PSP Lesson 1

Lets get started on some PSP Basics shall we?

This is the main window of PSP:

Main PSP Window

Your main window may look slightly different. Some of the Palettes may or may not be visible.
But that's ok, because we can turn them on and off as needed.
Now lets take a quick look at the different components of the main window. We will go into more detail later in this lesson, and also in further lessons.


Title Bar

This is the Title bar. The Title Bar is found at the top of each image. It displays the name of the image "voy-s5" in this case. The magnification level, [1:1] means that the image is full size. And the current active layer which in this case is the background. There is also a title bar at the top of the main window, which displays the name of the active image. (see mine says "voy-s5")


Menu Bar

This is your Menu Bar.
The menus available depend on what type of work you are doing in the main window.


Status Bar

This is the status bar. It can be found at the bottom of the main window. It contains information about the current image (on the right). You can see that the "Voy-s5" image size is 640 pixels x 480 pixels, and that it uses the 16 Million Colors palette and that it need 900kb of memory.
The numbers on the left are the co-ordinates of your cursor, within the image. You can turn the status bar on and off. We will look at how to do this later in the lesson.


Basic Tool Bar

This is your Basic Tool Bar. The tool bar contains buttons for frequently used commands. You can customize your tool bar. We look at how to do this later in the lesson.


Tool Palette

This is your Tool Palette. It can be anchored like mine is in the main screen window above, or it can be floating. If it is floating, it will look something like this:

Tool Palette

The Tool Palette contains image editing tools. When you click on an tool button, or icon, the control palette displays its options.


This is the Control Palette:

Control Palette

The Control Palette contains options for your selected image editing tools. The options change depending on what image editing tool you are using. The one above shows some of the options you might see if you were using a Paint Brush.


This is your Color Palette.

Color Palette

The Color Palette contains a selection of available colors and displays the active foreground and background colors. It can usually be found on the right side of the main window, and like most of the tool bars, can be turned on and off.


This is the Layers Palette:

Layers Palette

The Layers Palette contains the controls used when working with layers.


You can turn most of these Tool Bars and Palettes on and off as you please.

To display or turn off a Palette you can go to "View" then "Toolbars" on your Menu Bar.

Toobar Options

If want a Palette or Toll Bar turned on, all you need to do is make sure the box next to it is checked. To turn it off, clear the checkbox. If you press "Customize" Then you can customize what buttons you have on your Tool Bar by highlighting the tool and clicking on "Add" or "Remove". Then Close.

Customize Toolbar

There are also icons on your Tool bar for turning some Palettes on and off.

Palette Buttons

These are for Tool Palette, Control Palette, and Layers Palette.

Part 2


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