One of the most misunderstood and under used features of
Paint Shop Pro is it's ability to work with layers.....
So whats a "layer" you ask? Thats a good question, and one
I hope to answer in this small tutorial. Unlike other tutorials
this one is designed simply to give you some working knowledge
rather then show you a specific technique.
When you first open a new image, you have a number of options
in respect to the background. You can fill it with a specific
color or texture or even make it transparent.
Once you have your new image open and the background selected
you can begin to create your image or project or what ever it
is your going to be working on.
As each element of the image is added, it becomes a permenant
part of the background, and thus the overall image. Once added
it becomes extremely differcult, if not impossible to remove
an element from the image without having an adverse effect on
the overall image itself.
When I speak about elements, I'm talking about the individual
things that make up your overall image. For example, if you
were creating a button, it might consist of 3 elements:
1. The background
The solution is to use Layers as you build your image. You can
think of layers as clear sheets of plastic that are overlaid
on your image, and upon which you add the elements, one at a
time, with each element on it's own layer.
As an example, lets build a simple image using a few of the
tubes that come installed with Paint Shop Pro version 7.
In our example, we will create an image that consists of a
bed of leaves, upon which rest a group of nuts. The bottom
of the nest of leaves will be decorated with some pine cones
and then we'll throw in a few butterflies just because they
are pretty.
Basically, your image might look something like this:
2. The button itself
3. And the text that might be on the button.
In this example, this image would have 5 elements.
1. The background
2. The nest of leaves
3. The nuts
4. The pine cones
5. The butterflies
Now lets say that you decide after you create the image that you want to leave the butterflies out. Since they are a part of the background and in effect part of the image, your kind of stuck. You could take the time to carefully cut them out of the image, then go back in with the tube tool and add whats needed to clean up the image. But let's face it, we're looking at a pretty time consuming process, with results that will be questionalble at best.
However, this problem would have been completly eliminated if you had created each element on it's own layer. In that case, removing the butterflies would have been a simple matter of just deleting the layer upon which they were created.
Lets see how that would be done......
First, we open our new image and apply the background:
Now from the menu bar we select:
Layer/New Raster Layer
When the Layer Properties box opens:
we give our first layer a name, for example "Leaves" and click OK.
Now nothing appears to have changed on our image. The background is still there with nothing else apparent. However, the layer has been applied, but because it's that "clear sheet of plastic" it can't be seen.
Open the Layer Pallet.
You will notice there are 2 tabs listed. One says background and the other says leaves. If you place your mouse cursor on the background tab, a small image will appear that shows you the background of the image we are working on.
Place your mouse cursor on the tab that says leaves. You will probably see a small image with white and gray squares on it. Those indicate a transparent background, which is what your layer is right now. A transparent, clear sheet of plastic.
So select your Tube Tool from the toolbar:
and from the Tool Option Pallet for Tubes:
select Summer Leaves with the scale set to about 50. Now click on your new image and create a bed of leaves.
Now if you open the Layer Palette again and put your cursor over the layer that says leaves, you will see an image of the bed of leaves you just created with nothing else. Thats because on this clear sheet of plastic, the only thing you have created is the leaves, nothing else, not even a background.
Now lets add another layer, and name this one nuts. From the Tubes Palette scroll down, select nuts, scale at about 45 and add a few nuts to our bed.
So far we have completed 3 of the 5 elements of our image. We have element #1, the background, element #2, the leaves and element #3 the nuts.
So we simply follow the above procedure. Add a new layer, name it pinecones, add a few pine cones.
Add a final layer, name it butterfly and add a few Monarch butterfiles.
Our image is done......
Since we placed each element of the image on it's seperate layer, and gave each layer it's own name, we can manipulate this image is a number of ways.
Let's say we decided we want the pine cones to be above the image instead of on the bottom.
First, select the mover tool
Now, place the tool on the pine cones, and simply drag them where you want them. You will notice only the pinecones will move.
Lets take a quick look at out Layers pallete.
Starting from the bottom, or lower tab, we have the background, a layer named leaves, a layer named nuts, a layer named pinecones and a layer named butterfly.
This indicates the order in which the layers have been placed in the image. When you moved the pinecones to the top of the image, you probably noticed they passed over the nuts and leaves, but underneith the butterflies.
Now, let's suppose you want the nuts to be on top of the butterflies? All you have to do, with the Layer Pallete open, is click on the layer named "Nuts" and drag it up on top of the layer named "Butterfly".
Now, with the Mover Tool, if you click and darg the nuts, you will notice they pass on top of the butterflies, not under them.
Looking at the layer pallete again, you will notice a pair of eyeglasses at the end of each layer name. These toggel off the layer visibility.
By clicking on them, you essentially make that layer "invisible" which is GREAT to see how an image will appear with or without a particular elements added.
This allows you complete freedom to play around with an image, without fear of messing anything up. If you add a layered image and then decide you don't want it in the finished product, you can either delete it completely or just toggel off it's visibility.
When you save in image in Paint Shop Pro in either jpeg or gif format, all layers the image may contain are merged into a single image.
What this means is that once the layers are merged, they are lost forever......
But there is a way around this.....
From the Menu Bar, if you select File, you will see 3 different save options
1. Save
2. Save As
3. Save a Copy As
When ever you are saving an image that contains layers, you want to save 2 versions of the image. The first version is one that will maintain the layers of the image.
So from the File Menu, select Save Copy As. When the Save dialog box opens:
Under the Save as Type box, scroll down to Paint Shop Pro Image (*.psp) and save a copy of your image in that format.
This will maintain the layers of that image. Now you want to select Save Copy As again, and when the dialog box opens, go ahead and save the image in whatever other format you want to save it as, jpeg, gif, bmp, whatever. Normally, I'll use the same file name for both the psp format and other format, so I'll know what image goes with what psp file.
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