Another year means another PaintShop Pro release. What tools, commands or improvements have been added to this version? Let's have a look at some of them.
Cassel
Sort your fonts
Are you collecting a lot of cute and fun fonts only to realize that you are getting overwhelmed by the sheer number of fonts you have accumulated over time and when you want to use one, you tend to revolve around the same ones all the time because you can't spend hours sifting through everything you have? It is time to clean up.
Which PaintShop Pro should I buy?
Whether you are a first-time customer purchasing your copy of PaintShop Pro, or a veteran getting your tenth version, there are some common questions that come up before the time of the purchase. Here are answers to the most frequent ones I have heard.
Featured Resource – Loom
Loom is a screen recording editor so you might wonder how useful it could be to a digital scrapbooker or a PaintShop Pro user and your question would be valid, however, this a resource that can serve anyone, including PSP users!
What is in a scrapbooking kit? (part 2)
In a previous article, we looked at the most common types of elements one can find in a scrapbook kit, including papers, embellishments, alphas and wordart. Most kits will include those 4 types of elements but some designers will also include other content in their kits.
Painting on the wall
Using PaintShop Pro, you can create environments that are not real, but can still be realistic. Some templates can be found, online, where you would just have to add your own photos or designs to create a 3D room or element. The trick is to use the Pick tool correctly.
Trusted or Restricted?
When you purchase or download scripts, you have to save them in a specific location. You might have noticed that when you installed your version of PaintShop Pro, among the subfolders that are created, you will find one called Restricted scripts and one called Trusted scripts. Why is that?
10 minutes to scrap – Photo fixes
If you followed the previous tutorial suggesting that you group the elements in a single layered file before starting to actually create your scrapbook, you are wondering what is the next step. As mentioned initially, the goal of these "10 minutes" tasks is to allow you to work while you have no time to complete a whole project or to batch the process for several projects at once. Today, we'll work on the photos only.
Creating Panoramic Photos
Many scenes would give great images if everything could be encompassed into a single photograph. However, not everyone can achieve mostly because their camera does not have a panorama feature. There are two solutions to this: you can take a series of photos and stitch them into a single panorama, or cheat a little and use a regular photo to fake a panorama.
Featured Resource – Inkscape
Inkscape is a free vector program that you can download and use on your computer, whether you are a Windows user or a Mac user. Although PaintShop Pro has vector capabilities, there are some limitations to the program that Inkscape can solve for you. You will see that it could be a great addition to your graphics toolbox.
10 minutes to scrap – Group it
One major advantage of digital scrapbooking over the traditional paper scrapbooking is the time needed to start and complete a project. Of course, one can still work hours and hours on one layout but you can also stop midway and get back to it later. However, some scrapbookers feel overwhelmed when they want to do scrapbooking because they see the whole project in front of them and they know they don't have 3 hours available before dinner. Not even one straight hour.
Let's have a look at ways you can organize your projects in small tasks, and it will seem more feasible in your busy life.
Add and Remove selections in PSP
Using the Selection tool is great when you need to create a simple shape selection, however, there are times when you need more than one step to create an oddly shaped area or when you want to correct one that is too large or too small. There is a simple way to fix that without pulling your hair.
The toolbar
Did you ever notice that, when you have a Selection tool active, whether it is the Selection, the Freehand Selection, the Magic Wand or the Smart Selection Brush, the toolbar will include one setting called Mode?
This means that you can have a selection and then add another one by using the Add mode. This allows you to create multiple selections like this where I added three rectangular selections:
This allows you to add identical frames for example.
This is much faster than having to create each individual frame separately!
In the previous example, I used the same selection tool with the same shape, but I can also combine different shapes or even different tools, like starting with a rectangular selection and then add some point to point selection.
And once you have your selection, you can copy and paste it somewhere else, on another project, or on its own.
Not only you can add selection areas, but you can also choose the Remove mode. This can allow you to adjust a selection that might be too large, or oddly shaped.
The keyboard shortcuts
In addition to being able to change the Mode to Add or Remove from the default Replace, you can also change that Mode by a simple keystroke: holding the Shift key will automatically add the selection and holding the Ctrl key will automatically remove the selection. This makes it so much faster when you are in the process of making complex selections and you need to add a little here or remove a little there.
For further details and examples along with various projects, you can check out two classes just on selections. You can find them in our Master Class list. The two classes are the following:
3 ways to colorize laces
You might have gathered some digital laces, either by purchasing them, by extracting them (that is quite a chore) or by using picture tubes. Sometimes, they might be exactly the color you want, but most of the time, you might have to use whatever you have on hand. But that is not the case when you have PaintShop Pro. In fact, there are several ways you can change the color of lace using different techniques. Let's have a look at three of them.
Featured Resource – Vector Spiral script
A lot of people know that I am specializing in scripts, but others are even more knowledgeable than I am among them, is LeviFiction. You might have seen him in the Corel user-to-user forum helping out other members, but also posting various advanced scripts for anyone to use. One of those is a script to create a vector spiral. I wish I had the ability to create such spirals in the past, as it could help achieve so many projects.
Theme – Computers
In recent years, we have made astounding technological advances and the most notable of these advances are ones made to computers. Computers are almost indispensable for many people all over the world. It is widely used in business, the academe, in hospitals, scientific research, and you know what else? Our scrapbook layouts!
Computers are like electronic magical devices that make our lives easier and accessible. Isn’t that fascinating? Families and friends all over the world can contact each other in seconds and businesses are thriving using this technological marvel. What fun!
You may actually be on your PC reading this blog post right now! You may also have a tale to tell just like all of these fellow designers who took inspiration from computers.
