Using Layers in Paint Shop Pro

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Using layers in Paint Shop Pro is an easy process. Being able to place each element of an image you are working on is a very powerful tool to have. The following tutorial will work in Paint Shop Pro 5 and Paint Shop Pro 6. The only differences in the versions is the tubes available. I used default tubes from Paint Shop Pro 6. You can find tubes all over the internet that are free for you to use and you can create your own. Creating your own will be covered in another tutorial.

Below is the basic layer palette. Whenever I create a new image, I always (except when starting with vector graphics) add a layer before I do anything else. I do this to protect myself from errors that cannot be erased or that may set me back too many steps in my work. If I don't work on the background layer and put each of my image elements on a separate layer and I can add and delete elements at will without having to start over. I also save often to the .psp file format to save all my layer information in case my computer freezes or some other un-for-seen problem occurs.

In this tutorial I'm just going to use the default options available in Paint Shop Pro 6 so you don't have to have any drawing experience or be an artist to complete this tutorial. All you'll need is Paint Shop Pro and a little time.

The important options we are going to use in this tutorial are marked on the screenshot below. The first icon is the new layer icon. The second should be familiar to you and is the garbage can, or the delete layer icon. The transparency slider is where you will set the transparency of a layer so that other layers may show through or just to soften the colors on a layer.

Below is the Layer Properties dialog. For this tutorial we won't be using anything here but the ok button. If you would like you can name your layers as you go through the tutorial to make it easier to understand where things are.

So we begin. I created a new image 300x300 and added a new layer accepting the default name of layer 1. I then selected the tube tool and chose the summer trees. For the first tree and each of the trees I added to the image I created a new layer so that each tree would be on it's own layer. This makes arranging the trees where I want easy. Below is the layer palette after I completed adding the trees and their layers.

Below is what the image looked like after I finished adding the trees and layers.

To make things easier, we can turn off the layers. This comes in handy when you have elements that overlap and need to move one of them. All you have to do is turn off the layer above the element layer you want to move and move it. You can then turn the layer back on. Below shows all the layers turned off including the background layer except layer 8 which holds the tree you'll see in the image below this one. You can see whether a layer is on or off by looking at the eyeglasses. If they have a red x over them it means they are turned off.

Now I'll turn off the last layer and create a new layer above it. On this layer is where I will create my "land". The first thing to do is create a line that will be where my "land" meets the "sky". I do this with the line tool set to Freehand and the line width set to 1. The line will look as below.

Now, I will use the flood fill/paint bucket tool to fill in the land so it is all a solid color. Because I used a curved line I'll have a little touch up to do before this part is finished. You can see below where it needs to be touched up.

To fill the space in between the line and the flood fill I'll use the spray can tool set to 1 pixel and round. I'll use the same color I used for the ground and fill in all the blank space so that it will now look like below.

I don't exactly like the color of the land so I'll change it. First I need to explain why I did it the way I did. I plan to use a gradient for the color of my land. If I would have flood filled with the gradient I would have had to spend a lot of time with the spray paint can and the color picker tool to fill in the gaps that did not get color between the line and the flood fill. It's easier to use a solid color and then gradient fill over that. I used the summer field linear gradient with the angle set to zero to get the below image. If you'll look closely there is an aliased edge on the top where we drew our line. I then selected the color picker and picked one of the top colors closest to the line. With the Freehand line tool I added shorts lines where necessary to cover up that aliasing to get the image below. You'll still see some aliasing and we'll clean that up in just a minute.

Now I need a sky. I created a new layer and moved it below the ground layer that we just worked on. I also turned off the "land" layer so I could see what I was working on. I used the flood fill/paint bucket tool and the sunset linear gradient. Things looked pretty stark so I added a gaussion blur set to 4.0 to the sky layer. You will find the blur option in the Image menu and under that option will be gaussion blur.

I want to see how it looks so I turn on the "land" layer. I saw where I needed to fix the rest of the aliasing on the "land" layer and used the freehand line tool to clean it up.

Even though I have a gradient on my land, it still looks a little flat so I'm going to add some noise to it. I'll turn off the sky layer just to be sure I don't have an accident with it. The noise filter can be found on the Image menu. I added some random noise and came up with the below image.

Ok, let's see how it looks with all the layers turned on including the tree layers. When I first turned the layers all on, I didn't like how vibrant the sky was and used the layer slider for the sky layer and turned the transparency down a bit to soften the color of the sky. Remember how all my trees where spread all over the canvas? Because I had them all on separate layers I was able to use the move tool and place them just where I wanted them. If you'll look close, I also changed where the layers of some of the trees were to give the effect of some of the trees being behind the hill. All I had to do to get them back there was to drag them underneath the land layer. An interesting effect could be to create several land layers of differing heights and setting the trees in between different land layers which would give you a rolling hill effect with the trees where they should be.

Below represents all the layers I have now and they are all visible.

I had another thought and saw that there was a grass tube available. I created another new layer and put some grass blades on it. Not very thrilling right now so let's turn off that layer and see if we can work it in later. If we don't like it, all we have to do is delete that layer and the rest of the image stays intact. For now though let's leave it and turn it off.

I also thought that maybe I needed something else in my sky and sure enough Paint Shop Pro 6 has a cloud tube that was perfect. I created a new layer and placed some clouds on it. I then moved the layer below all the tree layers. I also had to move it around a bit with the move tool to place it just where I wanted it.

Ooooh kitties! Let's have some kitties in our picture. This is also a default tube in Paint Shop Pro 6. Remember to create a separate layer for each kitty. To get the effects of distance, change the size of the tube, larger for close up and smaller for far away. I put three cats in my image each on their own layer.

Ok, now let's check out that grass again. I felt it was usable but a little high on the image so I used the move tool to move the grass down a bit. All my cats were behind the grass so I moved the layer with the largest cat above the grass layer and ended up with the image below.

I think I better quit adding things now and put a frame on this image. Using the Picture Frame tool located in the Image menu I added this picture frame to my image.

The picture frame had a few things that I wasn't happy about so I set about to clean it up. I have circled the areas I didn't like. You can see a straight line across each of the sections that is circled.

To fix this I used the smudge tool set to round and size 6. Very carefully I smudged the lines to get rid of that straight edge and to smooth out the highlight a little. You see my efforts were rewarded in the image on the right. I see one of my cats is missing from my image and I should have been more careful to be sure he was showing. I could have simply moved his layer with the move tool to get him uncovered from the picture frame. But, all in all, I think this turned out ok for not using any artistic talents at all.

Being able to turn layers on and off also is an advantage when using tools like the smudge tool. If all the layers are turned off but the one you are working on, you don't have to worry about smudging unwanted colors into the area you are working on.

Below is the ending Layer Palette for the image above. If I wanted I could open the  .psp file I saved and move the cat that is missing up, because the frame covered it.

As you can see you don't have to be an artist to create great images with Paint Shop Pro either version 5 or 6. Layers make creating changeable images extremely easy. The ability to turn layers off and on allow you complete control of how your final image turns out. And if you are an artist Paint Shop Pro makes creating great pieces of art easy too.