RH Fan Art Lesson 1

Here are some images you can choose from.

      

 

Instructions on how to save an image to your hard drive. First position your mouse over the image desired, then right click on the image. (remember the right click is the one that you hardly use) Then  you will see a window like this one

      The one we will use is the SAVE PICTURE AS, click on it once.

Then you will see..

Pick the appropriate folder where you want to save your image, I will suggest My Pictures, under My Documents. Do not worry about the name of the image,  but if it is easier for you, go ahead and change it.  You could use as many images as you like... 

Now open the Paint Shop Pro software and let's begin.

      Make sure you have these tools enable, you can enable them by clicking on them once. These images are what the tools look like, but the tools are not active unless you are working on an image and click them.

Ok now let's open a new document to work on. Go to File then New (it has a blank page). When you do that you will get a window like this.

In here we will set up some characteristics of the new document, like the size, since we are doing wallpapers, we will be working with big sizes, like for example, you could do  Width of 450 and Height of 550. Make sure you keep it in the measurement of pixels. As background color you could chose any color you might like, this can be change at any point later on. And also keep it in the Image type of 16.7 Million Colors.  Hit ok and you will get a result like this

Mine is set to transparent background, that is why you see the squares.

Now open the images you saved, the ones you will be using to create the wallpaper.

Go to File then Open and make sure you want to open from My Pictures,  chose the image then hit open. Open as many as you will use, I will suggest to use at least two.

  Now with the images open, and the new document ready to be done, let's get to the good stuff.

Now, since we have more than one image to work with we have make sure that before we do anything we got the right image selected.  To select the image we want we click on the image once with the mouse, you will know that the image is selected because it will be highlighted like the image on the left, see how it looks to have light in the border, while the other one is grey. It's very important that you understand this, since we will be going back and forth between images for the rest of the lesson.

FOR NOW ON IF YOU FEEL YOU MADE A MISTAKE YOU CAN ALWAYS UNDO IT WITH THE UNDO ARROW IN THE TOP TOOLBAR.

If you picked a background already and like that one, keep it, but if not and would like to make match the images then let's change it. Locate the Dropper.

  Click on the dropper that is located on your left hand tool bar, then activate the image you want to get the background color from and position the mouse over the spot where the color you want is, click once wit the mouse and you will see that the tool bar on the right where the colors are changes to the colors you chose. The left click of the mouse is the foreground and the right click is the background. 

Now go the Flood Fill and click it to activate.

The same parameters applied here, the left click of the mouse is the foreground and the right click is the background.  Activate your new image and click the mouse over it to give it the desire background color. 

Side note, the background can be change at any given time.

Now, let's start adding the images to the new document. Activate the image you want then go to Edit and then click Copy. Then go an activate the new document we are creating and with it activated go to Edit and the Paste as a New Layer. If you wish to reposition the image at a specific place use the four arrows that are located in the left hand side toolbar. Click on the arrows then click and hold the mouse click as you move the image.

You will end up with images inside images. Like this...

Now, we start working with personalizing the wallpaper. For example I'm going to use the Eraser (click on it), looks like a pencil eraser is on the left hand side tool bar, to erase the borders of the images so they will look more like one image and not 3 images.

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In the Tool Option set your parameters as it seems in the image. Then go to the new document and as we did before to activate the image, we must do the same here.. but in the new document with the images inside you have to use the Layer Palette to activate which image you will be working on.  Click on the image you wan to work on. It will look like this...

 Now, with the layer (image) activated go ahead and erase the borders, to erase you leave the mouse click pressed while you move over the edges, if by any chance you make a mistake you can re-do it by pressing the other mouse click (right) over it again and it will put it back as the original. 

Mine looks like this

Now after you get it to look, as you want it we could just add text to it. Using the text icon on the left hand side toolbar, it a capitol A. Click on it and then you will see how the mouse pointer turns into a cross with an A. Click over the image to activate the text window.

Make sure that you leave the Vector and Anitalias checked, and the rest is up to you. Pick the color the size, the style and what you want it to say.  The Kerning and Leading is how far from each other the letters will be, and how leading (bent) the letters will be.

Once you picked what you want then click ok. If you do not like what it looks like just undo it.

Once the  text in on the image, use the mouse to make it bigger by clicking and keeping the mouse press on the corners of the textbox. 

If you are happy with the result then is time to merge all the layers and save your new wallpaper. To merge the layers go to Layers and Merge pick Merge all Flatten. Now save your wallpaper with the extension JPG. Go to File then Save As, then in Save as Type choose JPEG and whatever name your giving your wallpaper make sure you save it in my pictures. Make sure you saved the wallpaper and close the Paint Shop Pro.

Now to set it as you wallpaper.

On your desktop, right click on it and you will see this;

 Click on Properties and you will see this;

In here hit Browse and you will get a window, in there you look for the place you saved you wallpaper which should have been My Pictures, once you are in My Pictures then you look for the wallpaper file name. Hit ok, then hit Apply. And then you should have your Wallpaper.

 

Finish!!!!!!

Give yourself a pad in the back... you did a great job!!