|
This tutorial explains Paint Shop Pro 8 and 9’s Tools Toolbar.
Note
The Toolbar will be greyed-out if you don’t have an image - or a photograph open on Paint Shop Pro 8 or 9’s workspace.
1/ The Zoom And Pan Tools
The Zoom Tool enlarges an image when you left-click over it, and reduces its size when you right-click over it;- providing better manipulation control. If you select the Pan Tool, it will quickly deactivate a current tool; for example, the Picture Tube Tool. Additionally, if you have enlarged your canvas, it enables you to left-click and quickly move around areas of the image not in view .
Tip
Quickly pan (navigate) large documents by pressing down the Spacebar key; and when you see the hand icon - left-click and navigate your document.
2/ The Deform, Straighten, Perspective Correction And Mesh Warp Tools
Deform Tool: In order for the Deform tool to work, your image or object must either have a Transparent (Chessboard) Background; be placed onto its own Layer - or the Layer must be Promoted to an editable Layer. To promote your Layer to an editable Layer; from the top menu, choose Layers then choose Promote Background Layer. Now, activate the Deform tool, and the following Vector Deformation Bounding box will immediately surround your Image, Picture Tube, Custom Shape or Canvas. Mesh Warp Tool Tutorial.
   
You are now able to resize your image or text. The red squares - nodes - when dragged, will deform the image making it smaller or larger, and the centre red hoop will reposition the whole image to another part of your canvas. The right-side middle square will rotate your image - hover your cursor over the red boxes, and familiarise yourself with the node functions.
Modes
From the Deform Tool’s Options Ribbon; change the Mode setting accordingly, for example, changing the Mode to Scale will resize your image - whilst retaining its scale, (Aspect Ratio). You can also type in exact co-ordinates, if you know them.
Type In The Exact Co-ordinates.
Disable The Bounding Box
You can disable the Vector Deformation Bounding Box by activating any Tool from the
left-side Tools Toolbar, perhaps the Move Tool  .
The Straighten Tool enables you to straighten an askew image.
The top image above, has been taken at an angle and is not straight, however, the image below it, shows the result applying the Straightening tool.
Simply activate the Straightening tool, and a horizontal bar will appear, as shown below.
Now, hover your cursor over one of the vector nodes - small boxes - and manoeuvre your picture accordingly. Note, due to the straightening process, some of the outer image will be lost, and you will have to crop your final image to tidy it up.
The Perspective Correction Tool - Tutorial
When you take a picture of a tall building, you may notice perspective distortion - the object will appear to be leaning or angled. The Perspective Correction tool will attempt to correct this; activate the Perspective Correction tool, and align the corners of the control rectangle with the corner of an area that should be a straight rectangle - the four corners of a window or the building itself - if it lends itself to it - for example. Then apply the change.
The Mesh Warp Tool
Use this tool to distort a photograph by dragging points along a grid. Mesh Warp Tutorial
3/ The Crop Tool  Crop Tool Tutorial Here!
This tool will crop an image to size, if for example, there are details you do not like. To do this, activate the Crop tool icon, and draw a rectangle bounding box around the part you want to keep.
Then, from the Crop tool’s Options ribbon - click the following Apply tick icon.
And your crop is complete. You are also able to input the exact measurement of the crop, if desired - and utilise Presets.
4/ The Move Tool Tutorial
The Move Tool enables you to reposition your text - or image, to another part of the canvas; however, for this to work, your text or image has to be placed on a Layer first. Hover your cursor over the image - or text you wish to move, and when you see the following two double-headed arrows  .
You can left-click and drag the text, or image, to another part of the canvas.
5/ The Selection, Freehand Selection And Magic Wand Tools
Freehand Selection Tool Tutorial - Rounded Rectangular Selection Tool
The Magic Wand Tool will select specific (coloured) areas of an image - if for example, you would like to create a picture tube from an image. It works by selecting content rather than defining edges, and it implements the following types of values for making selections; RGB, Hue, Brightness, All Opaque, and Opacity.
Magic Wand Tutorial Here and Magic Wand Tutorial Here.
The Selection Tool is extremely useful for creating cut-out shapes from photographs; you also have a choice of shapes; including, rectangle, triangles, stars and circle. You can use this tool if you would like to make a collage made of different shapes.
Freehand Selection Tool Tutorial - Rounded Rectangular Selection Tool
I created Benji above, by applying a star selection to his photograph, then Cutting and Pasting the star, as a New Layer.
Tip
Once you have applied your selection, you are able to reposition it.
To do so, activate the Mover tool .
Then hover your cursor over the selection line. 
Now right-click and drag the selection to another part of the canvas.
The Freehand Selection tool is extremely useful if you wish to create (draw) a selection by hand.
6/ The Dropper And Colour Replacer Tools The Dropper Tool Tutorial - Colour Replacer Tutorial
Utilise the Dropper tool to load precise colours (to the Foreground and Stroke Properties and the Background and Fill Properties), from a photograph or graphic.
Use the Colour Replacer tool to replace one colour in a selection, or layer, with another. You can use brush strokes to replace only those pixels that the brush touches, or you can replace all pixels of a certain colour in a selection - or a layer. Additionally, you can set the Tolerance value so that the Colour Replacer tool changes similar, not just identical
colours.
7/ The Paint Brush, Airbrush And Warp Brush Tools
Paint Brush Tool Tutorial - Warp Brush Tool Tutorial - Airbrush Tool Tutorial Here
The Paint Brush tool creates free hand paint strokes, with a choice of brush heads.
 |
If you need to paint a thin straight line; select an appropriate brush head - for example, the following round brush  .
Then left-click where you wish to begin on your canvas, and apply your first brush stroke. Then press (and hold) the Shift arrow key and left-click where you wish the line to end, release your mouse button and the line will be applied.
 
Remember, your brush colour will represent the colour, gradient or pattern current in the Foreground and Strokes palette.
Tip
Left-clicking applies the active Foreground colour, pattern or gradient - and right-clicking applies the active Background colour, pattern or gradient.
The Air Brush Tool
The Airbrush simulates painting with an airbrush - or spray can, and the longer you hold the brush over an area, the more pronounced the effect will be.
The Warp Brush Tool is a fun-tool, it stretches, pulls, pushes, tugs and swirls your images, subsequently creating quirky designs.
8/ The Clone Tool Clone Tool Tutorial Scratch Remover Tool Tutorial
The Clone Tool is extremely useful, it will clone (copy) part of an image to another position on the same, or different canvas. With practise, you are able to remove, for example, a telephone wire from a photograph, seamlessly.
The Scratch Remover Tool - drag this tool across light scratches, or cracks, to remove them.
9/ The Dodge, Burn, Smudge, Push, Soften, Sharpen And Emboss Retouch Brushes
Smudge Tool Tutorial
Dodge And Burn Tools
Soften Tool Example
The Dodge Tool will lighten small areas of a photograph that are in shadow and therefore too dark. However, if you wish to lighten the whole image, it is best to use the Brightness and Contrast setting, from the main menu.
The Burn Tool acts in the opposite way to the Dodge tool, in that it darkens small areas of your image.
The Smudge Tool spreads colour and image details from the starting point and picks up new colour and image details as it moves; the effect is similar to smearing paint.
The Push Tool spreads colour from the starting point but does not pick up any new colour or image details.
The Soften Tool smoothes edges subsequently reducing contrast.
The Sharpen Tool heightens edges and accentuates contrasts.
The Emboss Tool causes the foreground to appear raised from the background by suppressing colour and tracing edges in black.
10/
The Lighten/Darken, Saturation Up/Down, Hue Up/Down & Change To Target Tools
 |
Lighten/Darken lightening increases brightness; darkening decreases brightness. (Choose to effect the RGB or lightness values of pixels).
Saturation Up/Down increases or decreases the saturation, and affects the HSL value of pixels. Tutorial
Hue Up/Down increases or decreases the hue affects the HSL value of pixels. Left-click to increase saturation, and right-click to reduce saturation.
Change-to-Target changes pixels based on a characteristic of the current foreground colour (of the materials palette): colour, hue, saturation, or lightness.
If you choose the colour as the target, this tool applies the foreground colour without affecting the luminance.
If you choose the hue, saturation, or lightness as the target, it applies the foreground colours hue, saturation, or lightness value without changing the other values.
11/ The Eraser Tool And Background Eraser Tools
Eraser Tool Tutorial Background Eraser Tool
You can use the Eraser tool to erase areas of a layer to transparency. When you use the Eraser tool to erase on a raster layer, all pixels in the tool’s path become transparent. A grey and white chessboard pattern indicates transparent areas. You can use the Background Eraser tool to erase pixels selectively. For example, in a photo of rolling hills, you can erase the sky or you can isolate an object from the surrounding image area.
12/ The Picture Tube Tool  Apply Picture Tubes Tutorial Here - Beginners
This tool applies graphics (or transparent photo object) to photos - or blank canvases, and if they are applied to New Layers, they can be repositioned independently. Additionally, you are able to apply your tube to a Scale size of between 10 and 250.
13/ The Flood Fill Tool  Gradient Skies Tutorial
Use the Flood Fill tool to fill a selection or a Layer with the Foreground or Background colour, of the Materials palette. You can fill all pixels or fill only pixels you specify. When you click in the image, the Flood Fill tool finds and fills all the contiguous (or adjacent) pixels you have selected. Left-clicking an image (or a Selection), fills it with the Foreground/Stroke swatch; and right-clicking fills it with the Background/Stroke swatch.
14/ The Text Tool Ribbon  Apply Text Tutorial
Use the Text tool to create raster and vector text. Vector text, which can be moved, deformed, and edited after it is created, can only be placed on vector layers. If you create vector text while working on a raster layer, Paint Shop Pro places it on a new vector layer.
15/ The Preset Shape Tool  
Download/Install Preset Shapes - Apply Preset Shapes
The Preset Shape tool creates several shapes, including buttons, callouts, signs, vehicles, international symbols, and arrows. When creating a shape, left-click to start from a corner; right-click to start from the centre. The corner is formed by the intersection of perpendicular lines along the outside edges of the shapes.
16/ The Pen Tool  Tutorial
Paint Shop Pro 8 and 9 allows you to draw lines and create custom shapes in three different ways; you can draw straight lines, curved lines, and freehand lines.
17/ The Object Selection Tool  Tutorial
This tools is implemented to move, skew, stretch, and rotate vector objects, and will therefore only be available with Vector Layers
Tools New To Paint Shop Pro 9
18/ The Art Media Brush Tools Tutorial - Tutorial
Oil Brush - presents a dense medium that blends colour by mixing thick medium rather than through an overlay.
Chalk Brush - represents a dry media with infinite head loading, meaning the media does not run (or bleed), out over the course of a stroke, like it does with the oil brush.
Pastel Brush - is a dry media, softer than chalk, but like chalk it has infinite brush loading.
Crayon Brush - is a dry media similar to chalk though with a wetter feel that prevents powdering, and the tool has infinite pigment loading.
Coloured Pencil - presents a dry medium that doesn’t tend to break up, but applies solidly to the canvas.
Marker Pen - is a slightly wet medium, though generally not wet enough to interact with other wet media.
Palette Knife - interacts with the mass of medium on the canvas.
Smear - unlike the Palette Knife, the purpose of the Smear tool is to smear existing pigment that has no volume on the canvas, such as pencil.
Art Eraser - allows you to erase art media from an image.
19/ The Rectangle, Ellipse, Symmetric and Preset Shape Tools
Apply Preset Shapes Tutorial - Download And install Preset Shapes
These tools allow you to create squares, rectangles, and rounded rectangles, and also include predesigned Preset shapes.
Wendi E M Scarth. Top of Page - Home.
|
