We have some changes here!  If you have used PSP 7 and are trying out PSP 8 now you are going to have to do some exploring here. heeheheh Nothing REAL major but some things have been moved around to different areas to try and simplify and group all common areas together. If you are COMPLETELY new to PSP then you have come to the right place!  Below I have a screen shot of my workspace and how I like to keep it but hey I am sloppy <g>  hehehehe You may arrange your workspace any way that you like. I also highly recommend that you create several workspaces for your self for the different things you work on, I have a workspace for when I am working on my site that shows mostly vector tools and those options, for my photo's I have a workspace saved that has all the photo touch up tools etc on it. You can create the workspaces and then choose FILE > WORKSPACE and Save ! PSP's final version will be shipping with several pre-made workspaces for you but feel free to create your own to suit your needs.

At the top you have your usual text menu bar with lots of options. Disregard the debug option, that is not relevant at all as it will be removed before the final product ships, however we can go over the rest briefly and explain their functions for the new users also try and point out some of the items that have moved around!

Starting with the FILE> option. Click FILE for the drop down to appear. From the FILE options there are several items listed to explore. The first set of options are for opening existing images and creating new images.  NEW will open the NEW IMAGE DIALOG box, OPEN will open any existing image on your puter, BROWSE opens the PSP image browser so that you can browse all images on your hard drive. CLOSE, well pretty obvious I think lol , closes the image. REVERT looses any current changes and reloads the original image.

The second set of options includes most of your saving options as well as this is where you can save your workspaces that I mentioned above. SAVE, SAVE AS, and SAVE COPY AS are all pretty self explanatory I do believe. Notice the arrows beside the WORKSPACE option, this means that there is another sub-menu available with options. Click WORKSPACE and the other options will appear.

You can load an existing workspace with the LOAD option, save a new workspace with the SAVE option and DELETE any that you don't want with the DELETE option.

DELETE will delete the current image from your files and SEND allows you to email any image that you may  be working on directly from PSP. Nifty eh ?

IMPORT and EXPORT also offer sub-menus with different options. IMPORT will contain the options to import a custom brush, Screen Captures and any of your TWAIN Devices. EXPORT Offers your options for the Image slicer/mapper as well as your image optimizers such as jpg, gif and png. From here you can export custom tubes, brushes etc.

The next area contains your Printing information. From PRINT you can print the current image. PRINT LAYOUT will bring up your printer layout options for printing.

Next up are the JASC SOFTWARE PRODUCTS, from here you can launch any other Jasc products that you may have on your puter, if PSP is all you have then the only item you will see in there will be Animation shop. BATCH PROCESSING allows you to convert a large number of image at one time. Last but not least is the PREFERENCES also gives a sub-menu with a lot of different options to cover. I have explained these in more detail on the PREFERENCES PAGE that I made to help you set your prefs!

Just below all that mess is your recent files list, this will list any files that you have recently had open. The default is set to 4 I believe but you may change that through your preferences, again which I cover on the Preferences page. EXIT will exit the program.

Next up may I present the EDIT option.  EDIT is your friend. lol you will be using the options here A LOT! Of course you can access them more easily by customizing your toolbars and adding all the options to the toolbar instead of having to click through the text menu's all the time. UNDO undoes that last operation you made, REDO redoes last option. REPEAT repeats the last thing you did. COMMAND HISTORY will show you a dialog of all the things you have done to your image and allows you to UNDO several steps back instead of just one, like with the UNDO. CUT, cuts out the selected area, removing it completely, COPY simply copies the selected area.  COPY MERGED copies the merged area. PASTE offers the sub-menu with several different pasting options to choose from, paste as selections, new images, vector selections etc.  CLEAR deletes the current selection. EMPTY CLIPBOARD will clear off anything you may have left on your clipboard from performing any copy functions.

TOOLBARS and PALETTES both have sub-menus with the different TOOLBARS & PALETTES listed on each, you may chose to hide/show any of them at any time. MAGNIFIER shows the TOOL MAGNIFIER options. DOCKING OPTIONS is new, this will bring up your personal preferences and allow you to choose what toolbars etc. are docked.  CUSTOMIZE allows you to customize your toolbars which I will cover in later tutorials.

Let's take a look at the IMAGE options that we have.  This too, contains a lot of things you will probably be using quite a bit.  FLIP will flip your image upside down for you.  ROTATE will bring up a dialog asking you how much to rotate (turn) your image and whether to turn to the left or the right. MIRROR will do just that, mirror your image for you. ADD BORDERS allows you to add colored borders to your image and any selected width that you like.  CANVAS SIZE will show you the size properties of your image and allow you to increase or decrease the canvas size. CROP TO SELECTION allows you to crop an image once you have made a selection. PICTURE FRAME brings up the PICTURE FRAME dialog box for adding any pre-made frames to an image. RESIZE will bring dialog so that you can resize the entire image not just the canvas as above. ARITHMETIC allows you to combine two images using arithmetic operations. I have never used this and have NO CLUE how to use to be honest with you <g> but it is there if you need it. IMAGE INFORMATION will bring up dialog with all your image info in it as well as lets you add your personal information to any image you may have created. COUNT IMAGE COLORS will count all the different color in your image and display them for you. PALETTE allows for loading of different color palettes if you happen to have any. DECREASE COLOR DEPTH will reduce the number of colors in any image to the number you specify, INCREASE does just the opposite. GREY SCALE removes the color from an image and puts it into greyscale. SPLIT CHANNEL lets you split the color channels in your image to RGB, HSL or CMYK, this and the COMBINE CHANNEL are used mostly for printing purposes.

DELETE  ALPHA CHANNEL deletes any alpha channel selection that you may have on current image. This too, is a little more advanced feature so you probably won't be using it right away. WATERMARKING gives you a sub-menu to watermark your own images (must be purchased to do separately from PSP) or to read a watermark on an existing image.  You can read all the time but to make a watermark you must register with the watermarking company and it is rather expensive but you are more than welcome to check into it further on your own if you think you are interested, personally I think the cost is a little TOO STEEP!!

Your EFFECTS menu contains a variety of fun toys to play with.  Jasc has graciously added a whole bag of goodies for you to play with and you can add even more if you like!  You have your 3D effects which are used quite often by most people such as your drop shadows, cutouts and bevels. Your ART MEDIA effects gives you various stroke type options. ARTISTIC offers different artistic filters. DISTORTION offers ways to distort your image like twirling etc. EDGE EFFECTS gives you different ways to edit your image edges like enhancing the edges. GEOMETRIC EFFECTS gives you skewing options and many other shaped options to use on your image. ILLUMINATION EFFECTS offer the sunburst and lighting effects. IMAGE EFFECTS allows you to create seamless tiles as well as the Page curl effect. REFLECTION EFFECTS has pattern effects like kaleidoscope that can give you a really neat effect.  TEXTURE offers you many options to add some depth and texture to your images. USER DEFINED are for user defined filters, filters you would create on your own. Lori has a good tutorial on this if you are interested on checking it out. PLUGINS sub-menu will contain any and all plugins that you have installed separately from PSP. You can obtain some extra filter for free on the internet or you can visit sites such as FLAMING PEAR for Super Blade Pro or ALIEN SKIN for Eyecandy. Those seem to be two of the most popular ones these days.

ADJUST contains many of your color adjustments. From this menu you can choose from several options to change the hue, saturation, and a number of other things. From here you can also colorize an image. From the NOISE option you can add noise to your images. You may also SHARPEN and/or SOFTEN any area or a whole image from this menu.

The RED EYE REMOVAL was introduced in version 7 and it is a GEM!! All them images that you have with 'red eye', this is the PERFECT TOOL for fixing that right up!  Clicking the RED EYE REMOVAL will bring up a rather scary looking dialog to edit the eye, just simply select the area you want and set your colors etc and boooom!  RED eye is GONE!!

NEGATIVE IMAGE reverses the colors and brightness in your image making it a "negative image". I don't know that working on the web you will have a lot of use for this but it is kind of fun to play with sometimes. Open an image of your own and experiment around with some of what we have covered here so far so you will have a bit better understanding of just how everything works.  Then meet me on the next page and we will finish going through the rest of the menu items.