LAST UPDATED August 30, 2003 7:49 PM

NODE EDIT ~~ To invoke node editing, click on the Pen tool. On the tool ribbon under Mode, the first icon is your node editing cursor.

MASKS ~~ To load masks, go to the Layers menu and choose Load/Save Mask. Once your mask is applied, look at your Layers palette - in PSP 8, you can edit a mask just like any other layer.

BEZIER CURVES ~~ Bezier curves can be created by using the Point-to-Point drawing mode and dragging the mouse cursor as you click each point. It's a little different than in PSP 7, but creates the same effect.

PRECISE CURSORS ~~ You can now find this in Files-->Preferences-->General Preferences-->Display and Caching.

BACKGROUND ERASER ~~ The center of the background eraser is the key to using this new feature. Instead of using the brush edge, as you would with the regular eraser, don't worry about anything but the center of the brush where the cross hairs are located. Let the brush outline overlap stuff and see what happens ~smiles~ The hardness and softness control changes the size of the center area and the falloff from "must go" to not sure, you figure it out" ;-)

COLORS IN ADD BORDER ~~ Run you cursor over the color swatch, hold down your CTRL key and use the resulting eye dropper to sample from anywhere on your screen.

SAVING ~~ When saving a .psp file in V8 that you want to be able to access in PSP7, click on the options button in the Save Window and click on PSP7. You will then be able to see your file in the browser when using PSP7.

FAVORITES FOLDER ~~ In every Save, Save As, Open etc., you can add folders to a special button. As Matt says, "saves navigating a bunch of folders and partitions".

TOOL OPTIONS ~~ Every tool contains 2 or 3 different bands of controls. If you're working with Tool Options floating, you can drag these bands on to new "rows", reducing the overall width of the palette. (ElShaddai - Jasc Software)

BRUSH VARIANCE JITTERS ~~ Jitter is randomness. Jittering a value by 10% will cause the result to vary randomly by 10% of the original value. This allows the brush to take on non-geometric designs (more natural). (Jon Ort - Jasc Software)

PRESETS ~~ You can't just point PSP8 to your PSP7 Presets folder to get them to work in PSP8. However, in the patch to 8.01 there is a PSP7 Preset Converter script. Just run that script and your PSP7 presets can now be used in PSP8.

SIZE OF FILE ~~ I'm not sure if this will be back on the Status Bar, but for now you can go to your Overview Window and click on the Info tab to find your memory used on the graphic you are working on.

SAVING FILES FOR Animation Shop IN PSP8 ~~ In order for images that you create in PSP8 to work in AS 3.04 they need to be saved to the PSP7 compatible .psp format in order for Animation Shop to load them.

DELETE KEY NOT WORKING? ~~ Reset your keyboard shortcuts. Go to View/Customize, click on the Keyboard Tab and Reset All.

MESH WARP TOOL ~~ Hold down the shift key while moving a node, you will move the whole row or column. Holding down the ctrl key will cause the whole line of nodes to bend.

ALPHA CHANNELS AND UNDO ~~ With the arrival of scripting the undo and redo must be linear for all operations that affect the image otherwise scripts would break. When saving selections to an alpha channel, and you need to undo something further down the line, duplicate your image. You can now undo the save(s) on the original image and you can fetch the saved selections(s) from the alpha channel in the second image whenever you need them.

CHANGING PPI ~~ For printing purposes there are times that you need to change the resolution from your original ppi setting to 300ppi or more. To do this without changing the number of pixels, go to Image-->Resize and toggle off "Resample using".

"LEGACY BLEND MODES" ~~ You will notice on some of the blend modes that they have the word (Legacy) by the name. The legacy modes are the ones that match Photoshop and older versions of PSP. These old modes called themselves HSL, but were not. The new ones match true HSL colorspace, making the names of the modes actually match what they appear to do.

B&B SEAMLESS ~~ When using Balls & Bubbles and checking the Multiple Balls or Bubbles mode, the image you get tiles seamlessly.

FLOAT A TOOLBAR directly over a docked palette. Hold down the CTRL key and click the title bar of the palette and move it into place. Do not release CTRL until after you mouse-click off the tool bar.

CHANGING FILE FORMAT ASSOCIATIONS ~~ If you want to change your .pspimage association to .psp for saving do the following. Go to File-->Preferences-->File Format Associations. Highlight Paintshop Pro Image and press the Extensions button. Highlight psp in the dialog box, press the Preferred button, psp will jump to the top of the list. Press okay OK twice to exit. Your file extension for PSP format images will be .psp until you change it back.

ADDING A SEPARATOR/DIVIDER ON YOUR TOOLBAR ~~ Open your customize dialog box (View-->Customize), go to your toolbar and right click on the icon that you want the divider to appear BEFORE and pick Start Group. To remove a divider do the same thing to the same button.

RECENT COLORS ~~ Right click on the color box to get your recent colors used. Yes, I know you can do this in PSP7, but in V8 it now displaced the foreground and background active materials in the lower left corner. Click on either square to choose your active material. This works anyplace where you have a color selection box.

VECTORS TIDBIT ~~ When working with vectors, click on the pen tool in edit mode. Click on a node and you can move the node pixel by pixel with your arrow keys. Hold down the Ctrl Key with your arrow and move it 10 pixels. Double click on your node and you can move the whole object with your arrow keys the same way.

TIP!! ~~ Holding down the shift key while selecting a tool or menu item will bypass the command dialog and will run the command with the last used preferences.

JPG OPTIMIZER - now supports Chroma Subsampling. There are several settings you can choose, however I have found that chosing NONE and not the default will give you a much better graphic. I set mine to None (in the Subsampling) with a compression value of 15 and it works out quite nicely. Leaving it at the default in Subsampling leaves a lot of artifacts, especially on bright colors.

If you have any problems, comments or questions please do not hesitate to E-mail me.

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