tool options palette question

[tonya]

I have had PSP Photo X2 for a long time. I've been trying to do new things with it. My question kind of applies to several different tasks. For example, I like to take a photo, duplicate the layer, make it B & W, then use the background eraser tool to put certain things back in color. When I first tried it, it worked beautifully. Now, I think some settings have gotten changed somehow and it doesn't look right anymore. My tool options palette (with hardness, step, tolerance etc) is a little confusing to me. There are also drop down boxes for sampling and limits. And, there are check boxes for auto tolerance, ignore lightness, and use all layers. I don't know how to use these settings appropriately. I couldn't find descriptions of the various settings in the manual. And, looking online, I find more "general" directions about how to do things rather than specific settings. I've tried playing with the settings, but there are so many different ones that it is confusing. My question is this: Is there a tutorial or something online that EXPLAINS what each of these settings do? Today, when I tried it, here's what happened (and this may not be related to PSP x2, but then again, it might be). When I drag across the sky in the picture to return it to blue, my computer has to "think" and it takes several seconds before the color shows up. It has a severe delay while it thinks. I run Vista Home Premium and the little circle (what used to be an hourglass in previous versions of Windows) shows up while it is "thinking". However, I know months ago when I did this same thing, as I dragged the mouse, the color came back instantly...with no delay. I'm wondering if it is something to do with those tool options settings.

[Trev Bowden]

Lot of questions first to have a B&W layer and a colour layer both layers must be 8 Bits per channel so you can desaturated a layer to get Gray scale or use the effects Black and white film.
Now eraser well going by the Features on your tool bar it was the Background eraser rather then the plain eraser Now I do have a complete guide to the Precession background eraser written by the team leader of the new filters Dept of Jasc http://www.trevorbowden.co.uk/PrecBG%20erasser.pdf
It's long but worth the read .
The PBGE will take longer to remove background as its a very clever sampling filter where as the Eraser will be what you used previously and is much quicker as it removes anything in the brush area rather then any colour in that area that matches the pixels directly under the centre of th brush

[LeviFiction]

EDIT: Darn, beat to the punch again.

The precision background eraser tool is a bit hard to understand but there are some good resources on it.

Here's a detailed website tutorial on it all: http://campratty.com/4tooltours/kz/bge1.html

I also based a lame video tutorial on that tutorial Here are parts 1 and 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRgHaVMxgEY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHfk6VIJE1Q

[Trev Bowden]

Just to clarify My Pdf and Porters Html are the same guide

[tonya]

Thanks!

[Ken Veal]

Looked at the part 1+2 u tube tuorials- they are very good.Levi, can you advise me where to see others like them that would cover PSPro X........Ken

[LeviFiction]

I don't know of any PSPX specific ones, no.

There is a book called the Paint Shop Pro X: The Official Guide that is very well written and gives a lot of good advice on using PSP.

My tutorials, so far, have only focused on the most basic of information. I believe most of not all of it is backwards compatible with PSPX.

[Trev Bowden]

There is not enough difference between PSPx and X3 to worry about when learning tools So i would recommend Levifictions Vids in fact I will probably recommend them to lots of users and to Livifiction There very good I did not know about them prior.
The only book on Psp that i have bought was By Ron Lacy and Sally Bechem PPS 9 here to hero. Its out of print but If you find a copy there is lots in it thats still Very usable. There is not that much new in x compared to 9 either. The speed of developing the program slowed dramatically after Corel took over.

[LeviFiction]

Did you mean Paint Shop Pro 8: Zero to hero? Because that's the only one I could find from Ron Lacey and Sally Beacham.

If so here's an Amazon link where you can get it used for a very cheap price: http://www.amazon.com/Paint-Shop-Pro-Ze ... 1590592387

[Trev Bowden]

Yes thats the one. Its older then I thought