Paint Shop Pro

[Yellowrose]

Get your graphics program ready Lesson 1 for Paint Shop Pro will be posted on March 29th

To follow this tutorial you will need Paint Shop Pro. Versions 7,8, 9 or 10 will work fine.

You can try a demo of the program HERE

[Yellowrose]

Lesson 1 - Working with Images

In trying to make this as easy as possible I searched my collection of object making screenshots from RCT 2 and found a very easy project for first time object creators. It has only 1 view. This will help to familiarize you with the PSP tools we will be using throught my PSP tutorials.

It is just a simple tree surrounded in flowers.



You can download this screenshot to work with by clicking on the zip file below.

[Yellowrose]

Step 1

Open the screenshot with Paintshop Pro. On the left menu bar select the eraser and then the Background Eraser tool.

Click the image for enlarged view - image 1




Now it is time to adjust the eraser tool settings - The area outlined with the red box

Click image for larger view - image 2



Shape = Square

Size = 150

Hardness = 100

Step = I never worry about this setting as I go a little at a time anyway

Density = 100

Thickness = 100

[Yellowrose]

Step 2

Erasing the background

Some of you familiar with the program will know what to do here. For those that don't move the eraser outline square to the top left hand corner, click on the image in the top left corner. Because we are working with a bmp image you will get a messege box popup just click OK to continue. Now hold down your left mouse button and drag the square accross the top edge, down the right side edge back accross the bottom edge and up the left side edge finishing in the same corner you started in. Dont't worry about the other color images in the corners we will get rid of those when the background is deleted. 1 step at a time.

Your result should look like the image below - click to enlarge image 3



Continue deleteing a little each time until you have this. One pass around the image with an extra pass down each side. if you delete a piece of the image just go edit undo and try again.

click image to enlarge - image 4

[Yellowrose]

Step 3

We are now going to reduce the canvas size we are working with. This is done for 2 reasons. 1.) to eleiminate the images in the 4 corners and  2) to reduce the area we will work with when we have to zoom in for further background and image editing.

We will start adjusting the canvas for the width of the image first. In the top program menu bar click on image scroll down and click Canvas Size.

click to enalrge - image 5




You will get this window pop up so you can adjust the settings for the canvas size

Click to enlarge - image 6



There are4 sections to this window but only 3 sections to the window we have to change or adjust. The first section is the images original size which for our image is 800x 600. The next section is the first of 3 adjustment settings we will be doing.

New dimension is where we will make the first adjustment. Before making any adjustments make sure the measurment window is set to pixels(underlined in red). Now we make the first of our adjustments. In the top window labeled width change the 800 to 400.

In the placement section it is decided where on the canvas the object will be placed. We want ours centered so make sure the center directional buttom is selected. Click it to be sure(labeled in red). In the 4 boxes to the right top will remain at 0 bottom will remain at 0 the other 2 boxes for left & Right should both show 200. This is how many pixels we are going to delete from each side of the image.

When all the settings are changed click the OK button to proceed with the changes. You should now have an image that looks like this.

click to enlarge - image 7



It is now time to save you work for the first of many times. Click file and then Save AS or use the F12 keyboard shortcut, and the save box will open, navigate to where you wish to save your image, put a name for your image in the filename box in the Save as type box use the arrow to open the drop down box and choose Prtable Network Graphics [*.png] and click save

We still need to adjust the width a little more so repeat the last few steps to again adjust the width. This time we are going to take off 100 pixels from each side so the width entry will be 200 instead of 400 go ahead and make the adjustment and don't panic with the result.

Does your image look like this ????.... :w00t

click to enlarge - image 8



no worries it is a simple adjustment to make. We'll do that now. We use the canvas tool again to make the adjustment. So again click on image and scroll to canvas size. We are now going to work just in the placement section. with the right and left adjustment windows.

In the left adjustment window click on the smaller up arrow to increase to 40 you will notice the corresponding adjustment in the right window with an - in front of the number 40, this shows we are taking 40 pixels off of the right side and adding 40 pixels to the left side of the image. Click the OK button. Your image should now look like this.

click to enlarge - image 9



Save your image again using Save as and just click save to save over the previous version of the saved image.

Now we will adjust the height of the image. So again click image/canvas size to open the adjustment settings window. Working in the height window enter 300. Check that the center button is still selected and make sure that 150 is in the top window and the bottom window and the left & right windows should contain 0 click OK. You should now have this.

click to enlarge - image 10




Time for some sleep 6 am ...I will post some more later today.

[Yellowrose]

We still need to adjust the height again so repeat the above but this time enter 150 in the height box and check that 75 is in each of the top and bottom boxes. Click Ok to make the change. You should now have an image that looks like this.

click to enlarge - image 11



We now have a more workable image size to delete the balance of the black background and tweak the image before it is ready for A.P.E.

Step 4

The view of the image is now a little small to work with so we have to zoom in a little. On the program menu bar click View then zoom in and then zoom in by 5.

click to elarge - image 12



You should now have an image that looks like this.

click to enlarge - image 13



Now we go back to the background eraser tool to delete the remaining black background. You will now have an eraser that is too large and will delete the image itself so it's time to make an adjustment to the size of the eraser. Lower the eraser size from 150 to 50. we now have an acceptable eraser size to work with. This time we are not going to drag the eraser but delete slowly so we don't erase any of the image. Starting at the bottom left corner click so the eraser pointer is in the black background area to delete a square.

You should now have something like this depending on how you placed the eraser tool on the image.

click to enlarge image 14



Continue to erase the back ground one square at a time until you get close to the tree area of the image. When finished your image should look like this

Click to enlarge - image 15



we now need to adjust the eraser size again so we don't delete any part of the tree as we continue to delete the background. Change the eraser size to 20. Now carefully delete around the edges of the tree making sure your pointer is in the black background area. Your eraser outline(the white square) can overlap on the tree. This helps to make sure the edges are as clean as possible at this stage of the editing. You should now have an image like this.

click to enlarge - image 16



Now comes the harder part of the editing. We are first going to again adjust the canvas size to work with as we will be zooming in again to work at a closer view level. The height is fine for now so we will just adjust the width for this prtion of the editing.

Go to image/canvas size and in the new dimension section adjust the width setting to 150 and click OK to make the change. the image just got a little smaller in the width and should look like this

click to enlarge - image 17



We are now ready to tweak the image. Zoom in again. View/Zoom/zoom in by 5. You should now have this.

click to enlarge - image 18

We need to adjust the eraser size again so adjust it to 1. This is where it gets a little slow but for a quality result this is the best way to get it. We are going to go pixel by pixel. If needed you can zoom in closer using zoom/zoom in by 1 so you can better see where the black is located.We will start around the upper area of the tree. Delete the extra black background pixels carefully. Remember if at any time you make a mistake and delete part of the image there is the undo button. The nice thing about working with PSP is an unlimited undo function. Continue to delete outer area black pixels until around the outer edges are complete. Then Move to the center around the tree trunk. Now to if you are zoomed in real close zoom out by 5 to get a look at what the image looks like if you are happy with the look move to the next step if not zoom in and edit a little more until it is to your liking.  When complete you should have an image similar to this

click to enlarge - image 19



Our image is now ready for a final check before the final save. We have to be sure there are no shadow pixels that will show as white spots when the image is put into APE for assembly. To do this we will add a layer to see the pixels so they can be deleted with the eraser then delete the added layer and do our final save.

To add a layer in the program menu bar click on Layers/ Add a new raster layer. When the box pops up click ok to proceed.

Click to enalrge - image 20



Check that your new layer has been added by looking in the palette windows on the right of the program screen highlighted with the red square in the image below. This is where we will also change the color of the layer.

click to enlarge - image 21

[Yellowrose]

we are now ready to change the color of the new layer we created. Click in the top color window to open the color selection window.

click to enlarge - image 22



select yellow from the color selection window that opens

click to enlarge - 23



To color the layer select the flood fill tool from the tool menu on the right

click to enlarge image 24



now just click anywhere in the image box to color the layer. you should now have this

click to enlarge- image 25



Whoa my object image disappeared.... :w00t  it was supposed to   to see your original image hover your mouse pointer over the bar that says Raster 1

click to enlarge - image 26



To make Raster 1 viable again we need to adjust the layers position to do this click on raster 1 and hold down the left mouse button and drag raster 1 to the top over raster 2.

click to enlarge image - 27



You should now have this image

click to enlarge - image 28



Time now to look for locate and delete those ghost or shadow pixels that will show when the object is put into A.P.E. To do this we need to zoom in twice so go view/zoom/zoom in by 5 2 times to enlarge the image. Using the right and bottom scroll bars look for ghost pixels and delete them with the background eraser tool. Do your best to get the main ones located along the outer edge of the image and the ones that are by themselves surrounded by nothing but the yellow from the layer background. For an example of a ghost or shadow pixel check image 29.

click to enlarge image 29



now that all our ghost pixels have been deleted it's time to delete that layer we made yellow. To do this just click on Raster 2 and push the delete layer button indicated in image 30

Click to enlarge - image 30



We are now back to this image. Note you should still be zoomed out by 5 at this point.

click to enlarge image 31

[Yellowrose]

Will finish off this part of the tutorial later on tonight real lief needs a little of my attention for a few hours.