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PSP Tutorials - Fading Images to Background Colors with PSP

By: FYICenter.com

Part:   1   2 

A collection of 8 tutorials tips on fading images to background colors using Paint Shop Pro (PSP) with downloading and installing PSP, blending images with colors, fading image edges, creating faded background images. Topics included in this collection are:

  1. What Is Paint Shop Pro?
  2. How To Download and install PSP Evaluation?
  3. How To Create an Image with Text?
  4. How To Blend a Color Layer to a Image?
  5. How To Add Margins to an Image?
  6. How To Fade Image Edges to Background Colors?
  7. How To Create a Top Left Corner Image with a Fading Color?
  8. How To Avoid the Antialias Edges When Cutting and Pasting?

What Is Paint Shop Pro?

Paint Shop Pro (PSP) is a bitmap graphics editor and vector graphics editor. PSP is a major competition to Adobe Photoshop.

PSP was originally published by Minneapolis-based Jasc Software, in early 1992. In October 2004, Corel Corporation bought out Jasc Software, and with it, the distribution rights to Paint Shop Pro.

Corel offers a free, 30-day, and fully functional trial edition of Corel Paint Shop Pro. You should try it.

How To Download and install PSP Evaluation?

Go to http://www.jasc.com/

Download an evaluation copy of Paint Shop Pro 6.0 Evaluation - psp602ev.exe (about 14,580KB)

Run psp602ev.exe and install it at \psp

Run \psp\psp.exe. If you see this start up image, your installation is done.
     

Note that the current version of is Paint Shop Pro X maintained by http://www.corel.com/.

How To Create an Image with Text?

You can follow the steps below to create a new image with some text:

  • Go to menu: File > New. You will get the New Image dialog box.
  • Enter Width: 728; Height: 90; Background color: White.
  • Click OK. You will get a blank image.
  • Select the Text tool from the Tool Palette and click somewhere inside the blank image. You will get the Text Entry dialog box.
  • Enter the text: "dev.fyicenter.com" with the right font family, size, and color.
  • Click OK. The text will show up on the blank image.
  • Use the mouse to move the text to the right location in the image
  • Repeat last 4 steps to enter another text: "Information center for developers...".
  • Go to menu: File > Save as. You will get the Save As dialog box.
  • Select Save As Type: JPEG, and enter File Name: fyi_banner.
  • Click OK to save the image. You will get an image with text as shown below:
               

How To Blend a Color Layer to a Image?

Let's say you has an image and you want to use it as the background for your Web page. But the image is too bright to be used as a background. You can follow the steps below to blend a color layer to your image to make it soft:

  • Go to menu: File > Open. You will get the Open dialog box.
  • Locate the image created in the previous tutorial: fyi_banner.jpg.
  • Click OK. Your image will show up. It will be labeled as "Background".
  • Go to menu: Layers > New Raster Layer. You will get the Layer Properties dialog box.
  • Click OK. A new layer will be created and labeled as "Layer1".
  • Select the Flood Fill tool from the Tool Palette, and select the blue color from the Color Palette.
  • Click somewhere in Layer1. Layer1 will become blue.
  • Go to menu: View > Toolbars. You will get the Toolbars dialog box.
  • Select the Layer Palette and close the dialog box.
  • In the Layer Palette, move the Opacity scale to 50% on Layer1. You will see that the blue layer becomes partial transparent and the background image is blended with the color layer.
  • Go to menu: Layers > Merge > Merge All. Layer1 will be merged to Background.
  • Go to menu: File > Save as.
  • Save the blended image as fyi_banner_blended.jpg. It will look like this:
               

How To Add Margins to an Image?

In order to adding effects to an image, sometimes you need to add margins to the image first. You can follow the steps below to add black margins to an image:

  • Go to http://lettres.ac-rouen.fr/ and download the classic painting "Port de mer au soleil couchant" by Claude Gellee. (c)[louvre.edu]1999 - photo Erich Lessing.
  • Save this image as port_1.jpg and open it in PSP. It has 580x440 pixels.
  • Create a new image with 780x640 pixels.
  • Select the entire image of port_1.jpg and press Ctrl-C to copy.
  • Go to the new image and press Ctrl-Shift-e to paste as a selection.
  • Press and hold left mouse button to move the selection to (100,100). Click right mouse button to finalize the paste.
  • Save the image as port_with_margins.jpg. It will look like this:
               

(Continued on next part...)

Part:   1   2 


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