Chipotle Chill
Right about the time we began living a low-fat lifestyle, my husband bought me a cookbook “Chipotle Chile Cookbook” by Jacqueline Higuera McMahan (see cookbook recommendations) as…
Creating text graphics in Paint Shop Pro 5 is much more creative than PSP 4 since you can place your text on a separate layer and save the text selection. Then, if you decide to change colors or textures, you don’t need to start over with a new graphic.
The Add Text dialog box is pretty straightforward. There are a few things you need to know, though:
To create a new text graphic:
The reason for the “Fill” layer above the “Background” layer is that any layer (you can tell it is a layer because the opacity slider is not greyed out) has a transparent background as default. If you hold the cursor over the layer name, you will see a checkerboard pattern. This tells you that the background is transparent. By having the bottom layer white, you can adjust the transparency of the “Fill” layer and you won’t see the checkerboard pattern show through, which can be very disorienting.
You can use the drop shadow filter in Paint Shop Pro exactly the same as you can use it in Version 4. But, since Version 5 has layers, I suggest you take advantage of this new feature to add your drop shadow on a new layer. The advantage to this is that you can create your drop shadow at 100% opacity, then use the opacity slider on the new layer to adjust the opacity until it looks perfect for your background and text.
Your settings on this filter are strictly a matter of taste. Keep in mind, though, if you add drop shadows to graphics, always keep the shadow going in the same direction. The more blur you add, the “higher” off the page the text appears to be. Adding a short shadow (offset 1,1) in black or white is a good way to make text stand out from a textured background. Use black for light-colored text and white for dark-colored text.
The first “welcome” above has a drop shadow set at Offset: 3,3, Blur 8. I then adjusted the opacity on the shadow. The “welcome” on the right has the drop shadow set to Offset: 1,1, Blur 1. I didn’t adjust the opacity. The first graphic is rather elegant and the second is kind of fun. The sharp black drop shadow on the second graphic makes it stand out from the page rather than being flat on the page.
Why have plain old boring flat one colored text when you can fill your text with whatever you want. You can make it rainbow, wood, let your imagination be your guide. Filling text with Paint Shop Pro is easy. There are two methods you can use. The first is to set a pattern or color and fill it with the Flood Fill tool. The second is to cut the text out of a graphic. You can do both with layers, again giving yourself the ability to change your text at will.
To fill the text with the paint bucket tool, all you need to do is to choose a pattern or texture or set the linear-gradient, then flood fill your text. Following the guidelines for creating layered text graphics, you always want to place your text on a second layer and save your selection for future use. Following are some examples of filled text using the flood fill tool (all have Eye Candy inner bevel applied for effect):
Flood filled with a wood pattern.
Flood filled with linear gradient set to 180 degrees.
This one is kind of fun. It is the same linear gradient as the graphic above except I set the “Match Mode” to RGB value rather than “None”. This allowed me to fill each letter individually. I just reversed the colors for the linear gradient for each letter. Kind of cool!
The advantage to “cutting” text out of a graphic is that you can move your selection to the spot you think looks best on the pattern you are cutting your text from. To create cutout text:
Text graphics usually look much better when they have a bevel applied. Unfortunately the one shortcoming of Paint Shop Pro is that they do not have a good beveling filter. The most widely used filter for creating text bevels is Alien Skin’s Eye Candy. The problem with Eye Candy is that it costs more than Paint Shop Pro! Fortunately there is now a more reasonably priced alternative. A new program called Blade Pro does great bevels and also other text effects that Eye Candy can’t do. Please see my Blade Pro tutorial for more information on this great program. The graphic below on the left was beveled with Blade Pro and the graphic on the right with Eye Candy.
The above graphic was beveled entirely with Paint Shop Pro. I call it the “Poor Man’s Bevel”. To create this bevel:
This tutorial will teach you how to create a stain glass pattern from a vector shape. You can create the same pattern with raster shapes, but by using vectors, it’s much easier to resize your shape and your end graphic can be resized as a whole (more on that later). This tutorial will teach you how to create the stain glass pattern I used for the header graphic on this page.
I created the stain glass header graphic by using the graphic as a mask for selections. I used stain glass textures from Spectrum Glass for the fills and I used a gold Blade Pro preset for the “leading”.
As you can see, by the use of vector objects, you can create many different stain glass patterns using the various shapes available.
Once you really get into Paint Shop Pro and start using filters things can get out of hand if you don’t have a plan for organization. I have my Paint Shop Pro set up as follows:
This kind of a setup is important for Plugins, since the plugin directory will only show so many filters on the menu. If you organize your filters in sub-directories, they will show up as follows:
All the plugins I have on this site are in zip format. If you don’t have an unzip program, I recommend Winzip available at Shareware.com. Once you have them ready to unzip, unzip them into a folder you have already set up, or with Winzip, if you give the program a folder name that doesn’t exist, it will create the folder for you.
There are two other files you need to have installed in your Windows\System folder. They are msvcrt10.dll and for some Photoshop plugins, “plugin.dll”. I can’t legally post the “plugin.dll” file since it is owned by Adobe and is distributed with Photoshop. Adobe considers the distribution of this DLL file to be piracy. I think that is pretty stupid myself. No one is going to buy Photoshop to obtain the DLL file just so they can get a few plugins to work! And, if Adobe knew how to “win friends and influence people” they would freely distribute this DLL file. After all, a lot of beginners on Paint Shop Pro will eventually purchase Photoshop. Oh well, go figure! Anyway, if you have both these DLL files in your Windows\System folder, most filters you download that say they work with Photoshop should work with Paint Shop Pro. There are some exceptions, you will learn which work and which don’t as you go. All of Alien Skin’s and Kais Power Tools filters work with Paint Shop Pro (or at least they do for me).
Now you need to tell Paint Shop Pro where you have your plugins installed. To do this go to File|Preferences|General Program Preferences and click on the Plugin Filters tab. The following is how I have my Plugins set:
There are quite a few Photoshop filters that work with Paint Shop Pro that can help your SEO, most notably the Image|Adjust filter. If you have Photoshop on your computer, you might want to install filters in folders under your Photoshop Plugins Folder and point Paint Shop Pro there.
Paint Shop Pro 5 now has layers. Look out Photoshop! This page will demonstrate how to use layers and paint brush practicality.
Understanding layers can be a bit daunting. But, once you understand the concept, they open a whole new world for designing web graphics. Now you can create graphic templates that you can reuse, create special effects of one image superimposed over another, all very easily.
The first thing you need to do is to get familiar with the Layer Palette:
When you create a new graphic, you have a layer. If you open up the Layer Palette (hit the Toggle Layer Palette button on the top menu bar), you will see that there is already one layer (named by default “Background”). This layer is identical to opening a new graphic in previous versions of Paint Shop Pro.
As you can see in the layers graphic above, there are currently two layers. I have added a layer called “Fill”. Since I work a lot creating buttons, headers, bars, etc., I found out quickly that having the fill layer is very important. With this fill layer, you can change your background in a flash. I leave the white “Background” layer (the layer that is created when you create a new white graphic) in place, because if you use this layer as a fill layer, you can’t adjust the opacity. If you promote it to a layer (this will be addressed later), you can adjust the opacity, but when you do, you will see the “transparency grid” showing through and you won’t be able to judge your opacity setting. With the Background white and the fill layer on top, you can adjust the opacity of the fill layer and see what you are doing. The above example is how I create all my new graphics. As a matter of fact, I have a “.psp” (that’s how you need to save your graphic to preserve the layers) file called “template.psp” that is 100×100 pixels with the two above layers. I just open it and resize any time I want to create layered graphics. The following examples show the important parts of the layers palette:
Layer Visibility Toggle – This button turns on and off the visibility of that particular layer. It is very useful. There are times when you will want to turn off a layer so that it does not want to interfer with what you are working on. Also, when you choose “Save a Copy As”, PSP will compress your graphic and save it with only the layers you have turned on showing….another useful feature!
Layer Opacity – I call this the “Opacity Slider”. This one is really useful. What happens when you start sliding down is that the layer you are on starts reducing in opacity. It is useful for adjusting coloring, superimposing one graphic over another, etc.
Add a New Layer – This is where you add a new layer to your image. You can either click on the icon and name your graphic (get in the habit of naming each layer or you will get really confused!), or you can drag a current layer over the icon to make a copy of the layer you dragged as a new layer. To quickly add new layers, shift click on the new layer icon. This bypasses the naming process and just adds a new layer.
Delete Layer – Click on this icon with a layer selected, and you can delete the layer. You can also drag a layer into the trash can to delete.
Right click is my friend! – When you right click anywhere on the layers palette, this menu will pop up. I find it is easier to use than clicking on the icons. It all depends on how you are oriented to using the mouse and your computer. This is especially useful when you have duplicated a layer and you need to name it. Just right click on the layers plaette and choose “Properties”.
Some other important things to know about layers:
If you right click on the “Background” button on the Layers Palette of a new graphic you have opened (such as a photo), you can choose “Promote to Layer”. This will make it a layer and enable the opacity slider. But, you now have nothing under your photo (like a white background). To correct this, just add a new layer, name it Background and drag it under the new layer.
Always name your layers. If you don’t, you will probably get really confused.
You can view what is in a layer by placing the cursor over the layer name in the Layers Palette. This will pop up a box with a rendering of the layer.
The dark and light grey grid you see behind graphics on layers means that part of the graphic is transparent. When you create a new layer, it is automatically transparent.
Learn to “Paste as a New Layer”. If you make a selection in one graphic and paste it into another graphic “as a new layer”, the background is automatically transparent.
When you have something on a layer, it is automatically selected. Say you add text to a layer and you deselect it. You can add a drop shadow or bevel the text without selecting it. By its nature, a layer is selected unless you make a specific selection of parts of the layer.
For my first layers tutorials, I will start with a very practical purpose for layers. The first will create a button template you can use to make buttons with different textures, colors, and backgrounds. The second is a tutorial for creating a “cutout” graphic effect.
Wouldn’t it be nice to have one button template with the button, drop shadow (if you want it) and background all separate so that you can change the background color, change the button color or texture then save the whole thing as a new button? Your template will always be there for you to use again. To create a button template using layers:
OK, we have the template for a button, so how do we use it? I will create a marble textured button on a light blue background out of the template:
If you would like a copy of the button template (called button.psp), click here to download a zip file containing the button template. You can then unzip the template and open the it in PSP 5.0 and see how it all works.
You can create a bevel on this button using Paint Shop Pro’s Cutout filter. I like this bevel better than their “Buttonize” filter. To create this bevel:
For a tutorial on this effect click here. This tutorial will demonstrate how to make a cutout template you can reuse with the new layers feature. The beauty of templates is that if you one day want to redecorate your page, you can just change the background on all your graphics and save over the old graphic. You don’t even have to write new html as long as you give the graphic the same name you started with. To create this template:
When you have the button or graphic you want, just choose “File|Save A Copy As” and save it as a JPG or GIF.
Now that you have your cutout template, what can you do with it? Well, you can make it bigger or smaller by using the resize feature (Image|Resize – Use the “Smart Size” setting, it works best for this purpose). You can fill the background with any color or pattern you like, just click on the background tab in the layers and fill. You can adjust the opacity of the shadow in the cutout and the white drop shadow by using the Opacity sliders. Once you have the graphic you want, choose File|Save a Copy As and save as a jpg or gif. The following are some examples of this template:
Filled with a light grained pattern, opacity of cutout lowered.
Resized to 250×114, filled with wood pattern, opacity of cutout kept dark and opacity of white shadow lowered, Eye Candy inner bevel applied to flattened image.
Same technique used on text to create a cutout effect. The cutout was only offset by 2 and the blur lowered. I then lowered the opacity of the cutout.
Since I quite often receive e-mail from people asking for some of the fonts I use on my pages, I decided to post some freeware fonts I have found on the internet. To the best of my knowledge all these fonts are freeware. If you know of any fonts listed here that are not freeware, let me know and I will remove them from the collection. Due to space limitations, I have placed all the fonts in one zip file for download. To download the fonts, just click on the download button at the bottom of the page. Also, for installation instructions, see bottom of page.
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Windows 95:
For Windows 95 users, you can unzip the fonts directly into the Windows/Fonts folder and they will be installed.
For Windows users, you will need to unzip the fonts into a subdirectory (you might want to create one called “Fonts”, then use the Windows Font Install utility to install the fonts from that directory.
PS Fonts: If you have Post Script fonts installed (via Adobe Type Manager), you will need to do an adjustment in PSP to keep the program from crashing when you use these fonts. Open Adobe Type Manager, then go to Settings|Advanced and uncheck Screen Font Smoothing.
Font Management Tips: It is very easy to become addicted to fonts! But, the more fonts you install on your system the slower your system becomes. For Windows 95 users, you can move your fonts to a separate folder (perhaps you might want to call it “Fonts1”. Then, when you want to use a font, double click on the font from Explorer. This will bring up the “Font View” window. You can then minimize the window (don’t put the font away by clicking on the “x”!). As long as that font is open on your system, Paint Shop Pro will find it and load it with all the other fonts. I keep all my dingbat fonts in a folder called “Fonts_Dingbats”, and just bring them up when I need them. If you are really organized, you can create folders for font types (i.e. Fonts_Fancy, Fonts_Casual, Fonts_Serif’s, etc.) Then get a font viewer utility and print out a catalog of all your fonts in the folders. When you need a font, just open it up, open PSP and have a ball! There is a downside to this system, though. When you move a font to a regular windows folder, you no longer have the font name available to you. All you see is the font name.
A better alternative is to buy a font management program like Typograf (http://www.neuber.com/typograph/index.html). This inexpensive program will make your life much easier. When you open a folder of fonts in Typograf, they are all then available to any Windows program. You can categorize your fonts, view them (a really handy view for dingbats is to view them on the keyboard) and you can print your fonts (again, for dingbat fans, you can print your fonts in keyboard layout).
Wow. I had no idea. Ever since I put up my new opening page, I have been inundated with e-mail saying “how’d you do that”? So, here it is folks.
First of all, this effect looks best with a fine grained pattern. You can do it with a colored background, but it is not quite as dramatic. Following are examples of a solid color background vs. patterned backgrounds.
If you choose to use a solid color background, don’t rely on setting the background color in your html and matching the color. Make a 50×50 tile of the color you are going to use and save that as your background tile. If you want to purchase some watercolors you can easily find them at https://bondiartsupplies.com/collections/watercolour
The first thing you need to do is to come up with your background tile. Following are the two patterns I use. Both are gray and can easily be colorized.
The first pattern is fine grained, the second is a little heavier grain. If you like the second pattern, but think the grain is too heavy, try resampling it down (try to 80×80). This smooths out the grains quite a bit.
So you have decided on your tile, but you don’t want it to be gray. Following are some samples of colored tiles and instructions on how to colorize them
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To colorize the tile:
If you haven’t done it already, download the Button/Button Font. Click here to view the font. You can download it below.
Cutout graphics all use the same formula as follows:
You now have a black “outline” of the top left part of your text.
You now have a white outline that defines the lower right portion of your text. If you want the cutout effect to show the background, stop at this point. If you want to add a color to your text, proceed to the next step.
The cutout application in step 6 defines your image and the white drop shadow in step 8 defines the lower portion of the image. Without the white drop shadow, the lower part is not distinct from the background. Sometimes no blur on the white drop shadow works better..experiment! The above settings can, obviously be adjusted to suit your personal taste.
This header graphic was created by placing the text in a script font, applying the cutout (in this case, the offset was 2), then the white drop shadow.
The horizontal rule above was created by creating a new graphic 500×10 pixels with the layers outlined above. I then selected an area 495×8 pixels on the cutout layer and applied the cutout filter at offset 1,1 with a blur of 4, then the drop shadow as outlined above.
The nice thing about this horizontal line is that you can stretch it without distorting it. On this page it is stretched to 600 pixels wide.
The two horizontal rules above were created using Davy’s Dingbats “rs” with a space between repeated 6 times, the top is dark gray text the bottom dark blue text (floating checked) with a drop white drop shadow maximum opacity, no blur on both. Place the text on the “Cutout” layer and the shadow on the “Shadow” layer.
Following are some examples of how you can use dingbat fonts to create decorations and bullets for your pages:
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You can download these fonts by clicking on the font you want below:
Button Button
Davys Dingbats
Classified
Food
Pointers
Chancery Ornaments
Following is an example of how you can create buttons that look great with this background:
The buttons on the left would look great along the left border of a web page. Click here to see an example of the buttons used with the background graphic below.
To create the first button:
To create the second button:
The bottom two buttons were created the same as the first two buttons, but using “!” in the Button font and a white drop shadow applied after the cutout on the cutout button.
The following backgrounds was created using the cutout technique. Click on the graphic to see it tiled as a background.
When you create a new file in Paint Shop Pro, you must choose 16 million colors for most of the filters to work. I set my default to Background Color: White and Image Type: 16 million colors. If you save a file as a gif, when you open it again, the image will no longer be 16 million colors . To fix this, just chose Colors|Increase Color Depth and choose 16 million colors again (or if you’re smart, you will have this option on your toolbar!).
Note: You should always work in 16 million colors mode. Most of PSP’s advanced features such as filters, layers, masks and antialiasing don’t work in 256 color mode. If you find a feature is “greyed out”, you know you are working in 256 color mode and you need to bump the colors up to 16 million.
The size of your new graphic is up to you. I usually create a new file bigger than I think I will need to give me working room, then crop the image when I am done (Image|Crop to Selection).
Once you have created an image, if you don’t like it and want to start over, this combination makes it very easy to do. Just be sure you have the background color set to what you want the cleared file’s canvas to be. This is also a trick for filling an image with a background color. Setting the background color then choosing Edit|Clear is a lot faster and more efficient than choosing the flood fill tool and using it. If you choose Edit|Clear when working on the base layer, it clears the layer and fills with background color. If you use Edit|Clear while working on a layer, it just clears the layer, it doesn’t fill the layer with the background color.
The tools on the left tool palette are the essence of the program. If you learn to use these tools effectively, you will be able to create great graphics. The tool palette leads at the left of your workspace by default. You can drag the tool palette and dock it anywhere on your workspace. You can also remove the tool palette from your screen, and then bring it back by pressing the “p” key on the keyboard. This is a handy feature when you have a small monitor and you want to clear your work space to give you more room when you are working on an image.
The view menu allows you access to many Paint Shop Pro features that will make your work easier and more efficient. The main features on this menu are View options such as full screen and zoom and alignment assists such as grids and guides. The following graphic illustrates the menu choices. This menu also contains a feature new to Paint Shop Pro 7, Preview in Web Browser
There are several viewing options available from the menu. If you are menu oriented person, this is where you will want to invoke these commands. But, we feel that these commands are best invoked by keyboard shortcuts or through the use of the Zoom tool.
Shortcut: Shift A
This command turns off the top menu bar on Paint Shop Pro and allows you a larger viewing area for your graphic. This command works best by using the keyboard shortcut since the “Shift A” toggles you into Full Screen mode and toggles you back. When you go into full screen mode, the menu toolbar disappears. You can still access the menu toolbar by placing your cursor at the top of the screen, but since you can’t see the menu toolbar bar, this can be confusing.
Shortcut: (Shift-Ctrl) A
This command turns off all the menus and toolbars and centers your graphic on a black background. It is very handy for assessing a graphic without all the clutter of the toolbars and menus. To restore your toolbars and menus, simply hit (Esc).
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Shortcut: (Ctrl-Alt) N
This command will return your graphic to normal viewing mode (1:1 ratio). This is very handy when you have zoomed in on a graphic numerous times and want to return to normal viewing. This is the most direct route to normal viewing. Again, this is another candidate for placing the icon for the feature on your customized toolbar.
You will probably never use these menu items since using the Zoom tool is much easier and more intuitive. If you want to Zoom in 1 time, just choose the Zoom tool and left click on the graphic once. If you want to zoom back, right click with the Zoom tool.
This feature allows you to preview your graphic in a web browser of your choice. Before you can use this feature, you need to tell Paint Shop Pro what web browsers you wish to use. To configure the web browsers, click on the “Edit Web Browser” button on the Preview in Web Browser tool palette as illustrated in the following graphic. To preview your graphics:
When your graphic is rendered in the browser, it will display also display the graphic size in Kbytes, download time for 28.8 and 56.6 Kbps modems, and the number of colors used in the graphic.
The settings for View>Rulers are set in File>Preferences>General Program Preferences>Rulers and Units (See Customizing PSP).
Rulers can be set to pixels, inches or centimeters. Rulers are very useful when you wish to cut an accurate portion out of a graphic. The following graphic demonstrates the use of rulers to create an accurate 200×100 pixel selection area starting at 50 pixels.
Rulers must be active on your image to use the guidelines feature since the guidelines are accessed from the ruler.
Shortcut: (Ctrl-Alt) G
The settings for the Grid option are configured in File>Preferences>General Program Preferences>Rulers and Units (See Customizing PSP). This is another very handy command in Paint Shop Pro. When you are attempting to line up parts of an image, the grid comes in very handy. It is also an invaluable tool for creating images through combining different shapes. The following graphic demonstrates how you can use the grids to line up shapes (Figure on left) to create a shape to use as a template for a button (Figure on right).
If you save a graphic in PSP format, the currently active grid settings will be saved with the document.
This menu option gives you access to the Grid and Guide Properties options as illustrated in the following graphic. The shortcut to this Options box is the same as the shortcut outlined in View>Grid.
The View Guides menu option allows you to set guidelines on your graphic. Guidelines are set by placing the cursor in the ruler, then when the cursor turns into a crosshair, dragging a guideline onto the graphic. Guidelines can be moved by placing the cursor over a currently placed guideline in the ruler (the cursor will turn into a white filled cross hair) and dragging the guideline.
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If you have “View Grid” toggled on, you will be able to toggle on the “snap to grid” option. If you have not toggled View Grid, this option will be greyed out on the menu. Toggling Snap to Grid activates the “snap” behavior.
If you have “View Guides” toggled on, you will be able to toggle on the “snap to guide” option. If you have not toggled View Guides, this option will be greyed out on the menu. Toggling Snap to Guides activates the “snap” behavior.
This option allows you to turn on and off the toolbars you want to have available to you on your workspace. It also allows you to set the size of the icons and the style of the toolbars. This is also where you can configure Automatic Rollups (See Workspace for further information on Rollups).
If you have a small monitor and you turn on Large Icons, you may think that some of your tools on the left toolbar have disappeared. They have not disappeared, they are just off the screen. If your monitor is too small, you may not be able to use this option as it will cause some of your tools to be inaccessible. When you click on the “Customize” button on the Toolbar Dialog Box with the Toolbar option toggled, you will have the option of choosing icons to add to your main toolbar. Customizing your toolbar is discussed in detail in the Customizing PSP tutorial.
This method works well with enlarged black and white graphics. When you enlarge a graphic, the edges become very pixelated (or get the “jaggies”). This is how to cure the jaggies from an enlarged image.
Save the following “remote” graphic (downloaded from Qvicker’s wonderful site).
This method may need some adjustment of the Gaussian blur depending on jagged your edges are. The point is to blur the edges until they are very smooth. You may also only need to apply the color adjustment once.
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How often have you found a really nice piece of clip art that suffered from the “jaggies” or where the lines were too thin for your purposes. Well, PSP 6 has given us a great new feature for “curing the jaggies”. To get started, download the “before” picture above.
Thats all there is to cleaning up the jaggies. Obviously each graphic will require a different application of the Gaussian Blur and Curve Adjustment.
Layers is a very powerful new feature of Paint Shop Pro 5. They give you much more control over your graphic, allow for lots of experimentation before you save your final graphic, and they save you time in making multiple versions of one graphic with different backgrounds. But, masks work totally different with layers than they did in Paint Shop Pro 4. So, first I will walk you through how masks work on layers.
A mask is a template. You can make a mask out of any black and white graphic. When you load a mask into a layer, what is white will be masked and what is black will allow anything under to show through. As an example, I have created a gradient mask (on the left) and loaded it into a picture of Betty Boop with a white background layer under the picture. Notice how the black portion of the mask is allowing the white background to show through. The gradient gradually blocks out more of the background as the color progresses towards white. The picture on the right has a black background fill.
This is the menu that pops up when you choose Masks|New.
OK, now you have the basics of masks down pat. Here’s a few hints for you.