ONE VERY IMPORTANT note about Paintshop: It has a "one-button-foto-fixer." If you are into digital photography (or if you scan old photos into your computer) this feature alone makes the price of Paintshop more than worth it. What it does to improve your pictures will amaze you. Trust me. Even pictures that you think are too good to need any fixing.
All I do is put down my own notes here, to help my feeble mind next time I want to do one of these things. Some tutorials out there are just too difficult for me to follow so I make my notes with "ultimate detail" so 6 months later I can still follow them.
I kid you not; Paintshop is an incredible computer program. AND easy. Sure, it has a lot of very sophisticated features but you don't need to use them until and unless you find a need for them. Almost EVERY photo I take can be significantly improved in Paintshop with a ONE-BUTTON-CLICK. Like Magic.
It is FAR easier to use than Photoshop and costs a small fraction of the price.
I'll continue to add to these as I learn. There is a huge amount of HELP in Paintshop but sometimes dummies such as I find them hard to understand. So, when I learn something neat, I like to make notes. These are my notes.
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The number of different ways you can make text "fancy" is limited only by your imagination. I knew what I wanted and figured it out; I wanted to add text to the bottom of this picture and the text to be the color of the grass:
Click HERE for those notes.
I wanted to add text to this picture like this:
Click HERE for those notes.
I needed this to make a thumbnail picture look "3D" on a *textured* as opposed to a colored background.
Click HERE for those notes.
Click HERE for those notes.
At the bottom of every website (except the *really* short ones) you should have a link to take the visitor immediately back to the top of the page.
On a colored page such as this, the "Return" button works fine and looks OK but on a "textured" page, a "textured" button might look extra nice; here is my example.
Click HERE for those notes.
Notice how, by giving the background a slightly blurry effect, the item in the foreground looks "closer."
Click HERE for those notes.
I wanted this effect:
Click HERE for those notes.
Long ago a gentleman asked me if/how this could be done. I was not able to tell him. Since then, I figured it out but know I can't remember who the gentleman was; I hope he finds this page. Here is what I wanted and my steps in making it are below it, a bit brief; hope you can follow it.
I want to take some of my photos and make it look as if they had been "thrown down" on a larger photo. This large photo is the "page" background but a colored or a white or black background could have been used. The finished result will be 800 pixels wide to suit *most* screen sizes and 600 wide
Here is a small version of a collage I did for my sister's 60th birthday:
If you do one of these, I strongly suggest:
- for the background image, use as large a picture as possible so that, if the person to whom you give
this as a gift, wants to enlarge it and print it out to frame it, they will be able to do so. And use a
background image that is relevant to the person.
- give the recipient a CD with the collage, as well as two folders: one for the ORIGINAL images, and the
other with the thumbnails, complete with the black borders added. If you don't, (s)he will probably ask
you for them.
- print the collage out on photo paper.
See also my "Wanted Posters" page at http://www.sticksite.com/wanted_posters/index.html for more neat ideas for gifts.
Sorry this note has to be brief. Time.
Click HERE for those notes.
(This is probably the EASIEST of all Paintshop fun jobs!)
Click HERE for those notes. (Yes, that is ME chatting with ME.)
This one taught me how to properly use the "background eraser" tool, making it one of my best PSP learning experiences so far.
I had these two pictures and wanted to put the spider onto that web:
Click HERE for those notes.
My blimp had blue text; I wanted red text:
.jpg "blimp")
Click HERE for those notes.
My picture had two jets and I wanted to remove one of them. Note that this "lesson" involves a slightly more difficult situation than would be the case if the background was 'textured' like grass, water, trees etc. Here is what I started with:
Click HERE for those notes.
I pasted an image onto another image and wanted the pasted image to have a realistic shadow, like this:
.jpg "man clip art & shadow")
Click HERE for those notes.
Here are the before and after pix:
.jpg "hunting in snow")
This is very simple to do, so I won't make a separate page for it; simply click Ajust, followed by "Brightness and contrast" and then "Levels" and in the picture on the left, use the eye-dropper to click on a patch that is very white. If you want to move the picture around, use the picture on the right.
Here are the two pictures I had and the final result:
.jpg "hunting in snow")
Click HERE for those notes.
When I took this picture with my Canon S5 IS, of a Cooper's Hawk, I had no choice but to shoot through two panes of "less-than-clean" glass. By the time I got outside, (s)he was gone. That left me with the choice: Delete it or Fix it? Don Pratt was good enough to guide me to the latter choice. Here is how I fixed it for my "Birds" page which lives at http://www.sticksite.com/birds/. Here is the original:
Click HERE for those notes.
http://www.gardenhose.com/pdf/ShadowsTute.pdf (making shadows: PDF file)
http://www.arleensweb.com/psptubes/freetubes/
http://www.wdvl.com/Authoring/Graphics/Tools/PSP/tubes.html (includes how to put text into a picture)
http://loriweb.pair.com/howto.shtml (Lori's notes)
and many other places; search with Google.
