Today, August 16, 2016, is the official release of PaintShop Pro version X9. Whether you have version X8 or an older version, what will you find in this one? Of course, everything that was in X8 is also included in X9, but it also has some new features. Let's look at some of the most obvious ones.
When you create a string and want to place elements nicely along that path, you have to be accurate in order to give a realistic look to your project. Did you download the alphabet beads yet? They are a good example of elements you might want to align correctly.
PaintShop Pro includes several functions to export various files and content so they will be used inside specific tools of the program. This export command will convert files from something generic, into a program specific file format. How do you know when you need to export a file and when you don't need to? Let's see.
Although hard drives are getting larger and larger and storage space is getting less expensive, it is a good idea to save space whenever you can. When creating elements, you will usually work on a canvas that is much larger than you need, so here are simple ways to trim this extra space without cutting anything off your element.
When creating various projects, whether it will be a scrapbook layout or another graphic design, you might want to extract elements from a photo to add it to another one. Maybe it is a flower you want to use to decorate the corner of a photo, or a whole person that you want to place on a different environment. Extracting the element is a technique on its own, but cleaning it is an important additional step.
In PaintShop Pro, you can place text along a vector path for some very creative effects, but what about picture tubes? Can you place them along a path quickly without having the move elements one by one and measure the spacing every time? Of course! There is a better way, and that is by using the VectorTube script. This scripts is quite old (2003!) but still works with the newest versions of PaintShop Pro. This script, coded by Joe Fromm, Peter Ward, is available for download HERE. Let's look at how it is used in various types of projects.
In various sites online, you can find frames for photos. They can be free or they can be purchased. Some frames are simple, rectangular and of the same size as your photo. That is great. However, you might end up with frames and photos of different size, different proportion or even different shape. How can you use them to create a great looking montage?
It is a common mistake, using PaintShop Pro, to want to enlarge a photo to fit into a frame, or just make it more obvious. It is normally discouraged to enlarge a photo since most of the time, the results will be a blurred mess, especially if the ratio of enlargement is important. Increasing the size by 10% might not be an issue, but if you want your image to be 10 times larger, that would definitely be problematic. However, with PhotoZoom, you can enlarge your photos with better results than you would get with Paintshop Pro alone.
You take fantastic photos, you create great montage, you design memorable scrapbook pages. You deserve the credit, or at least the safety of knowing nobody will take your work and claim it as their own. In the world of internet, it is so easy to grab a photo without permission, so how can you protect your work? With watermarking. Although watermarking is often used to protect the work from being used elsewhere, it can also be used simply as a signature too.
Cassel is the owner and main instructor in the Scrapbook Campus.
She has been teaching digital scrapbooking for over 15 years.
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