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The special effects are fabulous. The first feature I got busy with is called "buttonize." It will put your home-drawn image (or any other) on a 3D
button that looks incredibly real. You can even edit your pic after it's been buttonized.The "hot wax coating" feature is also attractive, but only if you use pale colors. Otherwise, the picture turns black
and you have nothing. The idea behind this one is that the image's contours, if it were a real 3D object, would be enhanced if you poured hot wax over the top of it. I like to hot wax my buttons. Don't knock it 'til
you've tried it. I noticed that I couldn't select the "special effects" features with every graphic I had. In fact, only 3 or 4 of the graphics in my folder could use these. That's because these are
photo-retouching features. They work on files with the .jpg extension, which is the file format for photographs. So, save your file as a .jpg in order to work on it, then save it as a .gif so that it will be accessible
by animation programs. You can use "batch convert" to change all your files' formats at once, then change them back one at a time as you prepare them for animation. They will look the same when you save them
as gifs. Trust me, I tried it. The drop shadow, cutout, chisel, and seamless tiling features you'll have to try for yourself. Ditto for transparent background color. The "deformation" features allow you to
skew, cylinderize, and distort the image in a number of ways, alone or in combination with each other. For example, you can put your image inside a "circle" (looks like it's in a crystal ball), or you can
"motion blur" it. You can even pinch and punch it, making it look like it's at the local fair's funny house in one of those mirrors. One or two clicks with the mouse is all it takes. The "filters"
do even more. To make a long story short, they enhance, find, trace, blur, soften, sharpen, add noise (color not sound, as I thought at first), despeckle, dilate, emboss, erode, median, and mosaic. Now I know how they
wrote Mario 2. I'm not exactly sure what the "brush type," "brush shape" and "paper texture" choices do that necessitates such a huge selection of them. There are a lot to choose from.
Some make patterns on the background if that's what you're into. I really had to use extreme settings to get a result. Some of the patterns were nice. I don't know why they don't just have one setting for
"pattern." The "mask" feature is complicated but adds a lot visually when it doesn't totally black out. Mask changes your image by actually combining it with a sort of stencil of another image,
inverted or not. You can create some spectacular images with this feature, if you're willing to play around with it. All the palette features and color adjustments baffle me, but they're there if you want or need to
use them, assuming you actually know how. What a concept. There is a tutorial CD-ROM available from JASC, Inc. that I've not yet had a chance to try (see product information below). Anything you can do to increase
your knowledge of Paint Shop Pro is well worth the effort. GIF CONSTRUCTION SET 32
GIF Construction Set by Alchemy Mindworks, Inc., won't read jpgs, which is why you have to save your files as gifs, as we discussed earlier. What it
does do is create animated graphics using the gif files you created with Paint Shop Pro. It took a while to download and install the program.Note: after you download the gifcon32.exe file, the best way to install it
is to use RUN from the Start menu, not Windows Explorer or Add/Remove programs. And, make sure the target directory for installation doesn't already exist. Spaces can be used in the name of this directory; put a
backslash at the end. Download information is at the end of this article. A shareware CD is available from Alchemy Mindworks, Inc. for $10.00. GIF Construction Set has an animation wizard that lets you list the
graphics one after the other and loop them to create a constantly moving picture. You have to create your graphic files in another program, like Paint Shop Pro, and then open them into GIF Construction Set. You can
view, change the speed of animation frame by frame, and supposedly give your graphics transparent backgrounds. I say supposedly because I didn't have any luck with it. You can created banner and LED signs without
difficulty. And as with Paint Shop Pro, the help screens are, well, very helpful. |
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