Foreground and background colours and text

[Helvetica]

Hi all,
Using PSP Pro X8 and the Grid maker script which I found here on the forum, very handy!.
I am getting very frustrated with the colour settings when using text.
I have the foreground colour set as solid black and the background colour as solid white. So far so good.
But when I add text or a number, it is shown as a black outline. I want it to be solid black. It is only shown in solid black when black is set to the background colour which is not logical.
And in this case, if I need to use mark and cut for anything, of course the cut causes a black area (background), instead of white.

I also sometimes need to move the number a tad to the left or right, but I can't, no matter whether it is set to floating or selection, unless I click the white arrow "Pick Tool".
In my old 1999 PSP 6, which I still use a lot, When I use the Text function set to floating, the letter(s) or number(s) can automatically be moved to wherever I want them, then I press CTRL D to fix it into place. Is there anything like this in X8 ?
I need to make several A4 grids with hundreds of small drawings of monograms and number them all, and having to keep using the Pick Tool in addition to the Text tool will make the work twice as big.

[JoeB]

Hi all,
Using PSP Pro X8 and the Grid maker script which I found here on the forum, very handy!.

If you mean Grid by Cells and Grid by Percent I have those scripts bound to icons and added them to the View menu underneath the Grid option for convenient access.

I am getting very frustrated with the colour settings when using text.
I have the foreground colour set as solid black and the background colour as solid white. So far so good.
But when I add text or a number, it is shown as a black outline. I want it to be solid black. It is only shown in solid black when black is set to the background colour which is not logical.

Paint Shop Pro has always used the Background color for the color of the body (fill) of the text and the foreground color for the stroke of the text. So in that regard it is no different from the previous PSP versions you have used. So the black outline you see is the stoke color (an outline around the text character). So set the Stroke on the Tool Options bar to zero and the background color to Black if you want black text without a stroke.

And in this case, if I need to use mark and cut for anything, of course the cut causes a black area (background), instead of white.

I don't know what you mean by "mark and cut", although I am assuming that by "cut" you mean cutting the text from the background. But I'm not sure what the purpose of doing so would be and particularly what color you would want to show through the cut area so am unable to help with a suggestion that might be useful to you.

However, the reason you get black if you cut something out of your image (like text, for example) when you set the background color to black is because if you open an image and the layers palette shows it as Background then that image background will be the color of the background color in your materials palette. If you don't want that to happen then you have to promote that Background layer to a regular Raster layer, which will make the background transparent.

I also sometimes need to move the number a tad to the left or right, but I can't, no matter whether it is set to floating or selection, unless I click the white arrow "Pick Tool".
In my old 1999 PSP 6, which I still use a lot, When I use the Text function set to floating, the letter(s) or number(s) can automatically be moved to wherever I want them, then I press CTRL D to fix it into place. Is there anything like this in X8 ?

What do you mean by saying you can "automatically" move text in your old PSP6? Certainly you must have had to take some action to be able to move it.

So, for me at least, I would need more details before I can provide suggestions. However, I'm curious as to whether there is some reason you are not using vector text for your projects, unless it is because you don't want to have a vector layer for each piece of separate text you lay down?

[Helvetica]

Hi all,
Paint Shop Pro has always used the Background color for the color of the body (fill) of the text and the foreground color for the stroke of the text. So in that regard it is no different from the previous PSP versions you have used.

Then something is very peculiar with my version.
In my old PSP 6, with foreground colour set to black and the background colour set to white, text is then black. See screenshot 1, especially the black foreground / white background settings on the far right. When I type something, it is black, as it should be.

So set the Stroke on the Tool Options bar to zero and the background color to Black if you want black text without a stroke.

So this would, in effect use the BACKGROUND colour for text on a white FOREGROUND ? That is exactly the opposite of my old PSP.

...you mean cutting the text from the background. But I'm not sure what the purpose of doing so would be and particularly what color you would want to show through the cut area

.

If I need to e.g. change the reference number of one of the monograms in the grid (their reference numbers are beneath the monograms), I need to cut that ref. number out and replace it with another. So it would have to be replaced with plain white ("background" colour for white "paper" in my understanding, apparently "foreground" colour in X8...)

In my old 1999 PSP 6, which I still use a lot, When I use the Text function set to floating, the letter(s) or number(s) can automatically be moved to wherever I want them, then I press CTRL D to fix it into place. Is there anything like this in X8 ?

What do you mean by saying you can "automatically" move text in your old PSP6? Certainly you must have had to take some action to be able to move it.

Nope, it is simply set to floating and that's it, nothing with vectors, layers etc. See screenshot 2. When I click on the A (the Text icon) at the top and type in the field, it automatically shows the text as a floating selection which I can move, re-position, resize etc.

I'm curious as to whether there is some reason you are not using vector text for your projects, unless it is because you don't want to have a vector layer for each piece of separate text you lay down?

To be honest, I don't think I have ever used Vector text. All I want to do is make these blasted monograms (there are so many of them, most using Greek letters), copy them into the grid and number them. At the moment I am doing it using two windows of trusty old PSP6, 1 for the plate (coin talk for a page with images on it) and the text size set to 26 for the numbers and the other window with the text size set to 86 and the language set to Greek.

[hartpaul]

Helvetica - Then something is very peculiar with my version.
In my old PSP 6, with foreground colour set to black and the background colour set to white, text is then black. See screenshot 1, especially the black foreground / white background settings on the far right. When I type something, it is black, as it should be.

What I am not seeing there and which could explain why you are only getting the foreground showing is the stroke width. If you have a high stroke width then it will give no room for the white background to show.
Did you try in PSP 6 reversing the foreground and background colors and type a letter - you would probably get a white A in that case and think that the text tool was not working.

One problem here is that you are persisting in using such an early version of PSP that very few others will have a version that they can test in.
For example my earliest is PSP 8 and when I choose the text tool I have a part of the toolbar showing stroke width, and presets. In the drop down window for presets to its right there is a Reset to default button. This provides vector text with no stroke width. Arial font and size 24 points (can't seem t change it to pixels meanwhile the stroke width is in pixels a strange curiosity by Jasc)

Using Vector text I can type in and apply and the text is surrounded by a box with a movement node in the centre and a rotation node to one side. I can do with that vector text what you are doing with the Floating text but with the addition that I don't have to do Selections > Select None at the end.

[JoeB]

In my old 1999 PSP 6, which I still use a lot, When I use the Text function set to floating, the letter(s) or number(s) can automatically be moved to wherever I want them, then I press CTRL D to fix it into place. Is there anything like this in X8 ?

What do you mean by saying you can "automatically" move text in your old PSP6? Certainly you must have had to take some action to be able to move it.

Nope, it is simply set to floating and that's it, nothing with vectors, layers etc. See screenshot 2. When I click on the A (the Text icon) at the top and type in the field, it automatically shows the text as a floating selection which I can move, re-position, resize etc.

That still doesn't tell me how you "automatically" move the text/floating selection. Moving objects requires a tool, a mouse action, and/or etc. @hartpaul explained how it works with vector text, but you haven't explained how you actually move your floating selection "automatically".

My suggestion is that you familiarize yourself with PSP 2018 and with using vector text. Vector objects can be moved, rotated and - most importantly - resized without any degradation to the object/text. You can use the handles @hartpaul mentioned and take even a very large size vector text and drag it to a very small size and it will retain smooth edges and corners, and vice versa. Raster text would become jaggy if you did that.

[Helvetica]

Ah sorry, I thought it was obvious how I move the text or whatever. I either use the mouse (click and hold down left button), or, if it only needs to be moved by one or two pixels, I use CTRL and up, down, left or right, depending on which way it has to be moved.

I don't seem to have a "stroke width" option in my ancient PSP 6, In the Text menu (where you enter the text), I can change the size, font, colour, bold/italic/underline/strikethrough, align left/centre/right, kerning/leading/auto kern, Vector/selection/floating/antialias and that's about it. So no stroke width - it comes as I want it just using size, colour and the floating option.
And as you can see it doesn't have many (ok, almost none!) of the options in newer versions. But it has served me well on all my Windows versions since 1999, works fine in Windows 7 Pro (as does my MS Office XP from 2002 with which I have written 8 academic books) and it took a helluva kick to get me to buy Corel PSP X8 !

But I will have a play around with using the Vector option.

Thanks for all your advice and help.

[JoeB]

Once you get familiar with using vector text rather than raster text I'm sure you'll appreciate its flexibility. There is a small learning curve, but feel free to post back if/as you have issues becoming familiar with it.