Stuff You Need To Know

By now you should have an idea of the size of PSP and all of the things that are available to you.  If you aren't sure of anything in PSP and you haven't already, take a look at this tutorial for an overview of everything that is available in the programme.  

In this tutorial you are going to find out about all the little niggly bits and pieces that some tutorials just assume you already know.  Things like the differences between file types and why you should save different images as different types, where to put tubes and various other bits and pieces you have (or will) download and all sorts of useful tips and tricks  :o)

You will need:

A copy of PaintShop Pro - you can download a 30 day trial version from here

Fire up PSP and wait for it to do whatever it needs to do.

The things that I go through in this tutorial aren't in any particular order... just as I think of them so don't worry if I start jumping around - that's all part of the fun of learning PSP!!  :o)

If you went through my overview tutorial that showed you the basic basics of PSP then you may remember that I promised you that I would write a tutorial on what all the various bits and pieces in the "New Image" window meant.  I think that's a good place to start, don't you!  :o)

OK, so first we need to go to "File" and then down to "New" 

or you can click on the icon that looks like a piece of paper if you have it on your toolbar.

A pop-up box will come up that looks something like this:

Let's go through each bit individually.  The first bit is the "Image Dimensions" section.  This is where you tell PSP how big you want this image to be.  I've want my width to be 500 and my height to be 500.  

You can either change the size, one at a time, using the up and down arrows next to the number

Or you can click and hold on the bigger arrow next to them and use the slider bar to change your number

I like to work in pixels and pretty much all of the tutorials you will come across online work in pixels too but there are other options available to choose from - just click on the big arrow and choose the one you'd prefer for that image.

Now lets take a look at the bottom bit... the "Image Characteristics" section

The background colour sets the colour you will have as your main background on the image.  I personally prefer to always use a transparent background unless a tutorial asks for a different colour 'cos then you can change it to whatever you'd like the background to be later on. 

There are only certain colours you can choose for the background in this dialogue box (another reason I always choose transparent).  To see what those colours are, click on the arrow on the right hand side of the box and you will get a list that looks something like this:

Use the scrollbar at the right to see the other colours that are available but that aren't displayed.

The "Image type" box lets you choose how many colours you would like to have in your image.  I personally prefer to keep it at the maximum number of colours unless a tutorial asks for something different 'cos I never know how many colours I'm going to be using so I always prefer to play it safe  :o)

If you'd like to change the number of colours, just click on the arrow on the right hand side to choose one of the other options

The last section of this dialogue box we are going to look at is the "Memory required" bit.

The number you can see will change depending on all the options you've set for the image above.  With a 500x500 pixel image on a transparent background, with 16.7 million colours available to use, this image will take up 977.6kb of memory.  Sounds like a lot huh?  That's because it's a big image with all the colours available - if the image was smaller and/or with less colours available, the amount of memory required would change and be lower.

Remember - each time you open a new image and change the settings, these settings will be saved for your next image so remember to change them each time you open a new image if you need to!