Practice Tasks I for Paint Shop Pro X 

1. Open the Example Pictures from within Paint Shop Pro X
1. Open the Paint Shop Pro X icon on the desktop. (double-click, OR right-click and Open)
2.  Click  to open the browser palette (or click View => Palettes => Browser).
3. In the left-hand panel of the browser palette, scroll down until you see your folder on the Desktop.
4. Click on the + sign. This displays the folders inside your folder.
5. Click once on the Example Pictures folder.  This displays thumbnails of the pictures in that folder.
6. Important: Right-click on any of the thumbnails in the browser palette and select Preferences.  Then click "Display file name with thumbnail" and click OK.
Note: If you do not have Example Pictures in your photos folder on the Desktop, insert the workshop CD-ROM, open it to view files, click once on the Example Pictures folder, click Copy this folder, click your folder in the list, and click Copy. 

2.  Rotating sideways images.  
1. Open (double-click on) "PramBefore".  (If you can't see the file names, right-click on the thumbnails in the browser palette, select Preferences, click "Display file name with thumbnail" and click OK).
2. Click the  icons to rotate the image in the desired direction.
3. To save the modified picture,  select File => Save. 

3.  Cropping.
1. Open "CropMe".  This photo has a white band at the bottom that we will remove.
2. Click on the  tool in the tool palette and drag out a rectangle over the desired portion of the image. 
3. Click on the green check mark  in the toolbar to apply the crop.
4. To save the modified picture as a separate file,  select File => Save as..., type a slight modification to the file name (e.g. add an "a" to the ene of the file name), and click Save. 

4.  Sharpening.  Some photos benefit from a little extra sharpness.
1. Open (double-click on) "TooBlurry". 
2. pull down Adjust => Sharpness => Sharpen or High Pass Sharpen..
3. Use the undo  and re-do  buttons to compare before and after.
4. Save the modified picture in your folder as you did before.
5. Try this on TooBlurryToo.

5. Adjusting the contrast and brightness to widen the tonal range 
1. Open  (double-click on) "TinTypeBefore". 
2. Click Adjust => Smart Photo Fix.. and adjust the sliders in the Brightness area.
3. Click the Advanced Options checkbox box to see all of the sliders.
4. Save the modified picture in your folder as you did before.

6.  Combining operations.  
1. Open  (double-click on) "Grapes". 
2. Use the functions that you have learned so far to improve this picture.
3. Save the modified picture in your folder as you did before.

7. Reducing photo size for manually (to make the file size smaller).
1. Move the mouse pointer over "TooBig" in the browse window (without clicking). Note its large size (2209 X 2125 pixels, 318 KBytes). 
2.  Open (double-click on) it.  Select View => Zoom to 100% to see how big this image would look in email. The picture won't fit on the screen;  it's clearly too big to send as-is in e-mail.
3. To reduce it, click on  or pull down Image => Resize.  In the section labeled "Pixel Dimension", select "Pixels" from the pop-up menu.
4. Set the width of this image to 600 pixels (generally a good size for e-mail) and click OK.
5. Select File => Save as..., type a slight modification to the file name (e.g. add an "Email" to the end of the file name), and click Save. 
6. On your home computer, you can e-mail it right from Paint Shop Pro.  Select File => Send.  This will open up your e-mail and attach the picture. Type in the recipient's e-mail adderess into the "To:" field and a message in the message area and click Send. (Won't work at the school)

8. Setting exact photo size for print outs.
1. Open  "TooBig" .
2. Click on the crop  tool in the tool palette.
3. Pull down the Presets menu and select one of the standard sizes, either vertical or horizontal.
4. Use the mouse to adjust the position and size of the crop box as you wish.
5 Click on the green check mark  in the toolbar to set the size.
6. Save the modified picture in your folder as you did before.

9. Converting a color photograph to black-and-white.
1. Open "FadedColor".  This was originally a color photo but has faded and discolored over the years..
2. Remove the unwanted color by selecting Greyscale from the Image menu.
3. Enhance the contrast as you did in Task 5, above.
4. Save the modified picture in your folder as you did before.

10.  Color correction
1. Open "TooBlue". 
2. Select Adjust => Color Balance.
3. Try reducing the amount of blue by moving the slider to the right ("warmer"). Try for a natural look.
4. Click OK when you are satisfied.
5. Save the modified picture in your folder as you did before.

11. Recovering color in badly faded color photographs.
1. Again open "FadedColor". This time we'll try to recover some of the original color.
2. Select  Adjust => Color => Fade Correction. Click OK and inspect the result.
3. Select Adjust => Smart Photo Fix.. and adjust the Saturation slider to try the buttons to bring out the color even further.  Try the other sliders to see if it helps. Click OK.
4. Save the modified picture in your folder as you did before.

12. One Step Photo Fix
1. Open "Robert". 
2. Adjust => One Step Photo Fix. This tries to improve the image by applying a series of adjustments, including contrast enhancement, color balance, saturation adjustment, sharpening, etc. (To return to the original image for comparison, click ).
3. Try this on some of the other pictures and see if you like what it does. This is often a good technique to use for the average photograph that could use a little extra impact.

13. Salvaging really dark pictures.
1. Open "Tapestry".
2. Try using  Adjust => Color => Fade Correction. Adjust the amount of correction to suit.
3. Click OK and inspect the result.
4. Save the modified picture in your folder as you did before.

14. Practice makes perfect.  Repeat the above techniques with some of the other pictures in the other folders on the CD or on your own pictures.

(c) Tom O'Haver (toh@umd.edu), revised April 2006.