Tools Toolbar

In this lesson we will cover the Tools toolbar and give you a brief overview of each of the tools.

Assuming you haven't moved it along the left side of the PSP 8 workspace is the Tools toolbar.  This is where you select the tool that you want to use.  You will notice an arrow beside some the icons.  This arrow indicates there is more then one tool at that location.  To select another tool at that location click the arrow and then click the tool you want.  Jasc has grouped the tools in categories. 

The tools listed in order they appear on the default PSP 8 toolbar are:

Pan :  Used to view (pan) to another area of the image.

Zoom :  Used to zoom in/out (magnify) on the image.  Left click zooms in and right click zooms out.

Deform :  Used to scale, shear, distort, apply perspective, or rotate an image/layer.

Straighten :  Used to straighten an image/layer.

Perspective Correction :  Used to correct perspective distortion.

Mesh Warp :  Used to distort an image/layer, or selected portion of an image/layer.

Crop :  Used to crop (trim) an image/layer down to the area selected.

Move :  Used to move a layer or selected area to a different place in the image.

Selection :  Used to select a portion of an image/layer using one of the 15 selection types such as rectangle, circle, or arrow.

Freehand Selection :  Used to select a user defined portion of an image/layer using one of the 4 selection types such as point to point.

Magic Wand :  Used to select portions of an image/layer based on content instead of defining edges.  In other words you could select an entire red area by clicking in it.

Dropper :  Used to select a color from an open image or materials palette.  Left click changes the foreground and right click changes the background.

Color Replacer :  Used to change one color to another color.  Single left click changes the specific color area under the brush pointer to the foreground color and double left click changes all instances of the selected color in the image to the Foreground color.  Right click works the same way except it is changed to the Background color.

Paintbrush :  Used to paint much like painting with a real Artist paintbrush.

Airbrush :  Used to paint much like using an Airbrush paint gun.

Warp Brush :  Used to produce warping effects on image/layer pixels.  Only the portion of the image the brush touches is warped instead of an entire area like Mesh Warp does.

Clone :  Used to duplicated specified pixels of an open image to another place in the same image or another open image.

Scratch Remover:  Used to remove scratches (line blemishes) from an image by blending the area above and below the selected area to cover the blemish.

Retouch tools:  The next 2 icons on the tools toolbar contain retouch tools.  I am not going to cover those in this lesson.  To find out what they do use the Context sensitive help (Shift+F1).  I would play close attention to the Smudge, Push, and Soften tool because they are being used more often in tutorials.

Eraser :  Used to erase in about the same way as an eraser on a pencil.

Background Eraser :  Used to erase the background of an image.

Picture Tube :  Used to apply PSP picture tubes to an image/layer.

Flood Fill :  Used to fill a selected area, image, or layer with the selected material.

Text :  Used to insert Text into an image/layer.

Preset Shape :  Used to draw preset shapes

Pen :  Used to draw lines, curves, and free hand..  It is also used to edit vector objects.

Object Selection :  Used to select Vector objects.

For more detailed information about a tool remember you can always select the tool then hit Shift+F1 on the keyboard then click on the tool icon.  This will open the Jasc PSP help file to the topic describing that tool.

In my opinion the most common used tool is the flood fill tool so I want to cover it in more detail.

Create a New canvas. (Click File|| New [Ctrl+N])

Width = 300 pixels
Height = 300 pixels
Resolution = 72.00 pixels
Background = Raster
Color Depth = 16 Million Colors (24 Bit)
Color = Transparent Checked

Select the Flood fill tool by clicking on it in the Tools toolbar.  Reset tool option to default.

Click on the foreground box and select the Patterns tab.  Choose Checkerboard large as your pattern (Note:  if you do not have that pattern please try downloading the 2 resource packs from Jasc by click Help || Jasc Software Online || Resources and Components.  These are large downloads so it will take a while.)

Click any where in your image.  If should now be filled with the checkerboard pattern.

Now click on the foreground box and change it to Gradient.  Choose the Landscape morning gradient.

Click inside on of the black squares on your image.  Your black squares are now blue, green, and so on and the white squares are still there.  You would have received the same effect if you would have chosen Brightness as your match mode.  Click Edit || Undo fill to get back to the black and white squares.

Now change the match mode in the Tool options palette to None. Click inside the same black square.  This time the whole image is filled with the gradient.  You would get the same effect if you selected any other match mode except RGB and Brightness for this image only.  The match modes will produce different results depending on the image.

Personally I use the default settings except I change the match mode to none as that works best in most cases.  The other settings for the flood fill tool rarely ever changed.  I encourage you to play with the flood fill tool.  Try using different patterns and changing the settings in the tool options.  Meanwhile if you wish save your image. (File || Save).

Tip:  Later on when you have more then one areas selected it is best to have the match mode set to none so you can fill all selected areas with one click otherwise you would need to click in each selected area to fill it.

That's it for this lesson.  Don't forget to go read about the retouch tools in the help file.  Have fun experimenting with the flood fill tool!