| Fun with Paint Shop Pro 8 and 9 Transformations | |
PSP 8 was well over two years in the making but when it finally appeared it was well worth the wait. This was a major upgrade indeed, with many wonderful new features and a great new look. One area where major improvements appeared was in vector graphics (node editing in particular). With the introduction of the Pen tool, Paint Shop Pro is becoming a serious vector graphics tool.
The Pen tool performs the work of the old PSP7 Draw tool in creating paths and contours, but it also serves as the node edit tool and has introduced easy to use vector transformation. To demonstrate some of these, we'll open a new 400X400 image with a black background. In the PSP New File dialog, you can choose any background color you want by unchecking Transparent and clicking the color swatch to bring up the Material picker. Set both your fill and stroke in the Material palette to Gradient by activating the drop-down or by clicking the swatch and choosing the gradient tab on the Material picker. Choose colorful gradients set to sunburst in the Style panel.
Now activate the Shape Tool and look at the Tool Options palette. (F4 will toggle this palette on and off.) Select the six point star, Star 3. from the Shape list drop-down. UNcheck Retain Style and check Create as Vector and Antialias. Make the stroke Width 1, and lay down your shape by Shift-dragging to maintain the aspect ratio. Finally, from the Objects menu under the Align submenu, select Center on Canvas.
If you're using PSP9 and don't have the Star 3 preset shape choose the Symetric Shape tool and set out the Tool Options Palette as below. Once you've layed down the shape make sure it's selected and go to Objects>Convert to Path.
