User manual SERIF PHOTOPLUS 6.0

[. . . ] PhotoPlus 6. 0 Companion ©1999 Serif, Inc. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without the express written permission of Serif, Inc. All Serif product names are trademarks of Serif, Inc. Microsoft, Windows and the Windows logo are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. [. . . ] If you have a pressure-sensitive stylus, checking the 6L]H box causes the brush size to vary according to pressure. A light application of the pen makes for a very thin brush stroke, and full pressure allows the brush size to expand up to the defined size. (If your brush tip is defined as 35 pixels wide, that's how wide it would be at full pressure. ) You can also turn on the 2SDFLW\ option so that faint pressure then correlates to a fainter brush stroke. Working with Paint and Text 57 Using the Airbrush tool Like the Paintbrush tool, the Airbrush tool is used for freehand drawing in the foreground color, but it behaves like a spray-can. Holding the tool over one spot with the left mouse button held down "sprays" more paint. The choices for Brush Tip and Tool Properties tab settings for the Airbrush are the same as for the Paintbrush. Note that PhotoPlus "remembers" your custom settings for each individual tool. To paint a line using the Airbrush tool, select it from the Tools toolbar and drag over the image area. Y Choose the Airbrush tool and experiment with it, noting how it differs from the Paintbrush. Y Try airbrushing on both the Background and the standard (transparent) layer while varying properties, particularly opacity. Using the Eraser tool The Eraser tool works very much like the preceding brush tools, with the same range of Brush Tip and Tool Properties tab options. But it is used instead to rub out pixels and replace them with whichever color is selected as the background color. To erase, select the tool from the Tools toolbar and drag over the image area. On the Background layer, erased pixels are replaced by the current background color. On other layers, they are replaced by transparency. Y Try erasing and experiment with varying the opacity setting on the Tool Properties tab. You'll see that erasing is by no means an "allor-nothing" proposition. Some wonderfully creative effects are possible using a semi-transparent eraser to reduce the contribution of existing pixels to the overall image. Y Again, switch between the Background and standard layers to see the results. Y By now, you may be getting inspired to create something "interesting" instead of just scribbling. Perhaps it's time to get a beverage, make a few phone calls, and while you're at it (if you haven't already) save this masterpiece-in-progress. We'd suggest SANDBOX. SPP. 58 Working with Paint and Text Using the Smudge tool Smudging may sound silly, but the Smudge tool can be quite useful for blending pixels the way an artist might hand-blend pastels. It comes in handy when retouching photos--along with the Clone tool, which we'll look at next. Now that you have a trial image with lots of painted and overlapping lines, let's briefly try out the Smudge tool. [. . . ] Click &DQFHO to abandon changes. PhotoPlus as an OLE Server Finally, PhotoPlus can act as an OLE server. This means that you can embed PhotoPlus images as objects in other programs, such as Serif PagePlus, then just double-click them for editing using the PhotoPlus tools. 116 Color and Input/Output Options To embed a PhotoPlus object into a document in another program (in this case PagePlus), copy the image to the Clipboard by choosing Copy Merged (or Copy, for singlelayer images) from the Edit menu. Switch to the other program and choose Paste Special. . . The cursor will change to the insert picture cursor. [. . . ]