there are two boxes, kind of one on top of the other. Move your mouse over the top box of the two. Click on it. Now Pick a color from the colors offered. Click on one and then click on ok.

Move your Cursor over your image and notice what happens in the bottom left of your screen. You should see number coordinates moving as you move the cursor over the image. Try centering the cursor over the middle of the image. When the coordinates, get to 200,50 - click one time with your mouse. That will bring up the text box.

If you have Arial font in your list choose that font. In the box next to that choose bold. Then in the size box choose "48". Look on the right side of this screen and be sure that "floating" has a check mark next to it. If it does not place your cursor over the box next to the word "floating" and click with your mouse. Now in the text box at the bottom of this window type in the words "Hello There" and then click ok.

That should put the text "Hello There" in your image. There will be some "annoying" moving - marks. To hide those, click on the Selections Menu, then click on "Hide Marquee".

Now let's do something fun. Let's put a "drop shadow" behind the text to make it look raised.

Click on the Image Menu, then click on Effects, then click on "drop shadow". Choose Black for the color, 100 for Opacity, 7.3 for Blur, and for the Offsets: Vertical 4, Horizontal 4. Then Click ok.

You should now have an image that looks like the text is standing away from the background. Save the image, from the file menu, File/Save as. Name the image and save it to the directory you want it saved to. Write down this directory. You are going to need to find this file for the next step.

So, now you know how to open an image, size it, place text on it, and add a drop shadow. Now, let's look and see what we can find out about this image. Close the image by clicking on the X in the upper right corner of the image. Then, you need to re open the image. From the file menu, File/Open. Find the image and highlight it. Do not click ok right now. At the bottom of the window will be a button that says "Details". Click on that. You can now see the size of the file, the type of file, the resolution the file was created at, where it was saved to on your hard drive, and the file creation date. This information can sometimes come in handy, so now you know how to find these things out. You can do this with any image that you download also. Ok, now close the image and let's move on.

Now let's move on.