Color Systems
There are 2 basic different types of color systems out there for generating lots of different types of color in paint parograms in the visible color spectrum: HSV and RGB.
Some just have different results than others.
HLS,
HSV,
RGB,
sRGB, and
CMYK are the rest that I can think of offhand.
There is Y'UV and YPrPb and YCrCb and Y'IQ and a couple of others used for video.
RGB is what we use for images and html color palettes.
That is the # and then the 6-digit hexadecimal number, with each sets of 2 digits representing red, green, and blue, the entire color space being represented in the form of a cube or flattened cube.
HLS or HLS is commonly used also in paint programs for selecting colors.
HSV stands for Hue, Saturation Value.
HLS stands for Hue Lightness Saturation.
These 2 color spaces are typically represented as 2 cones with the bases glued together or a flattened version thereof.
There is a printed CIE color chart which tries its best to cover the gamut of visible color spectrum if you are interested in the full color spectrum specs.
CMYK is used for some printing processes and I think for mixing paint, where the colors are Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and blacK.
Typically in a paint program , you will be using either HLS, HSV, or RGB.
In HSV and HLS, most of the color spectrum found in the rainbow is put in a wheel.
That’s H or Hue.
By the way, CMYK I think is how they mix paints mostly, except for gold and silver and copper and luminescent and "hot" colors like hot pink, which have something in the paint that reacts to ultraviolet light I think, but I am not sure how those work.
Alpha Channel
Alpha channels allow you to specify and draw out masks, which are areas drawn in shades that range between black and white (grey included) that you draw which can be used to make part of one image in its layer appear over an image in another layer.
Some programs like Paint Shop Pro use transparency by default.
GIMP does not by default – it uses a white background, but you can change that in the new image dialog to a foreground or background color, or transparency, or white.
That is in the advanced options.
Using transparency gives you quite a degree of freedom, but it only takes you so far.
If you have an image on a layer, and you don’t want to mess with its content, and you want to blend or mix or overlay parts of 2 layers, then alpha channels and masks is the way to go.
There are usually tutorials for your paint program somewhere on the internet.
For instance, google “masks paint shop pro” or google “alpha channel masks gimp”.
Plus, there’s the built-in or official website help.
You can usually get to that using the F1 key.
The F1 key is the Help key for pretty much every program in Windows.
You will learn a lot by digging around in GIMP.
But you will probably learn techniques faster with a book.
GIMP:
If you choose GIMP, you will probably need a book.
There are s number of books on amazon.com on GIMP (just go on amazon.com and search for GIMP), and probably one at a bookstore like Border’s or Barnes & Noble.
Powell’s Techbooks in downtown Portland has a HUGE selection of technical books (you will need to pay for a parking receipt).
Corel Paint Shop Pro
Add the minimum of following tools to your toolbar by customizing it (right click on the toolbar and pick customize):
Opacity:
This determines how opaque something is.
That means how transparent the image is.
If you want to whitewash your images to use them as backgrounds, you can choose layer blend mode to be “Screen” and choose opacity of about 75-78 (%), and make sure your background is a white RGB fill.
Colors:
There are 2 colors in the paint program.
Foreground and Background.
Depending on the context, they may become stroke and fill.
For instance, the outline of vector text can be called stroke, while everything else inside is called fill.
When you draw a vector rectangle or rounded rectangle, the edges, however tick you make them, are the stroke, while the inner stuff is fill.
Those colors can be switched out for gradients or textures.
Gradients:
Gradients are a range of colors between 2 points or 2 edges.
There is at least a start and end color with transparency.
There can be any number of points along the range spaced however far apart for nice effects, such as “Gold”, Chrome”, “Ferrari”, Rainbow.
There can be a center point and a radius where the gradient radiates out from the center, or if it’s a box it can be a straight gradient sweep from left to right or top to bottom or can be rotated at an angle.
There are other ways to do gradients as well.
Textures:
Textures are simply pictures (usually jpegs) that repeat in the x and y direction or horizontal and vertical direction.
They do this by making sure that the horizontal edges of the image match, and that the vertical edges of the image match.
There are software packages out there just for making textures.
Typically they are cool-looking patterns that people can use as backgrounds for web pages.
They can be rectangular or square.
Typically they are small.
You can get these from textures cd’s from the office supply store and put them in the correct directory of your paint program and they will show up the next time you run the paint program.
Layers:
As I mentioned before, Layers are like transparent sheets of plastic that you can put an opaque image on, and you can move the image on the plastic.
For example a newspaper picture cutout of a dog.
If you want to glue all the images to the plastic, that is what the lock is for on the layer.
It locks everything in place on that layer and prevents change.
You can have multiple sheets of transparent plastic on top of each other.
This is like layers.
Except with layers, you can name them.
I typically give them names like background, text, shapes, and things like that.
A layer can be of several different types: Vector, RGB/raster/bitmap, Art Media.
Art Media is used for oils, chalk, ans artists tools like that that are pressure sensitive, if you have a pressure sensitive tablet like a WACOM.
RGB/Raster/bitmap has the jaggies, especially if you resize it bigger, but it does pictures & shapes & text.
Vector eliminates that problem, but it doesn’t do pictures, however, it does text & shapes wonderfully in any size without the jaggies.
There is a technical term for the jaggies, it’s called aliasing.
When you look in the paint program for this option, look for Antialiasing and make sure it is on in some form.
I just use Sharp.
You can use layers to organize your image.
For instance, you may have a jpeg pasted as a background as the bottom layer called “background” layer.
Another layer called “text” will contain the vector or raster text.
If you ever decide you need to change the text, you don’t have to recreate the whole image, you only have to change the small section of the text layer (what isn’t text will be transparent).
You may have done a drop shadow effect on your vector text by converting it to a raster layer, and then doing the drop shadow effect (this is typically done automatically by Paint Shop Pro), I typically make 2 copies of the layer so I have a backup beforehand.
Effects:
There are a large number of effects that you can use on a raster image.
Raster as in raster lines on a TV picture tube, which scan across from left to right, from the top to the bottom.
Except that with computer screens the rasters are broken up into pixels.
Anyway, the effects you can use on a raster/RGB/bitmap image are many, and can be found in the Effects menu in Paint Shop Pro or in GIMP it will be in Filters.
Stock Photos:
You can buy stock photos (just google stock photos or stock images) off the internet or purchase cd’s off the internet, which sometimes can have adobe photoshop masks with them.
If you have adobe Photoshop, this is VERY useful, because it lets you mask the background out and just get the object by itself.
All the hard work has been done for you.
Typically this is done with the very expensive images, like the ones that cost $85/cd.
You don’t get an awful lot of pictures on the cd, but what you get are very large and fit for print.
Photo/Image Licensing:
This is a thorny issue with a lot of folks.
Normally you can’t just pluck a photo off the web and use it.
You would have to get permission.
Typically, there is special licensing for stock photos use on the web, such as a 5-year use agreement maximum.
If you use any photo, check the licensing agreement and read its distribution section first.
It may not say anything about use on the web, in which case you are probably free to use it.
Early texture cd’s were like this.
I hope they still are.
But photos typically have requirements – for instance, if you put a photo on the web, the author may require you to put a link on your site to their site when you use their images and say, “this image came from somewhere.com”.
Like I said, read your licensing agreement on your cd’s, or the agreement that is on the web if you get stock photos.
The same holds true for Stock Video, Stock Music.
Typically, the purpose of Stock Music, Stock Photos, and Stock Video is so you may use that content in your copyrighted work as a derived work.
And still retain copyright.
But there may be requirements.
There are Copyright laws in place that have to do with using photos of people.
You must have their permission to use a picture of them.
I think that is how it goes.
So if you want to distribute a photo of a beach and it has people on it, you might have to either get people’s permission first (there are always people on the beach), or eliminate them from the photo using a Paint Shop Pro’s clone tool (which copies a section something like a background image over another section of image, such as a person) or whatever equivelant tool Photoshop, GIMP, or Paint.net has.
layers and masks
Paint Shop Pro allows you to have multiple layers and masks.
The layers are transparent by default in Paint Shop Pro but in GIMP it is the Background color by default which is white.
(you can change this to 1 of 20 modes).
It is like layers of transparent plastic overhead sheets.
You have seen the maps in school libraries that had plastic layers with multiple sheets that showed different features.
same concept.
On the bottom you can put any background stuff.
Button images on the next, and button text (call that layer "text") on the next.
you can use another set of layers for button action and name it "buttondown" or "buttonup".
MSpaint, IPhoto Plus 4 and other programs that come with scanners and cameras don't have layers.
Paint shop pro also has "picture tubes".
They are a small collection of images you use like a stamp and plop them in with your brush.
I used this to create a jungle for a VBS program once.
I put the grass on a layer, and another layer for the text box, and another layer for the text itself.
You can duplicate layers like a text layer and turn the original's visibility "off" to make it disappear (so as not to ruin it), and then apply effects to the duplicate.
If it's going on the web or in the email, keep in mind that images generally shouldn't be wider than 640 pixels or so (many people either have failing eyesight or don't know how to change the resolution of their display - or don't want to).
For one thing the picture must fit within the browser, and people's monitors are generally sizes like 1024x768, 1366x768, 1280x1024, 1920x1080. They are either in HD format (16:9) or in old SD format (4:3).
Unless you are doing something special.
Layer modes include:
- normal (opaque overlay)
- screen (uses layer content to "crop" lower layers - sort of. similar to using a screen and a squeegee to make posters or whatever those are called.)
- darken (layer content appears to darken the layer underneath)
- lighten
- multiply
- dodge (lighten)
- burn (darken)
- ...
Paint shop pro supports several kinds of layers.
Vector and bitmap/raster/RGB and Art Media and Mask.
Vectors can be very easily resized and have parts removed and edited and moved around and tweaked.
Layers also have a 0%-100% Opacity (transparency).
This determines how much of the "mode" you get.
50% of normal will be 50% opaque - half transparent.
Whitewashed backgrounds and pastel colors are best behind black text.
A good contrast is necessary or people will squint.
Whitewashed backgrounds (for lack of a better term) can be created by filling the background layer with white, using normal or screen mode, and varying the Opacity.
Masks
I have used layers in screen mode to give a gradient (rainbow) to text.
a Mask Layer modifies opacity to show or hide underlying layers.
It is like a special layer all its own which is a feature of each layer that allows you to paint an area over a layered image a color range between white and black or gray, say, a pop bottle, and the bottle and its surroundings be in color, but the mask in shades of gray or black and white.
when the mask is applied, whatever in the mask is white will show up through as invisible.
for example, I had a unique photo of myself as a middle school boy, and I didn't have another copy of the photo.
it was very small, and it was curved and mounted in a cheap plastic pendant.
So I scanned it.
I was able to use the magic wand to cut out the pendant, but the magic wand left the edges of the circle rough.
so I made a black mask with a white circle over my picture small enough to get rid of the bad edges.
I wanted a title over the top that said my name, but alas the black mask was preventing this.
(you might have to expand the canvas in the vertical direction for the text) I had to create a white rectagle in the mask area where I wanted my text.
then things were allowed through.
the $700 Photoshop may work differently from this - it might have a mask for each layer - I think it does.
so it is different from Paint Shop Pro, which has the mask as a layer type (which applies to any given layer), whereas Photoshop applies [a loadable?] mask to each layer.
In Paint Shop Pro, you can load masks from any open image window. In Photoshop, I think you right click on the layer and pick mask or something like that.
Putting one image on top of another
In paint shop pro, this can be done one of 3 ways.
- create a layer for each image and paste as new selection, then deselect using the edit or selection menu.
Use the background eraser tool on the top image OR magic wand select tool and cut and paste to new layer, then turn off the old layer to eliminate surrounding stuff and get only the piece you want.
Select that top layer.
Use some sort of select tool to move the image in the place where you want it.
- create a layer for each image and paste as new selection, then deselect using the edit or selection menu.
Use the magic wand select tool, copy and paste to new layer, then turn off the old layer to eliminate surrounding stuff and get only the piece you want.
Select that top layer.
Use some sort of select tool to move the image in the place where you want it.
- this method keeps the integrity of the photo in the layer for the most part, at least what part is not obfuscated by the frame when you move the image.
create layers for each image, change the opacity to 50% for the top layers.
don’t change the image, but move the top image around.
Make a black mask layer using a black filled vector rectangle on a vector layer or using an RGB layer and fill the layer with black using the paint bucket “fill” tool.
white is considered invisible-mask and black is considered opaque-mask and grey is 50% opacity.
You are thinking in terms of the mask’s opacity.
Load the mask image from another file as another window and choose Layers|Load Mask.
So draw white in the mask image using a pencil or pen in the areas where you need the top image to come through.
you may want to rotate the image too.
When you are all done, export as png or jpeg, probably jpeg.
To keep the jpeg small, I like to use a compression of 26.
jpeg and png are common file formats used by web sites, email and documents.
Be prepared to spend a few hours on images.
free paint programs
Does layers & I think masks.
requires
.Net 3.5 Service Pack 1 from microsoft.com to be installed first and that you have XP, 2003, 2008, vista, or 7.
Yes, it does have crop - dig for it (I know, it should be obvious, but you have to get used to a certain mode of thinking with teh various types of cursors).
It probably has the feature you want, just dig for it in the menus and elsewhere.
I think it takes Photoshop Plugins.
GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program), available at
gimp.org or
for windows
Does layers & I think masks.
uses python scripting language.
a number of books available on
amazon.com.
Looks like it doesn't do hardly anything, but people do quite a lot on GIMP.
once again, requires getting used to a certain mode of thinking, and probably requires a book or at least the online help on the web site gimp.org.
takes Photoshop Plugins.
commercial paint programs
uses adobe extendscript scripting language, which is I think a much later version of Javascript than what is used in browsers.
the $700 and $1000 flagship of photo editors and the standard file format used for photo exchange used in newspapers, business, web, pretty much everywhere.
but it's expensive.
Often used with Illustrator, which is the vector graphics package, for another $700, but for the price of those two you can get a Premium Suite with many more packages.
a mask is applied to each layer or something like that (I don't have my book, and I don't own this package because I nevewr could afford it).
maybe someday I can upgrade.
takes Photoshop Plugins.
uses adobe extendscript scripting language *I think*, which is I think a much later version of Javascript than what is used in browsers.
a scaled down version of the the $700 flagship of photo editors and the standard file format used for photo exchange used in newspapers, business, web, pretty much everywhere.
a mask is applied to each layer or something like that (I don't have my book, and I don't own this package because I nevewr could afford it).
takes Photoshop Plugins.
Corel (formerly Jasc) Paint Shop Pro X2 Ultimate $70 available at
corel.com/pspcomes with a lite version of the famous Painter at this price!
Does layers & masks.
Some books (mostly older versions) available on
amazon.com.
There are some annoying bugs.
But even with these bugs, PSP has *integrated* vector graphics and art media, something I have not found with the Adobe products.
There are several layer types: Vector, Raster/RGB/Bitmap, Art Media, Mask.
This makes the program VERY flexible and useful for web graphics.
takes Photoshop Plugins.