Fun with Paint Shop Pro

Did you ever work with Paint Shop Pro? Then you can skip this short introduction. But if you want to know more (what is it, what can it do, is it handy, how can I learn more?) then read this short article and watch a simple tutorial video. And of course we have some nice links too.

Drawings and photos

Paint Shop Pro is a program for drawing as well as for designing/editing your images and photos. The program has a long history. A few years ago I started with version 5 and nowadays I'm working with the 9th version from Jasc. In the meantime the new owner, Corel, has released the 10th version but older versions are still used a lot.

Paint Shop Pro is a popular drawing program due to its user friendly interface and its versatility. You can easily create or edit images with the drawing tools. Editing your photos by resizing, adapting the color, hue or saturation, is also simple and the result looks very good. More advanced users can by working with layers, selections, masks and filters, archive all kinds of surprising effects and thus turn a photo or image into a true piece of art.

And what can one do with this piece of art? Almost everything is possible: editing your photos for making a beautiful scrapbook or album, making clipart, wallpapers, e-cards, stationery, images for animations (who can easily be animated with Animation Shop) or for your website.

This sounds like fun, and indeed, many hobbyists have discovered Paint Shop Pro and use it for private goals. The commercial counterpart of Paint Shop Pro is Adobe Photoshop, which is mostly used by professionals. Photoshop has a lot to offer but it is also more complex and more expensive than Paint Shop Pro. So it’s no wonder that hobbyists and beginners in graphic design prefer Paint Shop Pro.

An example

Now let’s have a quick glance at this program.

This is the interface, where we just started with a new image. Left of this image there are the drawing tools vertically arranged. Above the image we see several toolbars with many possibilities. The materials panel and the layers panel can be seen on the right. We don’t explain the details, we just want to give a global impression of the possibilities.

We selected a blue silky material, which can be seen on the right (the blue square) in the material panel. We used the fill tool on the left (the clicked-on basket) to paint the background of our image.

With the picture tube tool (a stamp tool, also a drawing tool on the left side) we added some nice autumn leaves to our image.

As a next step we added a ball-and-bubbles-effect to the image. The screen cast below gives a rough idea of the interface with a preview of the effect.

Just for fun we added a frame and this is the result: 

simple and quickly made.

Some links

Paint Shop Pro has build-in effects. But one can find a lot more effects as plugins on the internet. Some are free, others are trial versions. Just type “PSP plugins” and you’ll find a huge collection. The same counts for tubes. Tubes are images, mostly without a background, that can be imported in Paint Shop Pro to be re-used. You will find them en masse on the internet.

You will also find lots of PSP tutorials. Some Yahoo groups offer PSP lessons on a weekly basis and this is a good way to become an advanced user within a short period. Step by step you will improve your skills and make more and more complex and beautiful images.  

The next links are worth visiting:

groups.yahoo.com – search for “psp lessons”

www.pspug.org

www.baycongroup.com/paint_shop_pro/tutorials.htm

www.psplinks.com

Once you are a more advanced user, Paint Shop Pro is by no means the end of the road. For many designers it has been a step towards more advanced graphical programs or higher goals, such as web design, writing scripts and making animations for instance. Above all Paint Shop Pro opens the door to your own fantasy and (graphical) ambition.

You can also search with Google.

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