Fun with Paint Shop Pro 8 and 9 Transformations

(If you arrived on this page from a search, click here to begin the tutorial from page 1.)

Once rotated, the duplicated nodes become apparent. Now we'll try something different. Making sure the new contour is still selected, right-click on the canvas and choose Edit > Reverse Contour. Originally the two contours were going in the same direction. As as a result of duplicating, they superimposed themselves on each other but, by reversing the direction of one contour (making them go in opposite directions), the overlapping fill areas cancel each other out.

If you Duplicate Selected, and Rotate four more times, and reverse the contour on the second and fourth duplication you should end up with something like Figure 7 below.

Now let's try another transformation. Use the right-click Edit submenu to select all the nodes, then in the Transformation drop-down Duplicate selected with 0 in the fields. Activate the Transformation drop-down again and choose Contract. Enter 50 in both fields. This will collapse the nodes by that value horizontally in the X field and vertically in the Y field.

After you do that, you can do another Select all and, in the right-click Node Type submenu, change the nodes to Symmetric to get a nice lacy doily effect.

The possibilities are endless so take the time to explore all the node editing transformations.

If you'd like a PSP Preset Shape file of the shapes below click the image to begin downloading.

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