File Menu - Continued Import>Screen Capture Screen Capture allows you to take a quick snapshot of whatever is currently on your monitor. You can capture the entire screen, selected areas, and even images of specific parts of programs, such as toolbars. When you invoke Capture, PSP goes to the last screen you had open to perform the capture. For this reason, if you are making screen captures of PSP itself, you will need to open two sessions. One session will invoke Capture and the other session will contain the capture you want to make. The Capture menu has two entries, Setup and Start. Capture Setup Choosing Setup will bring up the Capture Setup dialogue box as illustrated in the following graphic. Within the Capture Setup dialogue box you can choose what areas will be captured, how the capture will be activated, and whether or not the cursor will show up in the captured images. Capture Area - This capture style lets you choose an area of the screen with the cursor before you invoke capture. When Area is the set capture style, you invoke capture according to how you set "Activate Capture Using". Then: Click once with the left mouse button at the upper left point where you wish to begin your selection and the cursor will turn into a cross-hair. Drag the mouse (don't hold down the mouse button) until you have outlined the area you want to capture. Click once with the left mouse button. A very nice feature of this method is that the pixel size of the selected area is displayed as you drag your cursor. The cursor cannot be captured while using this method because it is used to define the area. Capture Full Screen - This capture method works like a printscreen. The entire monitor image is captured. Capture Client Area - This would be, for example, the document portion of the screen if you Ire using Word. Exactly what portion of your active window will be captured varies from program to program. Usually the program title bar and text menu at the top of a window will be excluded, but toolbars with icons may be captured. Capture Window - This setting works the same as Capture Client Area except that it captures the entire open window, including all menus and controls. Capture Object - This setting will capture only the object on the screen that is the current focus of the cursor. For example, you are making screen shots to support a tutorial. You want the screen shot to be of a currently active graphic on your workspace. If you choose "Object" as the type, you will activate the capture through your selected method, then focus the cursor on the graphic and click once. Your screen shot will then be of only the graphic the cursor was focused on (and the cursor if you have selected that option). This is a good choice for capturing objects like a toolbars and menus. Activate Capture Using Right Mouse Click - This setting activates the capture by clicking on the right mouse button. This is a good choice if you wish to record an action and the cursor. The program will wait for the right mouse-click before firing off the capture so you can., for example, set the cursor to the selection tool, make a selection, then activate the capture. This will result in a capture of the selection area and the cursor if you have selected that option. Hot Key - This setting allows you to set a hot key to activate capture. This is also a good choice if you are capturing an "action" on a graphic such as a selection since it is independent of the mouse. Delay Timer - This setting allows you to set a time in seconds to wait on the capture graphic before making the screen shot. Options Include Cursor - This setting allows you to set Capture to include the active state of the cursor in the screen shot. Multiple Captures - This setting will allow you to click on several screens and invoke capture (through right-click, hot key, or timer) and then when you return focus to Paint Shop Pro 7, all your screen shots will appear. This option works best when you have Activate Capture Using set to Hot Key. Capture - Start If you find that you are using Screen Capture frequently, you will definitely want to put the Start button on your customized toolbar. When you invoke Screen Capture, Paint Shop Pro's window is minimized and the screen last activated appears. You then invoke Capture according to how you set the preferences. Import>Twain Twain is a device that allows you to import images from scanners and digital cameras directly into Paint Shop Pro. The two choices under Twin are Find a Source and Acquire. Find a Source Before you use Twain, you need to click on Select Source option and choose the source for your device. All installed twain sources will appear in the box for selection. Acquire When you select this option, your twain source will activate. If you do much scanning, you will definitely want to put this button on your Standard toolbar. Import>Digital Camera You can use Paint Shop Pro to access and manage digital images while they are in the camera, and you can load the images directly into the program. When you first install Paint Shop Pro, you are given the option of loading drivers for most brands of digital cameras. If you did not do this, run the installation program again and install the drivers for your camera. To load digital images into Paint Shop Pro you need to connect your camera to the computer, configure the camera settings from the "Configure" option on the menu, then open the image in Paint Shop Pro. To configure, choose your camera type from the drop down list. Choose your communications port and Baud rate. I recommend you have Download thumbnails checked. You will then see a thumbnail representation of all the images currently contained in your digital camera. Once you have set the configuration, you choose Access to load the pictures into Paint Shop Pro. Export Image Slicer This feature will be covered in a separate "web Tools" tutorial. Image Mapper This feature will be covered in a separate "web Tools" tutorial. JPG Optimizer The JPG file format uses a lossy compression algorithm in that this compression method eliminates data to reduce the file size. I recommend that you save all graphics that contain many colors in a JPG format. I also recommend you skip the JPG Wizard. The dialog box for saving a graphic as a JPG is much more useful and is very intuitive. Quality: I recommend you start with a compression value of 15. Higher compression values will result in a dithering in the image and a lower setting will inflate the file size. When you set your compression value, you will see the right sample image as it will look with that particular compression setting. Format: Your format choices are Standard and Progressive. As you will see by the animations next to the choices, Standard renders your graphic in a top to bottom rolling format. Progressive slowly renders your graphic from a hazy image to the completed image. Download Times: This is a very handy new feature in Paint Shop Pro. This tab shows you the file size and the approximate download time for various modem speeds for the graphic as it is currently configured. If you find your file size is rather large, you might want to go back and change the compression setting and see the results. GIF Optimizer A Transparent GIF is a graphic format that will allow you to set all pixels of a certain color to become transparent when your graphic is placed on a background on a web page. A rule of thumb for creating a transparent gif is to always start with a background color close to the color of the background you will be placing the graphic on. If you try to make all white pixels in a graphic transparent, then you place the graphic on a colored background, you will see spare pixels of white around the edges of your graphic. The Transparent GIF option comes with a Wizard that will allow you to quickly and efficiently create a transparent GIF graphic. I recommend you use the Wizard to create your Transparent GIF. If the results from the Wizard are not satisfactory, then go back and try some of the menu options. The GIF Wizard Click on Convert Matching Colors to Transparent. Set the background color by clicking on the background of your graphic with the Eye Dropper tool that will appear when you reorient the cursor to the graphic. Click Next. Select the color of the background you will use on your web page by either clicking on the color box and picking the color from the color picker or by clicking on the actual background graphic with the Eye Dropper tool. Click Next. Choose to use web Safe Colors or Best Colors. Keep in mind that if you choose web Safe Colors, your Transparent GIF may not render properly on your web page unless you have chosen web Safe Colors for your background tile and for the background of your Transparent GIF graphic. Click Next. Set the image quality by clicking on the slider and moving it up or down. The Better Image Quality will save your graphic with more colors but the file size will be greater. I recommend you always keep this setting at the Better Image Quality level. Click Next. The last step in the Wizard will display your graphic with the transparency set. All pixels that will appear transparent will show the transparent grid pattern. When you click on the Finish button, you will be prompted to give your graphic a name and the program will save your graphic. If you choose to manually set the transparency on your graphic, you will work your way through the various tab options on this tool. Transparency - will again prompt you to identify the color you wish to make transparent. Partial Transparency - choices will allow you to refine your transparency somewhat. You will always see a rendering of how the graphic will be translated to its transparency, so choosing the various adjustments on this tab may give you a better transparency. Colors - allows you to set the number of colors in the graphic. High numbers will result in a larger size graphic, lower numbers will result in a smaller sized graphic. But, there is a trade-off in quality which you will see exhibited in the view window when you change the number of colors. Format - will allow you to set either Interlaced or Non-Interlaced. The view window gives you a demonstration of the differences between these two file formats. Download Times - When you have completed your settings, this tab will give you approximate download times for the graphic as it is currently configured. Picture Tube You will use this option to add new Picture Tubes to the drop down list in the Picture Tube tool. This function is fully covered in the Picture Tube Tool tutorial. Page Setup The Page Setup Dialog box as illustrated in the following graphic allows you to set your page setup options. The dialog box previews your current print settings. If you have "fit to page" checked in the Page Setup dialog box, your graphics will be expanded to fit the entire page and may become distorted. Print Preview Print Preview gives you a fill size rendering of how your graphic will print. Print The Print Dialog box, as illustrated in the following graphic, allows you to choose your printer, set various print options and set the number of copies to be printed. You can print registration and crop marks by checking these options in the Print Options box. If you saved a Title in the Creator Information tab of the Current Image Information dialog box, you can select to print it by selecting the Title box. . If there is no Creator Information saved with the graphic and you choose the Title option, the current filename assigned to the graphic is used. Print Multiple Images You will use Print Multiple Images when you want to print more than one image on a page. When you choose this option Paint Shop Pro opens a window that displays thumbnails of the graphics you have open on your desktop and a blank page to arrange the graphics on. The following graphic illustrates the choices for configuring your Multiple Image settings. This graphic represents the pop-up menu invoked by right-clicking on the workspace. The same icons are available from the menu at the top of the screen. Zoom - The Zoom factors are pretty self-explanatory. They do exactly what they say they do. Show Grid - Toggles on and off the grid background. Snap to Grid - Makes the gridlines "snap to". Use Borders - Refers to the amount of space between graphics when you use Auto Arrange. Setting this will separate the images by at least the distance displayed in the Vertical and Horizontal Border Size boxes. Stretch to Fit - This also works in tandem with Auto Arrange. But, in this case, the graphics will be "stretched" to fit so that the borders between are exactly even. This can cause sever distortion in your graphics so it is probably not a good idea to use this option. Setup Options - This allows you to set the Units, Border and Grid Setting Options. Open Layout - This option allows you to open a previously saved layout. Save Layout - This option allows you to save a layout for future use. Auto Arrange - This option will auto arrange all the graphics to be spaced according to how you have set the Use Borders and Stretch to Fit options. Print - Finally....you can now send your arrangement to the printer! Jasc Software Products This is where you can launch any other JASC products you own from within Paint Shop Pro. You will mostly use this menu item to launch Animation Shop. Batch Conversions If you find that you need to convert several images to a new format (i.e. converting .bmp files to .gif or .jpg files), you can use the Batch Conversion utility to accomplish this task quickly and efficiently. All you need to do is to select the graphics you want to convert, select the format you want to convert the graphics to and designate a folder for the converted graphics. The program will convert your graphics to the new format in the designated folder. Your original images will not be converted. This ability can come in very handy if you download a zip file full of patterns or textures that are not in a .bmp format. All you need to do is to run Batch Conversion on them and save them directly into the Patterns or Textures folder.