Experiment with Paint Shop Pro. Grab a GIF or JPEG file and edit it. Try
painting your own image. Try each of the following:
- Start off by creating an Images folder in which to keep this
lab's work.
- Open Internet Explorer, go to a page with an image, and right-click
on the image to save it into your folder.
- Start Paint Shop Pro.
- Open the file you saved in Internet Explorer.
- Changing foreground and background colors: Along the right edge of
the Paint Shop Pro Window you'll see a color spectrum with two rectangles
below. The foreground rectangle shows the foreground color while the
background rectangle shows the background color. Clicking the left mouse
button within the spectrum changes the foreground color; use the right
mouse button to change the background color.
You can use the dropper tool to change foreground and background colors by
clicking within an open image.
- Saving an image file. For each of the following, use Save
As, double-check that the image is being saved into your Images folder,
and choose a different name. Save your image in interlaced GIF89a format
with no transparency information. Next, use the dropper tool to change the
background color to a color within your image (don't use white). Now, save
the image with a transparent background.
- Using the browser to view results. Return to Internet Explorer.
From the File menu choose Open and browse to your Images
folder. Open and observe each of the images. How does the image with a
transparent background look?
- For most of the image manipulation functions, Paint Shop Pro must be
working at a depth of 16-million colors. To increase the color depth,
open the Colors menu, choose Increase Color Depth, and
choose 16 Million Colors.
- Using one of your images, experiment with the flip, mirror, and
rotate choices under the Image menu.
- Next, experiment with the deformation and filter browsers under the
Images menu. Apply a few and see what happens. (You can return to
your original by using the undo button.
- Cropping. Often you'll only want part of an image. Use the
selection tool to mark the part of the image you want to cut out. Open the
Edit menu and choose Copy. Open the Edit menu
again, choose Paste, then choose As New Image. A cropped
version of the original image should appear.
- Resampling. Copy the two 30--- JPEG images in
S:\Kelliher\Images to your Images folder. One is 60x82, while the
other is 600x820. Under the Image menu, you'll find
Resample. Resample each image so that it is the size of the other
image. (Hint: Within the Resample dialog box, click Custom size
and enable Maintain aspect ratio. Then, you need only enter the
new image width.)
This demonstrates that it's not a good idea to resample to a larger size,
but it's fine to resample to a smaller size. So, remember, when scanning
it's better to use too large a DPI because you can resample down later.
- Brightness and contrast adjustment. Copy the image tigger.jpg
from my Images folder to your Images folder. Open it in Paint Shop Pro.
From the Colors menu, choose Adjust, then choose
Brightness/Contrast. Preview the following settings of (brightness,
contrast): (0, 0), (25, 0), (25, -25), (50, -25), (50, -50), (50, -90). By
suitably adjusting the brightness and contrast of an image, you can make it
usable as a background image on a web page.
- Painting and sign-making. This is a paint program. Click
the new button to get yourself a fresh canvas. Use a black background and
256 colors. Experiment with the painting tools: paint brushes, air brush,
flood fill, line, and shapes. (Hints: When you choose a painting tool,
some parameter boxes will open beneath the tool bar. Experiment with
different parameter values.) Add some text (Hints: When adding text, make
sure Floating is enabled. After placing the text, there's a
marquee around it to allow you to position it precisely. To turn the
marquee off, open the Selections menu and choose Select
None.) Use several colors. Are you the next Van Gogh? Try different
things. Go ahead, knock yourself out. (You can look at sign.gif in
my Images directory for a silly example. It's transparent, so compare it
in Paint Shop Pro and Internet Explorer.)
Make sure black is the background color, save the image in GIF89a format
with background transparency, and look at your image in Internet Explorer.
Is the background transparent?