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Haven't had much time to play as a major house project started much earlier than I expected .... but I am following along. Love seeing what everyone has been doing! I am looking forward to July 4th ... a traditional day of BBQ around this family!

Day 3 and I decided not to do the leaves again because I already did them last year. However I didn't fancy the diamond extra shapes. I know it is all about exercising but I have to like it too. Instead I found a flower shape and Ivy to use. This time I had less problems with clicking and changing the node types from symmetric to cusp and back, it went rather smoothly to my own surprise. 😕

Day 7. One of the challenges with this one was grabbing hold of the correct node to move after cutting. I learned not to move the node too far before you determine it's the correct one. I had to start over a couple of times because I couldn't get it back in place to line up with the full shape. Carole - Thank you for the reminder about Vectors in Action. I recall that all of the Vector masterclasses were great. I'll definitely go back to watch them again. After every workshop I think about the Mickey Mouse song: Now it's time to say goodbye to all our company. See you real soon!

I've finally finished the 6 Vector lessons. Thanks Cassel for the quick response to the Need Help post yesterday. It really helped. It is version 22.2.0.8 PSP Pro 2020 Ultimate I'm using. I'm so excited about what I can do with that learning! I just need to find the time now! And I'm now really looking forward to the next lesson!

Second parts of lesson5 is enclosed. The image (which does look a lot like me) is from Pngtree where I have a premium subscription.

Lesson 5 - The sun element came from an old scrapbook kit I made years ago called Keeping Cool. The saying is by Walt Whitman. This lesson was easy for me since I've used text on a path numerous times in the past. And in this case reverse path did make sense to me.

Lesson three - leaves Practice, practice and again but changing to cusp and back to symmetric was driving me mad, avoiding the duplicate nodes is essential. I have customised my tool bar to create a new one containing Cusp, Symmetric and Convert to Path hopefully that will reduce the mouse clicks, along with the arrow keys to find tune the node positioning. I also select all nodes to set all to Cusp, not sure that option works that well as we have to select Symmetric before activating Cusp and that upsets the path. I will try a few more leaves to get used to tweaking these nodes.

Day 2 - I started over a couple of times today, but overall, it was easier. Carole: Unfortunately, the cats are not supervisory material. Ever since River watched a documentary on ancient Egypt, she has constantly reminded me that her ancestors were worshiped and that she needs to be fanned.

This is my 2nd time and that makes it easier, but nevertheless it took me a while. After I had created the shapes I played a bit with textures, some of which I normally don't use. The heart has the texture glowing edges and the arrow has plastic texture. Maybe I should use those once in a while instead of a bevel, gradient or pattern!

I have done some effects.

stylized arrow, and a heart

Second time round for me on this workshop..... vectors are soooo very hard to remember let alone use. I didn't use any special fill or lettering as I am still trying to concentrate on node manipulation so my imges are recognizable. Did try a bit of extra manipulation in getting the heart through the arrow but it looked flat so I grabbed a brush to add some irregular marks around the entrance point of the arrow hoping to create the effect of a bruise. Sometimes additional "play" takes the edge off those pesky nodes. I am no artist so I doubt that I will be drawing many vector images but I really want to master text on a path. As for other members comments on PSP9, I still have my old WXP with PSP9 & AS on it and it is my favourite combination by far. I kept it primarily for the seamless integration with animation shop and for its ability to use all of the older free plugins that hate 64 bit installation. I use PSP 16 & 18 but 22 is waiting for me to stop avoiding installing it. I don't mind them adding new features with each release but I just wish that they would leave the old features alone. Change for the sake of change is so annoying and don't get me started on the fine print online manuals. I still have and use the paper manual that came with PSP9, a copy of a "Paintshop Pro for Dummies" book, and , of couse, Cassels own great publication.

Lesson 1 - On the heart, I used no stroke and the fill was a gradient. The arrow is white stroke and a pattern for the fill.

I have done this workshop before, as well as tutorials and master classes, but it's always good to review them. Thanks to these lessons, I don't struggle with the nodes as I used to. After choosing the arrow shape, I changed the node type of the arrow to symmetrical. I added the Text to a separate layer.

I'm still behind since we have been entertaining a very good friend this past week. Here is my vector tube. I also experimented with vector paint and really liked the results.

Day 6 I played with this one, adding the picture tube I had used at a larger size, on another layer, or two, or four. Jeni

Lesson 6

Day 6. "It's Showtime" was me in avoidance mode. Playing with PSP is much more fun! The tubes are LED lights from Cassel. I did two runs at slightly different sizes. One tube layer is in front, and the other is in the back of the text. The spotlight is from Pixabay, and the light is from a group of brushes I had in my stash. I do have a couple of questions. Is there a way to have text that is not an outline? Rather than having a rope outline in the Sailing example, I would like to have the text as a single rope. My first thought was that it would need to be done manually, but I didn't like that thought. Is there another? Second, at some point, I saw Carole do a neat trick that turned a preset star shape into a flower using the node arms. Can you remind me how you did it? I would only get it to work one arm of the star at a time.

OK...I have done Lesson 5. Here is my submission.

Day 5: Mountain photo: Massimiliano Morosinotto (Unsplash) with a quote from novelist Mark Obmascik. Rainbow Roses: Denise Chan (Unsplash) with a quote from American poet Lucy Larcom (March 5, 1824 – April 17, 1893). The quote in the mountain photo is: "I like the mountains because they make me feel small. They help me sort out what's important in life."

My lesson 4

finally completed lesson one. I had to go back a few times to really get the node types. I think this is what was frustrating me the other times I have tried to use them. It seems easy when Carol does it.

and Lesson #2 -

Day 2 Vectors I had fun with this. I am not sure how many times I played with this one. Finally...

Lesson 1 Heart and Arrow. Lots of fiddling around. I see some very cool hearts and arrows from everyone. It's pretty inspiring. I am keeping it simple for this workshop, as others have said, just concentrating on the forms and taming the nodes. Some of those suckers like to multiply when I accidently click too much.

Here is Lesson 1 Heart and Arrow.

Hello, I had no problems with the paths and path points, but with the color fill and border settings. I think it has something to do with the performance of my PC, because the color selection scale is difficult to open - I have to wait for minutes. Then suddenly the fill color cannot be set... I had to close PSP using Ctrl-Alt-Delete and start again.

Well, I had to try something different. (1 - Heart4) (I wasn't sure if this would work with a layer that was not raster which is what I have used it for in the past.) I ran a script I created to take copies of the layer, decrease the size of the copied layer. Repeat. Then merged the layers. Then I flood filled with red in some areas. (2 - Heart3) I then took a copy of Heart4 and applied the Colored Foil. I did not show this. I then took a copy of this layer and used the blend mode to get Heart3. (3 - Heart2) Then I used Heart3 layer with blend mode against Heart4 and ended up with Heart2. (Conclusion) I liked the variations that I was able to produce. I like it when it gets to be fun.

Here are my heart and arrow. I hope to use this in future.

Added the states to my USA pre-set shape. I'm happy with it.

Used the VectorTube script to light up my house.

Somehow I ended up on the forum for last year's workshop. Interesting reading, for sure. Anyway, I took a few days off to deal with life, but I'm back. Text on a path inspired by a photo, and a (literal) postmark design.

This workshop was alot of fun but some of it was hair pulling. 😆 Thank You

Lesson 5 #2 A fun exercise to do. I spend more time trying to learn how to work with layer masks (not sure that's the correct terminology), photographed on grey so I could add a textured back ground with blend modes (easy part), then needed to mask the blended texture layer to let the flower show through (hard part to wrap my mind around - which layer is the mask, is it black or white etc). the hardest part was wrapping my head around what on the top layer needed to be blocked, it kept thinking it was everything but the flower, but it turned out it was the flower I needed to block. Hopefully I will remember for next time. I added the little round label thinking you couldnt see it, but it seems to show up well and I have no idea why the top text on the flower is blurry, the original is not and even looking at the 600 version on my own computer it is not blurry. PSP is acting really slow today. Yesterday fast, today the opposite. And with the all temp files and cache cleared.

Lesson 6 assignment is attached. Love that script..... you can play with all sorts of variations before committing to one. I got a bit lost in all the tube settings so went back to the basics. However, I am noticing that I am getting a small "dot" if you will at the same bottom right of the capital M no matter what setttings I am using. Is this just an artifact of that particular tube? I had tried with a flower tube but got some gaps in the sharper inside corners of the M despite the tube being set at continuous so I guess that the size of the angular space has to do with the flower tube fitting in that space. But I still can't figure out that dot on the sample below..

Lesson 4 "Failure". Haven't figured out where it went wrong but the "cutout" isn't truly "cutting out" for me. Maybe I missed one of those double node merges but I didn't see any to merge. At any rate I should be seeing transparency in the handle after using the Preset Shape I exported and it is filling just like the main cup. The dog is pestering me for his walk and he won't let me concentrate on anything else until that "ritual" has been observed. As of September last year, we had 3611 (and change) miles logged with my Garmin watch (since Nov 2016) and have done a couple or more hundred since September. He is almost 11 and we won't have him for too much longer...he is a large doberman...getting gray and he runs out of steam early after commencing our walks these days. Pretty much maxing out at 1.5 miles on good days.

Vector lesson 5

Lesson 3 I thought everything was going great. Somehow my anti alias got unchecked. I wondered why things were so jaggy despite not being that zoomed in. Ah, the newbie in me rearing it's mistake-ridden head again. I will post what I did so far because I'm out of time now. I did the camera parts as different objects that I WAS going save as a preset shape. I liked the camera (from the summer collection download) so I will do it again, I can sure use the extra practice since I see some mistakes I want to fix. I also showed the outline on the camera so you could see the parts. I need to go bang my head against the wall and repeat: Anti Alias ALWAYS checked. If I had a blackboard I'd write lines too! 😩

Third time was the charm. The first time, I tried using Ctrl-V at the "paste" step, and my cut-out disappeared into the ether. Second time, the Cut-out didn't actually cut out. The line appeared on my object, but no "hole." Third time, all worked as planned. Hooray!

Here is my Lesson4:

Lesson 4 Quite a bit going on here, the cut and paste failed first time around, not sure what I did wrong. Keep on trying……. I tried attaching a .pspshape file to share but only jpegs

Finally: Lesson #1 -

Here is my Lesson3:

Lesson 2 Felt a bit better, less panic when I over click while trying to catch the nodes. Lots of UNDO! Still, it's really satisfying playing with the nodes and getting a better "handle" on the handles.

Here is my lesson 2

Day 3 - contour It is not a great contour, but it serves the purpose of practicing, practicing... 😄

Lesson 3 First image shows the leaf after I edited all the nodes. Second image shows samples after the vector was exported.

Lesson 1. I did the heart and the arrow, but I also did the splash required for my Lab 12 Mod 8. I fiddled around and ended up using the layer styles - Inner Glow and changing the settings and colors on both the arrow, heart and splash.

I have not signed in, but I can follow the Lessons as a Diamond, this is my 2nd try in this WS. so here is my new lesson and this is the old lesson.

Working with vectors is all about practice, practice, and practice. In the beginning, we hate it; the nodes disappear, and lots of annoying things happen, but after a lot of trying and error, we start to have fun with it. 🙂 There are a great number of tutorials and masterclasses inside the Diamond Membership. Here is Lesson 2: Edit: The tip for the corner nodes is genius. I have totally forgotten.