A few words about PSP, web graphics, life, etc.

Revised August 31, 1998

Last time we left our caped crusader, he was hanging upside down over a vat of boiling acid- Ooops! Wrong story! Make that: last time we spoke, I was elated over updating to version 5 of my old pal Ovaltine. No wait, I meant my old friend Paint Shop Pro! Back on June 15, I called the upgrade similar to going from a P-51 Mustang to the F-4 Phantom II jet fighter. Am I still that impressed? Oh yeah! But first….

I did make at least one boo-boo in the last batch O' gas. I said that Photoshop in the PC version didn't have a "Crop to Selection" feature (that is, a menu based Crop command). That is not true, for you may indeed crop an image by a marquee selection using a command in the Image menu. So to all my fans (all three of you), and anyone who may have been ticked by my discrepancy, I'm sorry.

Other things I have noticed about version 5 of Paint Shop Pro:

Remember back in earlier PSP versions about how you were often faced with that dread decision:

"Do I resample or resize this image"

You may have tried it both ways, and couldn't tell much of a difference. Maybe you could tell a difference between sampling and sizing. Either way, PSP 5 has taken care of the dilema by having only one function in the image menu: resize. But this is no ordinary resize button, NOO! There are four options for the resize type (Bicubic or Linear resample [see, resampling didn't go far away!], pixel resize and a "Smart" resize), as well as plenty of information about the resize job!

Another sign of the times is that PSP 5 has its very own image FORMAT. The extension is ingeniously enough, .psp! The lone downside for now is hey; besides PSP 5, what else can read that format?

PSP 5 (Like Photoshop 5) has multi-level undo. Much better than multi-level marketing I'll tell ya that! Of course, for happy graphics making (and computing in general), the old rule still applies:

Dig that VERY informative control palette floating off in space! Many more options are available for many PSP 5 tools. A good example is the lasso tool. "Some people call it a freehand selection tool, I call it the lasso tool." Thankyuhvurruhmushh there Billy Bob Thornton! Seriously, going from 4.14 to 5, PSP's freehand tool went from having only a feather selection control to having two other selection options (Smart edge, and Point-to Point), as well as checkboxes for anti-aliasing and sample merged options.

When you browse a folder for images in PSP 4.14, you just get a box full of thumbnails with right click options for opening the image and getting image info. In PSP 5, the Browser gives you a box with an Explorer-type folder tree on the left and the thumbs on the right. A right click in version 5 not only gets you the Info & Open options but also Rename, Move, Copy and Delete options! A very handy wrinkle indeed!

And what about the old fashioned way of File-Open image: any new wrinkles there? I'm so glad you asked! PSP 5 has tons and tons of image info at just a mouse click away (the Details button, to be exact), plus a thumbnail of the image! That's a thumb for EVERY image in the directory! Yeah, Photoshop can also show you a thumb in File-Open IF you saved the image there AND you had the Save Thumbnail box checked when you saved! There have been many times that while I have been using Photoshop to do the actual work on an image, I've also had some version of Paint Shop Pro open with a browse of the folder I'm working in!!

You may be asking……

Yes, browser breath J , I can now make transparent GIFs using PSP 5! Thank you Andy Shafran for your excellent book Creating Paint Shop Pro Web Graphics . Thanks to you, I found the Color menu commands that can make transparency in a (ARRGH! Don't say it!!!) jiffy!

NOTE: The correct pronunciation of the file extension of the popular 256-color image format that allows one color to be rendered transparent in a web browser is supposedly like the brand of peanut butter. Now do you get it?

Well, PSP 5 does at times shows a quirk. If I click on a layer I want to work on, sometimes when I click on the image, PSP decides that another layer should be the active one! Wassupwidat?

And then there's the filter stuff.

#1: Wouldn't it be nice if some of this Photoshop snobbery wore off with some filter makers? While filters from the two big kahunas [Alien Skin and Kai] work with Paint Shop Pro, some others still won't. To be honest, my only experience with this has been with Extensis Photo Bevel (a way fabulous filter I use very often I must add). It won't work in PSP 5. Can't we all just get along??

#2: Wouldn't it have been nice for JASC to have provided a greater bevy of on-board filters with PSP 5? Aside from the very welcome addition of Gaussian Blur, nothing new has been added! It's the same collection of neat filter effects and deformation effects that we got in PSP 4.14. I know a really awesome filter like (here we go again!) Photoshop's Lighting Effects really takes a lot of stuff, but honestly, how about a Ripple deform? Couldn't we come up with a good rippler filter to stuff in that box? Grrrrrrr…..

Well, if you ain't got it,

WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR!

Paint Shop Pro 5:
Go Get It!

Aaron