Colors, Patterns and Gradients

In this lesson, we will be going over the materials palette in detail, including the color picker, the patterns, textures and gradients.

Color Picker

Frame View

Rainbow View

Swatches

Notice on the top of the color picker there are three tabs.  Two are for different variations of the color picker and one is for your swatches.  Either the frame view or the rainbow view will give you the same results, and it is your preference what you would like to use.

If you left click anywhere on the color picker, that will select your foreground color.  Right click, and your background color will be selected.

For the swatches, you can save any color or texture or gradient, or combination of them and save them as a swatch for use in either your current project, or a future project.  You can also edit or delete any of your swatches.

Do you remember the Pattern, Gradient and Color symbols that we saw on the materials palette?If the solid color is selected, and you click in the center of either the foreground or background boxes, the materials properties box will pop up (shown on the left).You see here four different sections in which you can change your color.  On the top is the color picker again.  You can click anywhere in the round circle to get into the color family that you want to use, and then select either lighter or darker or variations of that color in the box in the middle of the circle.You may also select any of the preset colors on the grid below the color selector, and that color will then be selected.You can also enter the RGB values or the HSL values for a color, or the html value.  The html value is particularly helpful if you are going to use it on a web page or a background color.If you want to select a color from an image that you are working on, and have it open on your workspace, you can click on that color on your image while the material properties box is open on the color tab, and your color will be selected.

Gradients

You can change the sliding markers to alter the way that the gradient looks, as well as change the foreground and background colors and the opacity. You can then save it for future use.  Click “Copy”, give the gradient a name, and click OK.

You can also export your gradients to use in other programs.

Under the gradient tab of the Materials Properties box, you will see a large box with the current gradient showing, and when you click on the small arrow on the right, you will see all of the gradients that you currently have saved, which you can select from.You have the option to change the angle, how many times that the gradient repeats, and whether to invert it or not by the check box.

Under the gradient box, you will see four other options to change the style.  You can make your gradient linear, rectangular, sunburst, or radial.  On all of these except for linear, you can change the horizontal and vertical positions and the focal point.

Under the gradient box, you will see a button that says “Edit”.  You can use the edit function in order to change a gradient that you already have, or to create one of your own and save it.  When you click on this button, you will see this:

Patterns

• One thing to remember is that Patterns can only be used on an image that has 16 million colors, or a grey scale image.  If you want to increase the colors in any image, just go to image/increase color depth and choose 16 million colors.

Select your pattern by clicking on the small arrow on the pattern box, and then you can change the angle and scale.

You can use any seamless tile in your patterns to use on your projects.  In former versions of Paint Shop Pro, the patterns had to be in the form of a bmp, but now you can use any image.  Just save it to your Patterns folder.

   Textures

One other thing to note is the check box for the Textures on the top of the Material Properties box.  When this is checked, then you have the option to add a texture to anything in the Materials Properties, including your solid colors, patterns or gradients.  Uncheck the box, and no texture will be added.

Paint Shop Pro – Back to the Basics

Setting Up Your Workspace

Now that you have Paint Shop Pro, and have it installed on your computer, you will want to familiarize yourself with the program and do a few things to set it up to your liking.  A lot of this will be your personal preference.

If you have version 7 and have upgraded to PSP9, we will go through the steps by which you can utilize the various tubes and brushes that you used before.  All of the file extensions are different for version 9, so if you want to continue using your “goodies” you will have to convert them.

If you have an earlier version of Paint Shop Pro, I would advise you to get the upgrade.  The features that are in version 9 are fabulous, and you will want to make the investment.

A lot of the preferences in setting up your workspace will depend on you, and what you consistently use, and how cluttered your want your workspace to be.  I like mine clear, with only a few tools and palettes showing, besides the image that I am working on.  That is my preference.  You can experiment, and see what you like best.

When you have your workspace set up to your liking, then you can save the workspace by going to File/Workspace/Save and give your personal workspace a label for if and when you need to reload it.

General Program Preferences

Go to File (in the upper left hand corner of your screen), click on that, and then go down the list until you find Preferences.  Let your mouse hover over Preferences for a moment, and then click on General Program Preferences from the menu that will appear.  You will see a lot of tabs that look like file folders.

Click on the tab that says Undo.  I would recommend that you put a check mark in “Enable the undo system” and in the “Enable the redo system”.  Leave the others blank.

Click on the View tab.  Check everything.

Go to Display and Caching:

Under Presentation on the left hand side, I have “Re-use last file type” unchecked.  ”Display all color dropper tool tips” is checked.  I like using precise cursors, so I have that box checked as well.  Then your cursor shows up like little cross hairs, and you can see right where it is going to go.  I also checked “Show brush outlines”.  Zoom/Rescaling quality I pushed the slider up to Better.  Thumbnail/Preview I set at 80 pixels, and checked everything under Caching.

Now go to the Palettes tab.  I checked “Display colors in RGB format”, “Decimal Display”, and “Show document palette”.  Now on the right hand side, check everything.

Under the Browser tab, check symmetric, width & height are 80 pixels.  Under Appearance, I chose to “Use Windows Colors”, and “Display flat style thumbnails”  Everything else is checked.

On the Miscellaneous tab, I chose to have 10 items in my recently used file list.  You can have as many as you want.  I used 10 percent in the next item.  Clipboard data on exit:  Ask.  Force full window redraw unchecked.  Show Splash Screen when application starts:  Unchecked.  I don’t like to see the splash screen every time that the program starts, but it is up to you.  After the first couple of times, I didn’t care to see it again.  The last item is for a drawing tablet, like Wacom.  If you have one, uncheck it.

Under the Units tab, Display units in Pixels, 200 pixels/cm.  Toolbar colors is checked, and snap to center of pixel while moving is checked.

On the Transparency and Shading tab, you have your choice of what grid size that you will have.  When you have a transparent image, or a new image with nothing on it, you will see a series of squares, that are grey and white, or what ever color scheme that you want.  On this tab I chose Medium and Light Grey.  You can also choose your own custom colors by clicking on the Color 1 and Color 2 squares, and selecting a color of your own choosing.

The tab that says PhotoSharing, is for Photo Sharing services.  You can check from time to time on the link that says “Check for Updates” for new Photo Sharing services that are offered.

Now click on the Warnings tab.  Here you will see a list of the warnings that you will see after different actions are taken that might result in the loss of information, or when you can not do something that you are trying to do.  You can disable or enable all of these, or disable each one individually if you don’t want it to pop up again.  You can also disable these alerts when they happen, by checking the box that says to disable it.

On the next tab, Auto Action, it gives you a list of things that the PSP can do automatically.  You can set each item to “Always”, “Prompt” or “Never”.

Now that you have all of your general program preferences set, click OK.

File Format Associations

Go back up to File (upper left hand corner) and Preferences, and then go to File Format Associations.  Choose Select All, and OK.

File Locations

Now File, Preferences, and then go to File Locations.  Here you will find a list of file locations for brushes, tubes, masks, plugins, patterns, and a lot of other things that you will be using with Paint Shop Pro.  You do not have to store your files such as tubes within Paint Shop Pro.  As a matter of fact, I would not recommend that.  You can create a folder anywhere on your hard drive, and store them there.  If you store a ton of stuff in the PSP program, it just slows it down.  With the file locations, you can add a folder where you are going to keep these files, and when you open the program, it will find them for you and they will be useable in your work.  Click OK when you are done.

Auto Save Settings

Now go to File, Preferences, and Auto Save Settings.  Enable is checked, and I chose that the program will auto save every 5 minutes.  This is really handy if your program all of a sudden freezes, and dies, and you were in the middle of something that just took you hours to do.  I have not had autosave turned on, and lost all of my hard work.  So make sure that box is CHECKED!!!  And then click OK.

This is a very easy method to make an image look like it is reflecting on a table or some other flat surface.

    Materials Needed

• Paint Shop Pro.  You can download a trial version of this wonderful graphic program from COREL.
• Super Blade Pro
• My zip with the Super Blade Pro Preset, and the font that I used, which you can DOWNLOAD HERE.
• Tubes of your choice

** Put the Blade Pro presets and bmp images in your environment and textures folder, and the font, you can either install in your Windows/Font folder, or open it up on your workspace.  As long as it is open, Paint Shop Pro will recognize it and you can use it.

I will not remind you between each step, but please save your image often, so that you will not lose all of your hard work.

Instructions

1. Open a new image, 800 x 300, 16 million colors, background is black.
2. New Raster Layer, and name this TEXT.
3. Background and Foreground are both #FFFFFF (white).  Using your text tool, click on the image, and apply these options: Antalias and Floating are checked, Bold is on, and find the Rockwell font, or one of your choosing.  You can use any font, but a wider one shows up better.  I used size 100, but if you use a different font, you might have to adjust it as needed.
4. Keep text selected, and apply the Shiny Gold Super Blade Pro preset.  Deselect.
5. Move your text up towards the top of your workspace with the mover tool.
6. Now add any tubes that you want to decorate your text.  Place each tube on a separate layer, and move them into the position that you want with your mover tool.
7. Duplicate your text and all of your tube layers.
8. On every duplicated layer, highlight it, and go to Image/Flip.
9. Any duplicated layer that overlaps a top layer, move it down below that respective layer so that it is underneath.
10. Turn the opacity of each of the duplicated layers down to 40, as I have done on the layer palette here.  You can adjust the opacity to whatever looks good to you.
11. At this point, you might want to eliminate unwanted space around the image, and make sure it is centered.  Draw a rectangle around your text and tubes in the dimensions that you want, using the selection tool, and go to Image/Crop to Selection.
12. Make sure that your background color is set to white, and add a border by going to Image/Add Borders and type in 5, symmetric checked.
13. Select your white border with your magic wand, tolerance and feather set at 0.
14. Now apply the Shiny Gold Blade Pro Preset that you used on the Gold and Diamond name.
15. Effects/Sharpen/Sharpen, and repeat the sharpen again.
16. Change your background to black, and add another border of 15 pixels.
17. Change your background back to white, and add another border of 5 pixels.
18. Select this border with your magic wand, and apply the same Shiny Gold preset.
19. Effects/Sharpen/Sharpen, and repeat.
20. Resize, sharpen as needed, and you are done!

Thank you for doing my tutorial!