Paint Shop Pro support - shape & Text defaults

Author

shape & Text defaults

Ian McKay

2004-12-23, 12:17 pm

PSP folks

I use PSP 8.1 and have a couple of niggling problems:

Shapes
I use a variety of speech bubble "callouts" and *always* want a black border
line and white fill. This seems to be the default on my office PC but is not
consistent on my home machine (both line and fill are black). The fill color
do not seem to tie in with either my foreground or background colors.

Text
Here again, I *always* want to use black text but the default on my PCs
seems to be white text.

I would like to 'default to white callouts with a black line, and black
text.

It looks like I could do a set of presets but given that I always want the
same color combination , but use different callouts, this seems wasteful
(and because I see different results from my two PCs it does appear to be
possible to set this up)

I suspect I may be missing something here but I've had a pretty good look
through the help file on also Google and I can't find the answer .

Any help appreciated.

Thanks

Fred Hiltz

2004-12-23, 12:17 pm

Ian McKay wrote:
> PSP folks
>
> I use PSP 8.1 and have a couple of niggling problems:
>
> Shapes
> I use a variety of speech bubble "callouts" and *always* want a
> black border line and white fill. This seems to be the default on
> my office PC but is not consistent on my home machine (both line
> and fill are black). The fill color do not seem to tie in with
> either my foreground or background colors.

The callouts supplied by Jasc were made with a black outline and
transparent innards. That is what you should get when "Retain style"
is checked in the Tool Options palette. If you have something else
at home, the supplied preset probably got edited inadvertently.
Bring the office presets files home. You can find their locations in
File > Preferences > File Locations > Presets.

(I set all files in the Jasc\PSP 8 folder tree to read-only to
protect them from accidental editing. My own stuff goes into folders
under My Documents.)

Examine a preset callout with the Pen tool. You will see that it is
made with transparent stroke and black fill, using two contours
close together that define the
outline. Therefore a simple change of its Fill to white would make
the outline white, leaving the innards transparent.

If transparent will not do--you really need a solid white
inside--you could make your own from the Jasc one. Duplicate the
vector object. Activate the copy that is lowest in the Layer
palette. Change its Fill to white, then use the Pen tool to delete
its inner contour (double click any node on the inner contour and
press Delete). File > Export > Shape.

> Text
> Here again, I *always* want to use black text but the default on
> my PCs seems to be white text.

Activate the Text tool. Clear the check on "All tools" in the
Materials palette. Set Foreground and Stroke box to transparent and
the Background and Fill box to solid black. With "All tools"
un-checked, the Text tool will remember these settings.
--
Fred Hiltz, fhiltz at yahoo dot com

Ian McKay

2004-12-23, 12:17 pm

Thanks Fred - I'll give that a try this evening and see how it goes.

Ian

"Fred Hiltz" <not@home.ca> wrote in message
news:-PGdnbG9xf7jdFfcRVn-pA@adelphia.com...
> Ian McKay wrote:
>
> The callouts supplied by Jasc were made with a black outline and
> transparent innards. That is what you should get when "Retain style"
> is checked in the Tool Options palette. If you have something else
> at home, the supplied preset probably got edited inadvertently.
> Bring the office presets files home. You can find their locations in
> File > Preferences > File Locations > Presets.
>
> (I set all files in the Jasc\PSP 8 folder tree to read-only to
> protect them from accidental editing. My own stuff goes into folders
> under My Documents.)
>
> Examine a preset callout with the Pen tool. You will see that it is
> made with transparent stroke and black fill, using two contours
> close together that define the
> outline. Therefore a simple change of its Fill to white would make
> the outline white, leaving the innards transparent.
>
> If transparent will not do--you really need a solid white
> inside--you could make your own from the Jasc one. Duplicate the
> vector object. Activate the copy that is lowest in the Layer
> palette. Change its Fill to white, then use the Pen tool to delete
> its inner contour (double click any node on the inner contour and
> press Delete). File > Export > Shape.
>
>
> Activate the Text tool. Clear the check on "All tools" in the
> Materials palette. Set Foreground and Stroke box to transparent and
> the Background and Fill box to solid black. With "All tools"
> un-checked, the Text tool will remember these settings.
> --
> Fred Hiltz, fhiltz at yahoo dot com
>

Kris Zaklika

2004-12-23, 7:17 pm

Ian McKay wrote:
>
> PSP folks
>
> I use PSP 8.1 and have a couple of niggling problems:
>
> Shapes
> I use a variety of speech bubble "callouts" and *always* want a black border
> line and white fill.

The default callouts are white file and black outline. To
get the default colors check Retain Style when placing the
shape in your image. If Retain Style is unchecked then the
fill color will be that in the background swatch and the
outline color will be that in the foreground swatch.

> This seems to be the default on my office PC but is not
> consistent on my home machine (both line and fill are black).

You aren't using the same settings on the two computers.

> The fill color
> do not seem to tie in with either my foreground or background colors.

Sure it does. Pay careful attention to every setting you
are using when creating shapes.

> Text
> Here again, I *always* want to use black text but the default on my PCs
> seems to be white text.

The (fill) color of text will be whatever color you have
set in the background color swatch. The stroke or outline
color of text will be whatever color you have set in the
foreground swatch. However, you will only see the stroke
if you select a non-zero Stroke setting in the Tool Options
palette.

> I would like to 'default to white callouts with a black line, and black
> text.

You are getting the results you are getting because you are
not paying attention to the Tool Options settings and the
color settings at the time you apply shapes or text. These
settings exist so you can control the appearance of these
objects to be exactly what you want. Please take advantage
of them. The Help text expands on what I have written here.

> It looks like I could do a set of presets but given that I always want the
> same color combination , but use different callouts, this seems wasteful

PSP 8 shape presets do not save the name of the shape so
one preset will set the properties for all shapes you use.
In other words, there is no waste. PSP 9 saves the shape
name by default but in both programs you can create "sparse"
presets that save only those tool or filter properties that
you want, leaving the rest to assume the settings in effect
at the time you invoke the relevant command.

> (and because I see different results from my two PCs it does appear to be
> possible to set this up)
>
> I suspect I may be missing something here but I've had a pretty good look
> through the help file on also Google and I can't find the answer .

Maybe you haven't put across what you really have in mind.
Your post seems to suggest to me that somehow you feel that
the actual colors of objects you create occur at random and
that you have no control over them. However, this isn't the
case. How to create preset shapes as you want them to look
is described in Help > Help Topics > Contents > Drawing and
Editing Objects > Drawing Object. Text is covered in Help >
Help Topics > Contents > Working with Text.

> Any help appreciated.
>
> Thanks

Ian McKay

2004-12-24, 7:16 am

Kris
Thank you for your reply.
I *have* previously fiddled with the retain settings option, but didn't see
the result I expected - clearly my technique is somewhat faulty....

Together with Fred's earlier message I'll absorb what you both have told me
and try again.

"Kris Zaklika" <Kris.Zaklika@corel.com> wrote in message
news:41CB1BC0.FC3966A5@corel.com...[color=darkred]
> Ian McKay wrote:
border[color=darkred]
>
> The default callouts are white file and black outline. To
> get the default colors check Retain Style when placing the
> shape in your image. If Retain Style is unchecked then the
> fill color will be that in the background swatch and the
> outline color will be that in the foreground swatch.
>
>
> You aren't using the same settings on the two computers.
>
>
> Sure it does. Pay careful attention to every setting you
> are using when creating shapes.
>
>
> The (fill) color of text will be whatever color you have
> set in the background color swatch. The stroke or outline
> color of text will be whatever color you have set in the
> foreground swatch. However, you will only see the stroke
> if you select a non-zero Stroke setting in the Tool Options
> palette.
>
>
> You are getting the results you are getting because you are
> not paying attention to the Tool Options settings and the
> color settings at the time you apply shapes or text. These
> settings exist so you can control the appearance of these
> objects to be exactly what you want. Please take advantage
> of them. The Help text expands on what I have written here.
>
the[color=darkred]
wasteful[color=darkred]
>
> PSP 8 shape presets do not save the name of the shape so
> one preset will set the properties for all shapes you use.
> In other words, there is no waste. PSP 9 saves the shape
> name by default but in both programs you can create "sparse"
> presets that save only those tool or filter properties that
> you want, leaving the rest to assume the settings in effect
> at the time you invoke the relevant command.
>
be[color=darkred]
look[color=darkred]
>
> Maybe you haven't put across what you really have in mind.
> Your post seems to suggest to me that somehow you feel that
> the actual colors of objects you create occur at random and
> that you have no control over them. However, this isn't the
> case. How to create preset shapes as you want them to look
> is described in Help > Help Topics > Contents > Drawing and
> Editing Objects > Drawing Object. Text is covered in Help >
> Help Topics > Contents > Working with Text.
>

Kris Zaklika

2004-12-24, 7:16 pm

Ian McKay wrote:
>
> Kris
> Thank you for your reply.
> I *have* previously fiddled with the retain settings option, but didn't see
> the result I expected - clearly my technique is somewhat faulty....
>
> Together with Fred's earlier message I'll absorb what you both have told me
> and try again.

Come back and ask again if you still have problems.
You may find the Jasc User Forums to be a better venue
for questions http://www.jasc.com/community/forums/?

[snip]