Blending images

[Davidk]

Hi All

I'm a relative newcomer to using paintshop X6 and have been looking for a method of blending images so I can create a label for a photo disk that has selected significant images on it but nicely blended together, rather than looking like individual images just collected together. Up to now, I've had to use powerpoint - lacking anything decent that does what I want - and a painting tool to produce a clunky result, similar to the following

What I want to achieve is a result that may look like a lot of tourist advertising material - which is not my intention but a means of describing what I want to do - with a cross fade between images to provide a smooth result but one that still retains the main parts of each constituent image.

I've searched the Paintshop X6 help base, and the only item that seems to come close - HDR merge - is about merging different light images of the same view or target, into a single enhanced image of that target. The on-line tutorial is descriptive of how to do it, but merging in this fashion is not what I want to do.

So, can paintshop do what I want? And if so, how?

Thanks

Davidk

[Kathy_9]

If I understand correctly what you want to do, it sounds like you want a collage of your images. If so, there is no fast and easy way to do that with PSP but there are free collage building programs. You could try Picasa as it works very well. If that's not what you mean, just disregard.

[dsigman]

You can blend images.
Create layers for the images you are using. Make a selection of the image that is to be on top. Right click and copy the selection. Then go back to the other image, right click and paste the selection as a layer. You can then use the pick tool to resize and move the top layer. You can also use different blend modes as well as change the opacity.

All this can be done quite quickly.

[Davidk]

Thanks for the replies.

The layers thing looked attractive, at least at 1st view. I also found a video tutorial - the right terminology of search again helps - that made it sound simple. Tried it out and got into all sorts of trouble. Eventually after a frustrating hour I found a way to get back to a clean start. Then, found and viewed the written tutorial option, and it only works in MS exploder, (that is, when the link is clicked it opens exploder and displays the content there) but that seemed to view OK - text and images. But when I went to print it locally, so I had an aide memoire to work from when I next tried to create a layered result, all I got was a print of the image web links. Not really helpful.

I use Firefox as my default browser - is there any way to get the written tutorial stuff displayed in that program?

Davidk

[Kathy_9]

have you tried copying the link from the address line in Internet Explorer and then pasting it into the address line of Firefox?

[Davidk]

I've managed to get a number of written tutorials. Next problem - the organizer . . . .

The tuts make it pretty clear that the organizer is the launching element for the layers. I've come across a remark that states the organizer is just a virtual store for work in hand. Which seems good, but there's nothing I have been able to find - despite working thru 9 pages of written tuts and the video tuts on the basics on PS X6 - that describes how it works and how to use it, and in particular how to get thumbnails of images into it, and out of it without impact on the originals (eg without deleting the photo all together. next para).

In Video Studio, a project file is a listing of the various clips/images/voiceover/ music and other files in use. It doesn't store or copy them - just points to where they are stored on a machine. Thus deleting an item eg a photo image from a project doesn't delete that image from the machine. However, I mentioned getting into trouble with paintshop in a previous post - one of those was trying to delete a thumbnail from the organizer that I had inadvertently inserted (but I have no idea how that happened) into it, and the machine immediately gave me the windows error panel "do you want to delete this file from the computer"? Cancel that and work around it. But it seems pretty clear that the paintshop organizer doesn't work the same way that a project file does in VS.

My system has photo and video image files stored by type in their own drives/folders, and used by a range of applications which just use their stored locations. Nearly 10,000 photos alone and I don't perceive a need to copy (or for paintshop to copy) those into a separate library Duplicated storage just for paintshop.

Is there a tutorial on how the organiser works, and how to use it?

Davidk

[MarkZ]

Davidk:

I'm not sure I understand all the issues you mention about Organizer. I know that the concept is a challenge for many.

I think of Organizer, whether in Manage or Edit mode, as a view of images in a folder, no more than that. It allows comparison of thumbnails and selection of an image for editing. If I want to manipulate files, that is move, copy or delete them, I use Windows explorer (I use the version from Zabkat).

In Manage mode the trays extend the functionality of the Organizer.

[Forriner]

For projects you can think of a tray as a collection of shortcuts to images. So you can take images from all over the Manager or Windows explorer and drag them to a Tray (the tray's tab) for use in your project. You can delete those thumbnails from the tray using the Remove from tray option on the Organizer palette. You can remove the Tray from the same menu. The tray is also available in Edit mode.

I don't know about X6, if the problem of losing images from the standard My Tray when switching views has been fixed in later versions. In X4 you just open a new tray (click on the + tab), name it and use it, staying away from the My Tray.

@Markz: Even if you don't use the Collections view of the Manager, PSP makes thumbnails of all the images in folders that you view with the computer tab. Moving/deleting images from within Explorer or other programs may corrupt the PSP database (collections tab) and/or leave thumbnails behind. Deleting a folder in Explorer leaves that folder + thumbnails intact in the PSP folder:
\user\you\appdata\corel\psp version number\thumbs.
This for X4 anyway.

[Davidk]

The description of the organizer as just a virtual workspace of images stored elsewhere is close to the project file concept of video studio I mentioned. What led me to question how organizer works was the impact of trying to delete a thumbnail from it. The times I tried it I got the "do you want remove this file from the system" box from windows - the same one you get if a delete file is tried from within MS exploder. Which really did suggest that the files in the organiser were originals.

Beyond that, there seems to be no description of how to work it; create and name one, delete one, input one or just a few files, or to delete one or just the selected thumbnail icons in it. I did discover that - using the nav panel icon - selecting a pictures folder on the main drive file tree input the whole folder contents into the organizer. In that case, 400 images. Frightening - I don't wont to clutter up my system with multiple copies of large picture folders. Further experimenting in the organizer with all those thumbnails in it showed that selecting a thumbnail and choosing delete arrived at the error box I mentioned above.

The user guide pdf had nothing that described how it select files for the organizer or delete them, or create new workspaces for images that will be used in later functions like layers. There's description of how items in the organizer can be manipulated for other functions like layers etc but I'm at the stage of not understanding how to get to and leave the starting gate in this race. Hard to run a race if that isn't clear.

Davidk