Layers
With the addition of Layers, Paint Shop Pro has become
a much more powerful graphics program. Layers are functional
in 256 Grey Scale or 16 Million colors and up to 64 layers
are possible, per image. The Layer Palette
can be a little daunting, so let's take a look at it.
The Layer Buttons are used to toggle the working
layer on and off. The depressed button is the layer you
are currently working on.
The Layer Button names may be
changed from "Layer 1" to a more meaningful name by right
clicking on the button and selecting the Properties
box from the drop down menu.
The Layer Visibility Toggle
You may choose to view only certain Layers at a time,
hiding others. When a layer is visible, the layer
Visibility Toggle will show a red, green and blue icon.
The Protect Transparency Toggle protects the layer's
Transparency,
preventing the transparent parts from being
edited.
To
Move
two layers together, activate the Layer Group Toggle.
To unlink the layers so that they may be moved separately,
press the toggle button again until it shows an asterisk.
The Opacity Sliders adjust the opacity level of each
layer, allowing more or less of the lower layers to show
through.
Since the different Blend Modes are so similar
to those in Photoshop, and since they are already covered
so well by Selena Sol and Kenji Tachibana, I will not
go into them here but will refer you to a
better source
The Enable Mask Toggle activates and de-activates
a
mask
that has been loaded to a layer.
The Link Mask Toggle locks the mask with the layer.
To create a New Layer, you can either press the
New Layer button to bring up the Layer Properties box or
you can bypass the Properties box by holding down the
Shift key while pressing the button. If you're in a hurry,
bypass the Properties box, but go back to it later to change
the name of the layer so that it will be easier to keep
track of the contents of each layer.
The Delete Layer button does just what it says,
it deletes a layer. You can either delete the active layer
by pressing the Delete button or dragging and dropping a layer
on the button.
Additional Resources:
Masks
Introduction to Paint Shop Pro 5 : Table of Contents
Clone Brush
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