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Tubes
are a highly contagious!  Basically,
tubes are images on a transparent background/s,
(also known as layers). You can "PAINT" or
create pictures by using other pictures (picture
tubes). Here we will discuss TUBES and
working with LAYERS.
When
you open a new image in Paint Shop Pro, you have a choice
to make it transparent, usually this is your bottom layer
or what will become the "background" of
your image. On the bottom or base layer is where you
have the choice to either fill it with a solid colour,
a gradient fill, or a texture fill, or it can be the
grass (made with a tube) as shown in the picture below
on the left, or the gradient fill shown in the picture
below, on the right.
Tubes can be very useful as one can "paint" with
them by arranging them on different layers to create "scenes" or
"paintings".
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CLICK ON
IMAGE FOR LARGE VIEW
Opens In A New Window |
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CLICK ON
IMAGE FOR LARGE VIEW
Opens In A New Window |
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There
are endless uses for Tubes. They can be used to create logos & graphics
for web pages (like the logos at the top of
this page), email backgrounds "stationery", web backgrounds, gift
tags, greeting cards, graphics
for presentations, decoupage, designs
for T-Shirts,and the list goes
The beauty of working with tubes is: The tube is on a transparent
layer - meaning it has no background,
you can drag them around on layers, you
have total control as to what size you
want the tube to be (that is scaling down from 100%
of it's original size), giving one control of depth
and perspective. Perspective and dropped shadows can
be added to tubes to give your pictures depth dimension. Tubes
can be positioned on different layers, moved or dragged
around on a layer with the MOVE TOOL. |
THE MOVE TOOL |
If your Layer
Palette is not visible you must enable it
so you can see on which layer the
specific tube is. (You can have more than one tube
on a layer). If your layer palette is not activated
you can press F8 on your keyboard
to activate it.
Once you have
created your desired image with tubes
and layers, you can save it in the
various graphic formats, like JPEG,
JPG, BMP, PNG, PSD or GIF etc.
Remember there are compression settings one can adjust to
vary the file size of your image. I will write a tutorial
on that if there is a call for it. |
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Tubes
Placed On Different Layers |
As you
can see in the above image - various tubes were placed
on their own layers. You can create a new layer by clicking
on LAYERS | NEW RASTA LAYER or
the shortcut as shown in the image below. |
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If
your base / bottom layer is labeled "background" you
can right click on the word background and select PROMOTE
BACKGROUND LAYER. This "activates" the
solid background to a transparent layer which will not
appear to be transparent if it is filled with a colour
or texture or what ever. |
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WHERE
IS THE TUBE FEATURE FOUND? |
The
tube brush only becomes available once you have opened
a new blank or existing image.
When you click on the tube brush you must click on
the browser window, step #2 as shown in the image below.
The tube browser window will show all the tubes that
have been exported into PSP.
Paint Shop Pro 8 will
show you ALL the
tubes which are in your Picture Tube
folder of Paint Shop Pro. These tubes
were either exported into PSP of
copied and pasted as I have explained
in my other tutorials and F.A.Q.
The fact that ALL the tubes are shown
in the tube browser of PSP
8 can be quite daunting
especially if you have thousands
of tubes installed.
In PSP 9 and PSP X you
can categorise your tubes into different folders and choose
specific folders to browse and work from.This is a GREAT
new feature! |
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SCALING
/ SIZING OF TUBES |
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Here
you can see Barry's Place Wild
Animal Tube placed on the canvas at 100% of its
size.
You
can reduce the scale (size) of the tube by
either typing in the percentage size you want
into the box or by clicking and dragging the
slider to the left or right on the V
- or on the v and inverted v.
See image below. |
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The tube shown on the
left of the Cheetah was scaled down to 35%
of its original size. I selected the tube
from the tube browser window, scaled the
size down to 35% and then click on my canvas
with the tube brush and thus the resulting
image on the left.
Now you can see that
the tube is considerably smaller than in
the picture above. This tube is on a transparent
layer, with no background at this stage.
The grid block you see behind the tube denotes
transparency in Paint Shop Pro.
Often when you scale
a tube down it becomes blurry or un-focused.
Therefore it will need a little tweaking
to improve the sharpness or focus.
See my tutorial on sharpening tubes that have
been scaled down.
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DO
I SAVE IT WITH OR WITHOUT A BACKGROUND?
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You
will eventually have to save your image with some sort
of background, that is if you do not want to create a GIF or PNG image
with a transparent background.
The choices for backgrounds are endless and obviously should
fall in line with your design theme that you have in mind.
You may choose a solid colour, or a textured background,
a gradient fill or what ever you wish.
If you want to save your image as a transparent GIF or PNG then
you do not need to have a background and you will have to
use the export wizard to help you achieve
this.
Go to FILE | EXPORT | GIF OPTIMIZER to export
a GIF. The shortcut to that is to hold down your ALT key
and press the letters F T G to take your
there much quicker!
Or for a PNG FILE | EXPORT | PNG OPTIMIZER to
export a PNG and the shortcut letters for PNG are ALT
- FTN. |
BACKGROUND OPTIONS |
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In
Picture A
We
have our picture saved in .psp format - the file
format native to Paint Shop Pro. If you save
it on your hard drive in .psp format it will
keep the transparent layer - (the white and grey
grid that you can see in the background).
Saving
your image in this format allows you to re-open
it and make alterations at a later stage, like
changing the background colour or texture, or
adding new layers with other tubes on these layers.
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In Picture
B
Here
our picture was
simply saved
in JPEG format
by going to FILE | SAVE AS -
Give it a name,
click in the SAVE
AS TYPE box
and choose
JPEG.
You
can see that Paint Shop Pro has automatically
given it a white background, that is because
I had my colour palette background set to white
at that moment. It did not choose red as that
is my foreground colour.
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In Picture C
Here
I applied a new layer,
moved it to below
the layer that the
tube is on and flood
filled it with a
texture. You
move layers by CLICKING on
the layer and HOLDING down
the mouse button,
dragging and dropping
the layer beneath
the top layer by
releasing the mouse
button.
I
could
have
chosen
a solid
colour
fill,
or
applied
a texture
to
the
solid
colour.
The
choices
are
endless.
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In Picture D
Here
I saved the tube on
the same background
as this table row.
Can you see the difference??
;-) |
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Let's "Paint" A
Picture Using Tubes |
The
image below was made with a total of 5 tubes on different
layers.
Click on the image to take you to the tutorial on how I did
that. |
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I Hope You Found
This Information Useful. If You Have Any Queries, Please
Do Not Hesitate To Contact Me
webmaster@psptubez.com
Regards Barry |
