I really dislike Paintshop pro 8

[Woodstock]

I just cant get started with the thing! It's sooo annoying. Ive seen a lot of the tutorials official and not official via youtube etc...basic, simple questions just cant be resolved. It's so frustrating. Long gone are those Ulead days where what you did made sense and just..worked.

Perhaps somebody out there can explain, a simple process in simple terms.

All this 3 workspaces nonsense, adjust, edit etc etc ...

I have 20 photos ( for example ) which I want to bring into my 'edit' workspace...my aim is to simply put all these images ( or some of them at least ) onto a blank page...raster/vester who knows!!...and then tart them up a little, add a little text and bobs your uncle a dvd video cover is created.

BUT - I cant seem to bring in my photos...well I can..but I cant seem to get them to 'automatically' appear on separate layers..they just come in automatically as a large image. As soon as I create a NEW blank page they disappear.

Thoughts please on surely the most simply, basic of tasks which despite ALL the tutorials they fail to tell me.

And this..300dpi..stuff....I want obviously to print the best quality possible....so..why they choice? 300dpi? yes no?

Ulead come back!!!!

[Cassel]

In that EDIT tab, go to Window > Tabbed documents and uncheck it. That will allow you to see all the images on your workspace as if they were placed on a desk in front of you.

Then, whenever you open a blank image, it will lay on top but without necessarily covering everything.

[JoeB]

Further to what Cassel told you, if you don't know anything about print resolution (300 dpi stuff - which should actually be stated as 300 ppi not dpi - where in PSP have you found a setting for dpi??) there is a ton of information on the internet available with a Google search where you can learn about that stuff. Print resolution is not anything special with Paintshop Pro but with all image editing programs. If you wish to print images created and/or edited with graphic programs then you really can - and should - do some basic research about the subject of printing, print resolution, etc.

For simple reference, if you are basically printing photos either using your home printer or at a photo lab then if you make sure they have a print resolution of 200ppi they should come out fine. Some people prefer to err on the side of caution and go to 300ppi, but that's a personal preference. You can see the present resolution of an image you load into PSP using the menu item Image>Image Information. You can change the resolution using Resize. When creating a new image (which you will be doing if you are creating DVD covers) you can set the resolution in the dialogue that opens to create a new image. I've made hundreds of DVD covers, starting each one with a blank template I created at the size necessary for a standard single/double DVD case, which covers front, spine and back (10.8" x 7.250" at 200ppi), and which provides space of 5.1" for each of the front and back images and 0.6" for the spine in the middle.

[Woodstock]

That's Joeb and Cassel for your replies, my thread was born out of sheer frustration of watching endless tutorials where they linger on the 'change red eye' and doesn't really give you the basics...however, yes, plenty of stuff out there. I still find past versions much better ( Ulead ) but obviously unstable with windows 10 etc

Thanks for the advice, I will hopefully try to get started on a project.

Joe feel free to show(off) your many dvd covers - be interested in perhaps finding inspiration on what Paintshop pro can achieve / nick a few ideas. Just looking at tarting up some home movies and I (used to ) enjoy making dvd covers if only for my own benefit.

[Woodstock]

..just to add...

I have done as you said, edit>windows etc..and yes easier to find images. However...a question on best working practice ( and I'm ALWAYS concerned with quality issue..i don't know ..just if I'm spending time on creating something I was to ensure I print at the best quality - I HATE copy/pasting things - old skool thinking but I think that it does lessen the quality each time...)

DO I

- IN Adjust mess about / tinker with the images and then SAVE onto my PC
- IN EDIT > I create a new documents ( with settings you kindly gave me ) > then I INSERT(OPEN FOLDER ) and bring in photos ive saved sitting on my PC. Then I COPY and PASTE these onto a NEW LAYER / adjust to fit etc.

Simple as that...or is there a better way?

[TroyTheTech]

Although JoeB touched on this above (quoted below this paragraph), I just wanted to come in to clarify that DPI is the standard terminology for photo resolution and image handling. Although there is a push lately to use PPI, "Pixels Per Inch" is mainly only used to express how the image is handled in digital virtual space and how it will be displayed on a monitor (input resolution) not how it is printed (output resolution).

Further to what Cassel told you, if you don't know anything about print resolution (300 dpi stuff - which should actually be stated as 300 ppi not dpi - where in PSP have you found a setting for dpi??) there is a ton of information on the internet available with a Google search where you can learn about that stuff. Print resolution is not anything special with Paintshop Pro but with all image editing programs. If you wish to print images created and/or edited with graphic programs then you really can - and should - do some basic research about the subject of printing, print resolution, etc.

DPI is mainly a printer setting, which is the hardware limitation on how it will turn out (literally, how many dots the printer can produce per inch). The DPI setting can be set in the Properties of the Printer, both in the queue of the job being printed, and in the Printer configuration.

PPI is only for how the image is displayed on a screen (literally how many little picture dots are making up the image) the more there are, the more detailed and complex it will look (usually limited by the camera in total Pixels) but the more pixels utilized, the more size it will take up as a file.

These two terms are being used interchangeably by many recently, but they are quite different. Again:

PPI is how the image is handled virtually on a screen (imported or created) and how detailed and complex it will look.
DPI is how sharp the image will look when printed, related to the hardware and how detailed of an image the printer can produce by printing (you can have a 1200ppi image on your screen but if you can only print in 600dpi, some complexity is lost or colour is duplicated when printing, compared to the onscreen complexity, due to the limitations of the printer hardware).

For most common uses, printing in 300dpi (or even 200dpi) should be acceptable looking as home-use output, as JoeB stated.

..just to add...
...a question on best working practice ( and I'm ALWAYS concerned with quality issue..i don't know ..just if I'm spending time on creating something I was to ensure I print at the best quality - I HATE copy/pasting things - old skool thinking but I think that it does lessen the quality each time...)

JFYI Woodstock, the Copy/Pasting mechanism does not lower quality, as it simply 'passes' the data back and forth (but it's always good to be cautious if you want higher quality and check/ask to be sure, of course).
Saving (with compression) and then opening and editing THAT file, then Saving again (with compression) lowers quality each time it is saved, due to some data being lost through the compression. Perhaps that is the mechanism you were thinking about.

[JoeB]

Sorry @TroyTheTech, but the only correct statement you made is that DPI is a printer setting and a factor of the limitations of the printer hardware. PPI tells the printer how many pixels of an image to print per inch of printed page. If you only print one pixel of an image per inch of page you're not going to have much of a printed result unless you intend to tape all of the resulting pages together and view the result from a distance of half a kilometer. You'll note that PSP, Photoshop, etc., do NOT have DPI settings - only PPI settings. Just because people have, for years, been confusing DPI and PPI and/or using those terms interchangeably does not make it correct. Here's the scoop:

DPI is only a function of how many dots/spots/splots of ink any particular printer can lay down per inch of printed paper. The printer settings (Draft, Normal/Standard, High, Photo, etc., actually tell the printer how many dots to lay down per inch, with lower settings representing lower numbers (e.g., 200dpi, 300, 600, 1200, etc.) and the lower the number or setting the more grainy the printed image. Depending on the quality of your inkjet printer, some are only capable of shooting out 400 dots per inch, while most newer printers can produce many more.

On an image viewer, images have no physical dimension (such as inches) and are represented by pixels (short for Picture Elements), the smallest part of an image viewable on a display. You can see them if you zoom in a lot on an image - it becomes jaggy as the pixels are viewed.

PPI is information set in your image editor telling the printer how many of those pixels of the image to print per inch of printed paper. A 600 pixel square image set to 300PPI will print a 2 inch square image (600 pixels divided by 300 printed pixels per inch). If you set PPI to 600 you will end up with a one inch square printed image. So PPI is only a way of telling the printer how large you want the image to be printed.

But whether it looks grainy on paper when printed depends on the printer's DPI (dots per inch) setting. Draft, for example, will print out 200-300 dots per inch, while Standard maybe 400 - 800 dots of ink per inch (if your printer has that capability), and Photo twice that (the preceding just being figures picked as examples, some printers spit out more dots of ink at each of those settings). The exact dots per inch with each setting is a factor of the various printer manufacturers and the specs of the printer but a decent printer will lay down at least several more dots per inch of ink than the input pixels per inch information it receives from the input image.

So an image input to the printer providing information that it should be printed at 300 pixels per inch will look better the higher the dots per inch setting of the printer (draft, standard, photo, etc - some printers actually let you set the numbers rather than just select draft, standard, etc) because the printer will lay down more ink in each inch of printing the higher the setting. So, for example, it will print 300 pixels of the image per inch of printed paper, but if the printer is set to draft then that inch of print will use less ink (fewer dots/splots of ink) per inch and still look grainy - as expected from a draft output. If the printer is set to Standard or Photo it will shoot out more dots/splots of ink for every printed inch of the image (but still print 300 pixels of the image per inch of paper if that is the PPI you set for the image in your image editor) and the image will look better because more ink is used in each inch printed. It's like drawing a one inch line with a crayon with light pressure (equivalent to Draft printer setting) - it looks pretty light and grainy. Draw the same one inch line with more pressure (equivalent to Standard or Photo printer setting) and it looks better because you are laying down more wax particles in the same size of space.

So rememter: Your image editor - and therefore your image - CANNOT tell your printer how many dots/splots of ink to shoot out for each inch of paper. You can only set that in the printer. But your image editor CAN tell the printer how many pixels of your image to print on each inch of paper.

So using a PPI setting of 300 is a good idea because an image with that PPI setting printed on a decent printer using a high DPI print setting (Standard or Photo rather than Draft) is about as good as the human eye can resolve (although actually the human eye usually can't see the difference between a printed 200PPI image and a 300PPI image).

And because the PPI is only information that is important to send to a printer and for no other purpose you can leave it at that setting when it comes to exporting to view on a screen because it means nothing on the display. If you have 2 images at 300 x 300 pixel size, with one having a print resolution of 300PPI and the other at 100PPI and put them on a web page or in your image editor on your monitor, the images will be the same size. But the 300ppi image will print on one inch of paper and the 100ppi image will print on 3 inches of paper. The two attached images look the same size on your monitor despite the fact that one is 100PPI and the other is 300PPI. You can download the attached images and see for yourself.

SO TO BE CLEAR: PPI has NOTHING to do with how the image is displayed on your screen or the complexity or quality of the image on the screen! It is the size of your image in PIXELS ONLY (the pixels dimensions) that determines the size (and, within certain parameters, the quality and complexity) of the image on the screen. Any image of ANY size in pixels can be set to have a whole bunch of different print resolutions (PPI) and it won't change the image quality, detail or anything else as it is portrayed on your monitor.

Here's a link to a site I ran across that discusses this matter very succinctly and clearly:

http://www.williamswriting.com/2014/ebook-cover-size/

HTH.

[photodrawken]

This is actually kind of funny -- both Troy and Joe are fundamentally saying the same thing, and they're both mostly correct.

At the risk of thoroughly confusing everyone , I'll take a stab at an explanation.

Pixels
An image is composed of picture elements (pixels, abbreviated as "px") which are the smallest little squares of picture information. Your cell phone's camera will create an image using a total of less than 10 million pixels, your digital camera will create an image using anywhere from 20 to 34 Mpx. Your computer monitor will use I don't know how many total pixels for its screen. The Jumbotron at the ballpark will use lots of large lights as the pixels to display its images.

The range of sizes of the pixels is obvious -- the pixels in your camera's sensor are incredibly tiny and the pixels on the JumboTron are large.

The important things to keep in mind are:

• The pixels in an image are a scalar quantity -- they are one-dimensional, having only the number of "how many".
• The number of pixels in an image's width (and height) are fundamental to how the image will be displayed.
• Because the physical size of a pixel can vary so considerably between various devices, a 100px line will be very short when viewed on your computer monitor and very long when viewed on that JumboTron.

PPI
When working with digital images that will only be displayed on a computer monitor, Pixels Per Inch (PPI) is really irrelevant. It's the number of pixels in the width and the height that determines how large the image will look on-screen. The first two images in Joe's citation clearly show this: if the width is 550px, it doesn't matter what the PPI is; the images will look to be the same size on the same monitor because the monitor is simply showing things that are 550px wide. Period.

So why bother with PPI? Because when you use an image on different displays (or other output devices), you need to change that abstract scalar thing called a "pixel" into a dimensional description that can be communicated. Those first two cited screenshots show this: You're telling another device (a printer, or a laser cutter, or a JumboTron) that the final image should be 1.8 inches wide, or 7.6 inches wide.

DPI
As others have stated, Dots Per Inch (DPI) is a term used in the printing industry that describes how many drops of ink are used to create something that is one inch long. You really don't have to worry about DPI when working in image editing software -- you will be telling the printer that an image should be "x" inches wide and "y" inches high because a printer doesn't understand what you mean by a "pixel", but it does understand what an "inch" is. If you tell the printer to use 100 dots (of ink) per inch, you'll get a "rougher" looking image than you would if you tell the printer to use 1,600 dots (of ink) per inch.

Clear as mud?

[brucet]

I just love these DPI v PPI discussions. Everyone basically says the same thing and at the same time confuses everyone.
Theory is theory. Most folks just want workable solutions without the technical 'stuff'.

Basic rule of thumb for me is to keep everything to 300 dpi/ppi. Only ever going to 72 dpi/ppi for some web work.

Off now to put on my fireproof suit.

regards

[garjobo]

QUOTE "Saving (with compression) and then opening and editing THAT file, then Saving again (with compression) lowers quality each time it is saved, due to some data being lost through the compression. Perhaps that is the mechanism you were thinking about.[/quote] "

Leading into my question - if i am saving a project over a number of days and I want to avoid as much as possible losing quality...what is the best way of saving ? SAVE AS a Bitmap or Paintshoppro file etc Never save as Jpeg? even when complete ( unless i plan to upload to web etc )?

[JoeB]

QUOTE "Saving (with compression) and then opening and editing THAT file, then Saving again (with compression) lowers quality each time it is saved, due to some data being lost through the compression. Perhaps that is the mechanism you were thinking about.

Leading into my question - if i am saving a project over a number of days and I want to avoid as much as possible losing quality...what is the best way of saving ? SAVE AS a Bitmap or Paintshoppro file etc Never save as Jpeg? even when complete ( unless i plan to upload to web etc )?

"

First, all raster images are "bitmap" images, which simply means they are made up of pixels. Vector images are different in that they use math formulas to draw lines/shapes, etc., but that's irrelevant to your question.

You should always save your work first as a .pspimage (Paintshop Prp) image file. First, this prevents losses during saves. Second, it preserves all layers - including vector layers like your text, etc. - so that you have everything in place the next time you want to edit it.

After that, it depends. Most other image editing or image viewing programs do not recognize .pspimage files so can't open them, so if you will have a need to view or edit those files using other programs you have to have a copy in another more common format. You can save a copy losslessly as PNG or Tiff, both of which are common file types but are quite large in file size. For many people this may not be necessary and saving as .jpg is fine. In the interests of caution you can save as PNG or Tiff and another copy as .jpg. When saving as jpg the higher the compression the more quality you lose but the smaller the file size. Usually a compression of 5 to 10 will not be noticeable and give a reasonable file size compared to an uncompressed jpg (which itself still has some loss). However, subsequent saves of .jpg files will cause subsequent quality loss.

[photodrawken]

Never save as Jpeg? even when complete ( unless i plan to upload to web etc )?

Yes, you've got that correct.

You only need to keep two copies of the image on your drive: the original unmodified image, and the image you work on (which you save in the native format of your image editor).

Then, whenever you need to use a copy of your edited image anywhere else (such as displaying on the Web, or opening it in another software program, etc.) you use your image editor to export the image in the desired format.