PSP Adjustments and Effects

The first thing to remember with most Paint Shop Pro adjustments and effects is that they can be applied only to greyscale images or to color images that have a color depth greater than 256. So if you have trouble applying an adjustment or effect, check your image's color depth.

An Overview of Adjustments

Under the Adjust menu, Paint Shop Pro 9 has a number of commands that are designed for photo correction. For a real quick fix, try One Step Photo Fix. For a bit more control, try the following commands, in the order listed:

Automatic Color Balance
Automatic Contrast Enhancement
Automatic Saturation Enhancement

If your photo has a lot of "noise" (random stray pixels sprinkled throughout the photo), try Adjust > Photo Fix > Digital Camera Noise Removal or Adjust > Add/Remove Noise > Edge-Preserving Smooth.

For even more control over color and contrast, advanced digital photographers can use the adjustments available in the Color Balance, Brightness and Contrast, and Hue and Saturation submenus. Lens distortion, chromatic aberration, and red-eye can all be corrected with adjustments available in the Photo Fix submenu. And the texture and sharpness of your photos can be adjusted with the commands available in the Add/Remove Noise, Blur, Sharpness, and Softness submenus. Of these, Gaussian Blur and Unsharp Mask are especially useful in the digital darkroom.

Note: Adjust > Add/Remove Noise > Add Noise can come in handy for simulating textures, such as this concrete tile:

An Overview of the Effects

Under the Effects menu, Paint Shop Pro 9 has ten categories of special effects: 3D Effects, Art Media Effects, Artistic Effects, Distortion Effects, Edge Effects, Geometric Effects, Illumination Effects, Image Effects, Reflection Effects, and Texture Effects.

3D Effects

Drop shadows are one of the most commonly used effects, and Drop Shadow is likely to be the first 3D Effect you try out. Drop shadows are particularly useful in adding a "floating" effect to text, as in this example:

Here I added the text to a blank white image and then, with the text still selected, chose Effects > 3D Effects > Drop Shadow. The settings used here are Color Black, Opacity 70, Blur 10, with Vertical and Horizontal Offsets both set to 5.

Another useful 3D Effect, especially for text, is Cutout. Here's a simple example:

This was made by adding the word "Roses" to an image with a background color of RGB 156, 165, 165. The text was added as a selection. With the text still selected, I chose Effects > 3D Effects > Cutout and did the following: checked 'Fill interior with color' and selected RGB 222, 231, 231 as the interior color; set 'Shadow color' to black, Opacity to 100, and Blur to 1; and set the Vertical and Horizontal offsets both to -2.

Cutout can also be used on other selections, of course, not just on text. Here's a variation on the last example:

In this case, after applying Cutout to the text, I applied Cutout to the whole image, this time unchecking 'Fill interior with color', but otherwise using the same settings as before.

Another very useful 3D effect is Inner Bevel. This is great for creating a beveled effect on text or objects of any shape.

And here's a quick list of the other 3D Effects:

Buttonize - Produces bevels for simple rectangular buttons and frames.
Chisel - Produces a chiseled effect on the outside edges of a selection.
Outer Bevel - Like Inner Bevel, creates a beveled effect, but Outer Bevel creates the effect outside rather than inside a selection's edges. (Can be applied only if there's a non-floating selection.)

Art Media Effects

The Art Media Effects, as you might expect, can be used to simulate various artistic effects. These include Black Pencil, Brush Strokes, Charcoal, and a few others. Of these, Brush Strokes is probably the most realistic.

Artistic Effects

This category contains a potpourri of effects. The ones that I've found most useful are Balls and Bubbles, Halftone, Hot Wax Coating, and Magnifying Lens.

Distortion Effects

You can distort your images in all sorts of interesting ways with the effects in this category. The ones I've used the most are Pinch, Punch, Polar Coordinates, and the new addition - Displacement Map. Here are some examples:


Original		Pinch, 60%


Original		Punch, 40%

Another handy Distortion Effect is Warp, which is much like a combination of the Geometric Effects Pinch and Punch, discussed below. Ripple and Wave produce natural water-like effects. Other Geometric Effects include CurlyQs, Spiky Halo, Twirl, and more.

Edge Effects

Most of the Edge Effects are useful for finding the edges of figures in photos or other images. One of these, Find All, can be used as at least a first step in creating a line drawing from a photo. (Note: Users of previous PSP versions who depended on the old Find All Edges will discover that the new Find All is very different from the old effect. To get the same results as Find All Edges, these users should go to Effects > User Defined Filter and select the 'Find all edges (legacy)' preset.)

Two other Edge Effects, Erode and Dilate, maximize dark and light areas (respectively). One use for these is as a step in creating a painting from a photo.

Geometric Effects

At first, you might think that the Geometric Effects are just curiosities and not really very useful. Actually, if you're a little creative with these, you can get some rather nice effects.

Two Geometric Effects that are particularly interesting are Circle and Spherize. Both of these warp a rectangular selection or layer into a round object. Circle pinches the sides of the rectangle to form a circle, whereas Spherize seems to wrap the rectangle around a sphere.

One interesting thing about Circle is that if it's applied to a circular object, the result is a rounded diamond:


Original		Circle

The rounded diamond that results could then be rotated 45 degrees, using Image > Rotate, to form the basis of a rounded square button:

Such a button might be enhanced with Cutout, Drop Shadow, Inner Bevel, or other effects.

The Perspective and Cylinder effects can also be handy. Use these to add perspective to an image element on a layer or to "wrap" a pattern around a cylinder. (Note: If you used the Perspective effects in a previous version of PSP to create egg shapes from circles, you'll be disappointed to find that these effects have been fixed in PSP9 to produce better perspective results. Unfortunately, this fix means that the effects no longer produce egg shapes from circles.)

Illumination Effects

The two Illumination Effects - Lights and Sunburst - enable you to add lighting effects to your images. With Lights you can shine up to five lights on your image. Sunburst approximates the effect of photographic lens flare.

Image Effects

The Image Effects are Offset, Page Curl, and Seamless Tiling. Offset and Seamless Tiling are great for creating seamless tiles. Page Curl makes your image look like it's on a page with a turned up corner.

Reflection Effects

The Reflection Effects are Feedback, Kaleidoscope, Pattern, and Rotating Mirror. Try Kaleidoscope, Pattern, and Rotating Mirror for making interesting tiles.

Texture Effects

The Texture Effects enable you to add textures to your images, including such things as Blinds, Fur, Sandstone, and Weave. The simplest Texture Effect is Emboss:

Emboss

By itself, Emboss might not seem very exciting. But try combining Emboss with other Effects and with other operations such as Adjust > Hue and Saturation > Colorize.

Plug-in Filters

Third party Photoshop-compatible plug-in filters will work with some other graphics packages, including Paint Shop Pro. To install plug-in filters in PSP, simply copy the filters to a folder and then select that folder as your plug-ins source, using the Plugin Filters tab of PSP's File > Preferences > File Locations.

There are quite a few plug-ins available, some free and some not.

Here are a couple of examples of what you can get with the free, downloadable filters in the Filter Factory Galleries:


Gallery A Round Button	Gallery B Crystall Ball

Both of these were based on this original:

If you don't mind spending a little money, there are several commercial packages of plug-in filters available for purchase, such as the filter collections from Alien Skin, including Eye Candy 4000 and Xenofex:


Little Fluffy Clouds + Glass + Glow	Swirl + Weave

Some folks claim that life would be dreary without Eye Candy. And Xenofex is one of the wildest collection of filters you're likely to find! Also check out the frame-producing Splat! (which is particularly handy for folks who do digital scrapbooking).

Basics