Upgrading from ancient PSP 8

[JCBrown]

Hi Terry,

I don't know how to justify text in PSP, never done it, but there must be a way. I sent you a link to my unofficial tutorial showing how to do this using Xara directly from MEP. It depends on whether or not you want the text embedded in the photo or separately. My tutorial shows the way that can be modified from the nle as the text is not embedded in the photo.

For the mapping, attached is a screen shot of PSP2018 with 2 photos selected and the pins at the correct locations. This is what I was looking for to be able to quickly determine where my photos should be inserted along a route. I have not mastered this in GE.

Did you purchase Ultimate or regular? With Ultimate, you get the Perfectly Clear lite plugin, which I find very useful for quickly making major improvements to my photos. I actually have the full version plugin. It would take me a lot of time to do the same thing in PSP. Diminishing returns, as I want nice photos (sometimes with repairs) that will be seen on-screen for 3 or 4 seconds only. There are other, of course, that I need for other purposes and they require much more care. Perfectly Clear recognizes faces and can quickly make us and other old people look a bit younger.

[terrypin]

Do you mean like this, Joe? I don't see how I can make it smaller? Even as shown here, it doesn't let me access all primary colours as far as I can tell.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/7my9nj7d6nw4r ... .jpg?raw=1


Could you show me a screenshot of your layout please?

[Ken Berry]

I don't know how to justify text in PSP, never done it, but there must be a way.

When you click on T in Tools to get the Text tool, various aspects of the tool, including Justify and indeed Force Justify, appear above the image. See red arrow in attached image. At least this is the Justify I imagine you are talking about...

[JoeB]

Also as he is coming from PSP 8 there was no manage tab so he would get the experience closest to his PSP 8 by setting complete and Edit .

Thanks, duly configured that way. Current layout shown, with a few queries thrown in!
https://www.dropbox.com/s/zvk5kugc8xxge ... .jpg?raw=1

Also, I cannot see any diffrerence with this enabled or not? View > Customize > Toolbars > Show Text labels

You can't access all of the colors from the palette with my suggestion. Remember, I said that I don't use it to access colors, usually choosing colors from an open image or, if I want to fine tune, clicking on the foreground/background swatch and using the dialogue that opens. Everybody has their own workflow and requirements, which is why I wanted to make it clear that I don't use that palette. I prefer to use the space to have more layers visible because that's more important to my workflow.

[hartpaul]

This shows how to place a palette in any allowable position. In this case by left click and dragging on the undocked Script Output palette, the cursor is attached to it and as I hover over the materials palette a ghostly white / transparent docking indicator shows that I can move the cursor over position 1 and release to have the Script Output palette dock under the Materials palette or I could move the cursor to position 2 and have it dock above the materials palette.

This shows it docked between the Materials and Layers Palette.

By moving the borders I can show more or less of the Materials Palette and its recently used colors. Don't forget that you can also right click on the color boxes and get Recent Materials box showing below the Primary and secondary colors , black white and two shades of grey and above the 10 most recently used colors so using up space in the Materials palette is only useful if you have more than 12 recent colors you want to peruse.
also you can click the unpin button to allow any palette to hide to the side.

View > Customize > Toolbars > Show Text labels seems to work only for the Effects Toolbar.

[hartpaul]

Terrypin said "Adding text seems particularly different. But I guess after a few insertions I’ll get comfortable. Can you tell me how to wrap text please, a facility missing in PSP 8 that frustrates me and which I hope has been added now."

After you have made your rectangular preset shape, right click that layer an convert to a raster layer. You should have your white rectangle on a transparent background. Then use the magic wand tool to select all that white area and then the text tool and type in your text . Control A to select all teh text and you can change its size, justification, color etc. When satisfied with text layout Selections > Select None.

[terrypin]

I don't know how to justify text in PSP, never done it, but there must be a way.

When you click on T in Tools to get the Text tool, various aspects of the tool, including Justify and indeed Force Justify, appear above the image. See red arrow in attached image. At least this is the Justify I imagine you are talking about...

Thanks Ken. I guess what I'm really looking for is some simple intuitive way to see all of my text, preferably in a box. If I pause or am interrrupted I want to see what I've typed so far. In this PSP 2018 screenshot I've typed "My text is being entered while looking at the keyboard", but I cannot see all of that without stepping through the three alignment options.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/mo00s9yd1drl7 ... 1.jpg?dl=0

When annotating a screenshot, typically when posting to forums/newsgroups, I became used to switching out of PSP 8 into IrfanView to do so, largely because of the absence of word wrapping. In IrfanView I'd simply drag out a rectangle, tap Ctrl+T to bring up the text dialog, and start typing, changing fonts etc to suit, with the text always visible. I'd assumed a similar facility would be available in PSP 2018.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/34iorsp06u4gu ... 2.jpg?dl=0

I've had only a couple of hours with 2018 but to be honest my first impression is that even PSP 8 seems to be rather better for text entry in some ways. In this screenshot I've typed "My text is being entered while looking at the keyboard and although I have no wrapping here, it is more accessible for editing than the text on the screen."
https://www.dropbox.com/s/xfqf1vvb104ah ... 3.jpg?dl=0

I have yet to try hartpaul's instructions, which may resolve my gripes.

[hartpaul]

Hi Terry,
You can still get the text box from PSP 8 by holding down the shift key when you click to make your first letter. However that does not keep text on the screen and large text will go off the screen.

To get what you are after you could do Selections > Select All and then start typing. All the text will stay on the screen withing the selected area.
I would suggest use View > Customise to make a special toolbar and put icons on it for Select All and Select None to make the process faster then using the drop down menus.

[terrypin]

Terrypin said "Adding text seems particularly different. But I guess after a few insertions I’ll get comfortable. Can you tell me how to wrap text please, a facility missing in PSP 8 that frustrates me and which I hope has been added now."

After you have made your rectangular preset shape, right click that layer an convert to a raster layer. You should have your white rectangle on a transparent background. Then use the magic wand tool to select all that white area and then the text tool and type in your text . Control A to select all teh text and you can change its size, justification, color etc. When satisfied with text layout Selections > Select None.

Bingo! Thanks so much, hartpaul, that does the job nicely.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/sq86bk9efbhys ... 4.jpg?dl=0

Not yet quite the no-brainer I'd like, but familiarity will probably change that. (I wonder if anyone has written a script for it?)

I tried briefly to replicate those steps in PSP 8 but was sort of pleased it failed. Please tell me I'm right - I'd hate to think I'd missed that all these years

To select the rectangle, instead of the layer step and using Magic Wand, the single step Selection > From Vector Object (Ctrl+Shift+B) seems to work.

Couple of associated questions please:

When altering text size, colour, etc, is it to be expected that Undo (Ctrl+Z) doesn't work, and that Esc must be used instead?

Do you find that the shortcut Ctrl+D doesn't work in some cases to remove a selection?

[terrypin]

@harpaul: Thanks for that very helpful explanation about docking. I''ll experiment with it as soon as I can. Meanwhile, from the various screenshots I've shown such as
https://www.dropbox.com/s/sq86bk9efbhys ... 4.jpg?dl=0
can you suggest further improvements please?

BTW, I take it that there's no option to revert to the old style of showing layers as a single line of text rather than a thumbnail, with a hovered pop-up, which saves a lot of space?

[hartpaul]

BTW, I take it that there's no option to revert to the old style of showing layers as a single line of text rather than a thumbnail, with a hovered pop-up, which saves a lot of space?

File > Preferences > General Program Preferences > Palettes and on the right untick Palette Thumbnails, tick the Right Pane box as well.
Above that you can also change the size of the tooltip thumbnails when you hover the cursor over a layer.

[hartpaul]

Couple of associated questions please:

When altering text size, colour, etc, is it to be expected that Undo (Ctrl+Z) doesn't work, and that Esc must be used instead?

Do you find that the shortcut Ctrl+D doesn't work in some cases to remove a selection?

Once you have text typed in all you have to do is Control A to select all the text and then you can change the color size as you wish. That is about the only shortcut I use so have not looked at your control D to deselect.
I added a customised toolbar that has the Select None included on it.

[terrypin]

BTW, I take it that there's no option to revert to the old style of showing layers as a single line of text rather than a thumbnail, with a hovered pop-up, which saves a lot of space?

File > Preferences > General Program Preferences > Palettes and on the right untick Palette Thumbnails, tick the Right Pane box as well.
Above that you can also change the size of the tooltip thumbnails when you hover the cursor over a layer.

Thanks, I far prefer that .

[JoeB]

[Bingo! Thanks so much, hartpaul, that does the job nicely.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/sq86bk9efbhys ... 4.jpg?dl=0

Not yet quite the no-brainer I'd like, but familiarity will probably change that. (I wonder if anyone has written a script for it?)....
....

To select the rectangle, instead of the layer step and using Magic Wand, the single step Selection > From Vector Object (Ctrl+Shift+B) seems to work.

Regardless of which procedure you decide to use, you can easily record a script of the steps so that it's a one-click solution for setting up the rectangle to constrain the text.

[terrypin]

Thanks, I’ll try that tomorrow.