Image Menu The commands in the menu can be divided into five broad categories: image orientation, image size Image Orientation The orientation choices from the Image menu allow you to change the position of a graphic by flipping, mirroring, or rotating. Each of these commands has a keyboard shortcut that can be used in as an alternative to the menu commands. The shortcuts are listed beside the menu selection in the graphic above. The following graphic illustrates, from left to right, an original image, the image flipped, the image mirrored, and the image rotated 90 degrees to the right. Flip Shortcut: Ctrl+I Choosing the Flip option will flip your image "upside down" or on its vertical axis. Mirror Shortcut: Ctrl+M Choosing the Mirror option will flip your image on its horizontal axis. Rotate Shortcut: Ctrl+R To rotate an image, choose Rotate from the Image Menu and then select the direction and the number of degrees from the pop-up dialogue box. You can choose one of the preset selections (90, 180, 270 degrees) or you can enter a value into the Free rotation box. The box can be set to any number from .01 to 359.99. Setting the degrees to a fraction can be very handy when you are trying to straighten a scanned image. If the All Layers box is unchecked, you can rotate an image on a layer independent of the remaining layers. Generally it's a good policy to leave the box unchecked, since you will probably find yourself rotating individual elements more often than an entire image. Every time you rotate an image, some blurring will occur. If you plan on making more than one rotation for an image, always start with an original for the next rotation. As an example, the following graphic was created from a 5 pixel straight line rotated 15 degrees to the right. The example on the left was created by duplicating the original layer, rotating 15 degrees, then duplicating the rotated layer and rotated 15 degrees again until the final graphic was created. You can see that each line blurs a little more each time you rotate it. The second graphic was created by duplicating the original layer 6 times. Then I rotated the first duplicate 15 degrees, the second, 30 degrees, the third 45 degrees...and so forth. You can see that the graphic on the right is still crisp and clear because I never performed a rotate on a layer that was already rotated.       Image Sizing Image>Crop to Selection Shortcut: Shift+R There are two ways to crop an image in Paint Shop Pro. One with with the Crop tool and the other is through this menu selection. I use this method the most and usually use the keyboard shortcut. When you choose this crop function, the graphic will be cropped to your current selection. Keep in mind that your cropped graphic will always be square or rectangular. If you are cropping an irregular shaped selection, the areas outside the selection will be filled with the current background color. The following graphic demonstrates the results of a circular crop selection on a white graphic with the background set to black. Image>Canvas Size Shortcut: None What do you do when you're working on a graphic and you run out of room? You increase the canvas size! The Canvas Size panel shown above is set to increase the size of a 50 pixel square graphic to 100 pixels square. If you set the image to Center horizontally or vertically the program adjusts the coordinates in the boxes to match your requirements. The following graphic demonstrates the result of increasing the canvas size of a 50 pixel graphic to 100 pixels with (from left to right) no center option selected, center horizontally selected, center vertically selected and finally both centering options selected. You can manually enter the orientation coordinates if you do not select either the horizontal or vertical centering options. If you are working on an image with just one layer (the default "Background" layer), the program will fill the added pixels with the current background color. If you are working on a graphic with a transparent background, the program will expand the canvas and leave the surrounding area as transparent. The following graphic demonstrates a white graphic 100 pixels square with the canvas size increased to 125. The left graphic was a background layer with black set as the background color and the right graphic is a graphic on a transparent layer. Image>Resize Shortcut: Shift+S You will use this function when you want to change the size of an image. When you resize an image, keep in mind that if you increase the size you will probably see a degradation in the quality of the image, whereas decreasing the size will often improve the quality. Since you are increasing the number of pixels in an image when you resize up, the program has to make its "best guess" at the colors needed to fill in the new pixel. The results of increasing the size of a graphic by more than a few percent can be quite poor. Reducing the size of an image reduces the number of pixels and compresses the existing pixels. Since no new data needs to be created the results are usually quite good. If you have a black and white graphic with jagged edges, you can frequently smooth the edges by reducing the size of the image. Following are the settings for this command: Pixel Size - Resizing a graphic by Pixel Size allows you to enter the pixel size directly. If you have Maintain Aspect ratio checked, when you enter a pixel size in the Width box, the proportionate height will auto fill the Height box. If you have Maintain Aspect ratio unchecked, you can enter any pixel size you want in the Height box. Percentage of Original - Resizing a graphic by Percentage of Original will do just that. The program figures out the appropriate pixel width and height based on what percentage you enter and resizes to those numbers. You will notice that when you enter a percentage in the percentage box, the pixel size changes in the pixel size box. Actual Print Size - Resizing a graphic to Print size will change the percentage and pixel size boxes accordingly. Resize Type Smart Size - Smart Size allows Paint Shop Pro will choose the best algorithm based on the image characteristics. Bicubic Resample - Bicubic Resample uses a process called interpolation to reduce the "jaggies" associated with expanding an image. Therefore, choosing this resize algorithm is always best when you are enlarging a graphic, especially photographs. Bilinear Resample - Bilinear Resample works the opposite of Bicubic in that it applies the opposite algorithm. Use Bilinear Resample when you are reducing the size of a photograph. Pixel Resize - Pixel Resize removes or adds pixels as necessary to achieve the new height and width specified for the graphic. This resize algorithm works best with graphics with clear sharp hard edges. To see how this works, create a new graphic 150x150. Draw a black rectangle with Antialias unchecked. You will have a black rectangle with clear sharp straight edges. Now, duplicate the graphic (Shift+D). Resize both to 70%, one with Pixel Resize and with Smart Size. Zoom in on both graphics. You will see that with Pixel Resize, the edges are still clear and sharp, whereas the Smart Size edges are now slightly blurry due to the antialiasing that went on during the resize. Resize All Layers - With this option activated, any time to do a resize, all layers will be resized. With the option inactivated, when you are working on a layered graphic, you will only resize the currently active layer. Also, if you have an active selection on a layer or even on the background layer, and you float the selection (Selections>Float), only the selected area will be resized when Resize All Layers is inactivated. Maintain Aspect Ratio - You will probably want to keep this option activated at all times. If it is inactivated and you enter pixel sizes or percentages that are not proportional, you will distort your image. If you find that resizing a graphic to a smaller size has caused some blurring, use Effects>Sharpen>Unsharp Mask to reduce the blurring. Image>Information Shortcut: Shift+I This command is extremely useful. The first tab of the Dialog Box shows you all the technical information you could ever need about your graphic. The real power of this command lies in the second tab, Creator Information. As illustrated the following graphic, you can save all the information necessary to a graphic in this dialog box. If you are creating graphics professionally, the ability to save information such as the font used, the colors used and other information such as presets, will be of great benefit to you in the future. A word of caution, though. You need to save your graphic in "psp" format for all the creator information to be retained with the graphic. Saving as a "gif" will retain only the Description information, saving as most other formats will lose all the creator information. Image>Arithmetic This function combines the pixels of color between two graphics or changes the pixels of color in one graphic. A cool use for this function is to make a color graphic into a black and white graphic (to use as a mask or template). The following setting was used to create a black and white graphic out of the color graphic.        Image>Add Borders Shortcut: None The Add Borders function allows you to add symmetrical or non-symmetrical borders to an image. The color of the border added is determined by the currently selected background color. The following graphic demonstrates the effect of adding a 5 pixel symmetric border with the background set to black, then a 3 pixel border set to white, then another 5 pixel border. As you can see, using the borders function can be a quick way to add a frame to a graphic. If you have Symmetric checked, any number you enter will be duplicated in all the boxes. If symmetric is not selected, you can enter individual settings in each box. Common usage's for the add borders function would be to add a large right border to a side border background graphic, or to increase the size of your graphic to allow more working room. You can think of it as a "quick and dirty Resize Canvas". Since there is no shortcut for this function, you will probably want to put the button on your Standard toolbar. Image>Picture Frames Picture frames were introduced to Paint Shop Pro in Version 6. This function allows you to add a pre-made frame to any graphic. There are several frames that install, and there are many additional frames on the CD in the Frames folder. Frames are very similar to tubes. The frame files are PSP format files with the extension changed from .PSP to .PFR with selections saved to an alpha channel. They are stored in a subdirectory of Paint Shop Pro 7 called Frames. The first control panel allows you to choose your frame and has a very handy button called "Edit Paths". Since Paint Shop Pro caches all the frames when you open the Frames Wizard, if you have a lot of frames you might not want all of them to load at that time (this can slow your system down considerably). With the Edit Paths button, you can store frames in other folders and activate the folders through this button when you want to use the frames not in the default folder. Once you have selected the frame you want to use, click on the Next button. This will bring up the following control panel: When Paint Shop Pro adds a frame to a graphic, it adds a new raster layer to the image to hold the frame and resizes the frame image to match the graphic if you choose Frame Inside Image. If you choose Frame Outsize Image, Paint Shop Pro adds a new raster layer and adds more canvas space to accommodate the frame. This allows you to frame an entire image without losing part of the image under the frame. Also, when Paint Shop Pro adds the frame to an image, it will "stretch" the frame to fit the shape of the image. Thus, if you add a square frame to a rectangular image, you will end up with a distorted frame. You also need to be aware of the orientation of the frame. If you have a frame that is in portrait orientation and you want to apply it to a graphic in landscape orientation, you need to rotate the image to the proper orientation, apply the frame then rotate back to the original orientation. Be sure to check out the Photo Edge frames on the Paint Shop Pro CD. They are really very nice. All the photo edges create a white border around your graphic. If you want the border to be a different color, use the color replacer to swap the white with the color you choose. Creating your own frames is very easy and can be a very creative process. Please see my Picture Frames Tutorial to learn how to create your own Picture Frames. Image>Watermarking Jasc has entered into a licensing agreement with Digimarc to allow embedding watermarks in an image. You need to purchase and register the license with Digimarc before you can use this feature.