Lesson 2

More Tools etc:

In this lesson we will be giving you an overview of several more PSP features and effects. We won't be getting too technical on any one thing so don't worry. It will just a brief summary to familiarize you. *Smile*.

In Paint Shop pro the images we create for our web pages are saved in either as a GIF or a JPEG file type. A GIF is limited to 256 colors, and is more widely used for images that do not require a whole lot of detail. We also use images in the GIF file format to make transparencies and animations on the web. These are used when your image does not need a lot of detail or you wish to use it for an animation or a transparency.

A JPEG however, is saved in a compressed file format and is used for images that require more detail. These may be saved using any number of colors. JPEG's are used for photographs or any image you wish to have a higher quality look.

It is very easy to save an image in either file format. Just go to file, then select save as, then select the folder in which you would like to save it to on your hard drive. Name the image and in the drop down menu select either "JPEG-JFIF Compliant (*.jpg;*.jif;*.jpeg)" for a JPEG file, or "CompuServe Graphics Interchange (*.gif)" for a GIF file and click save. Note: You will see several different file types but generally only use the gif or jpeg on the web!

With an image up on your screen click "Image", then "Image Information". This is where you will find all the information on your image, such as the height and width and how many K's it has among other things. This can be useful when coding in your height and width tags on your page, instead of going back into the file manager to view the image info.

Lets get familiar with some of what is included on the Image menu. The first three options on the the Image menu are Flip, Mirror, and Rotate. Clicking on Flip will turn your image upside down. Clicking on Mirror will make your image appear as if viewed in front of a mirror. Clicking on Rotate will give you a window with several options on rotating your image in various ways or steps. In this way you can manipulate your image in several ways.

Tip: Did you wonder why in the heck I went and underlined one letter on each of the image menu items? Well ~ you can eliminate the need for the mouse by using the "Alt" key on your keyboard. You can see that I underlined a letter from each of the menu items! Lets say you want the Image menu to appear! You hold down the Alt key and type the letter I, and boom the Image menu drops down! You can now access any menu item by typing the underlined letter, sometimes holding down the Ctrl (or Shift) key and typing the underlined letter on all menu options. Give it a shot! Making yourself do this is quite a bit faster that using the mouse in most everything you do on a computer. You do get very used to it after awhile.

There are also listed beside some menu items a direct PSP keyboard shortcut combination. You can use these, if you remember them, to directly access a function.

Next we find the Add Borders option. When this is clicked another menu will come up with settings on how wide to add a border around an image. If Symmetric is checked then all the border widths will be the same. If unchecked then you can change any one side border of the image. Then we find the Canvas Size. This acts in much the same way as the Add Borders option.

We now come to the Resize option. You can use this to make your image any size you like. You can also resize the image in pixels or a percentage of the original.

On the rest of the items on the image menu, you can play around with them and see the different effects of what each can do. There are some very interesting and different looking effects with some of these. Experiment around with them. We will be covering some other effects in a later lesson.

Homework

1. Choose any image and place it on your psp.html page in four different positions for that image.
     #1 image will be the original image position ~
     #2 image will be the image rotated to the left 90 degrees ~
     #3 image will be the image in an upside down position ~
     #4 image will be your image rotated to the left 270 degrees or a 3/4 turn to the left.
2. Choose a second image and place it on your psp.html page, along with the same image when the mirror option is used.
3. Email your instructor with your psp.html address (URL).

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