The PSP7 Toolbar

PSP7 Basic Class:  After customizing your toolbar, do a screen capture of it to turn in.  The Screen Capture tutorial is linked on the bottom of the page.  Use your email name followed by the word toolbar.  Example:  mine would be glori_toolbar.gif.

Customizing your toolbar is very important.  It gives you quick and easy access to the features you use the most.  So instead of searching through the drop down menus, you just click your icon for the function you are performing.  I have my resolution set to 800x600.  If you are one of those, you can add many icons to your toolbar, but.........don't overload it with things you only use sometimes.  Try to limit it to the functions you perform time and time again.  Keep in mind that this is my toolbar and suited to my uses.

Let's look at the first half of my toolbar.  I try to group my icons in an order that goes together and makes logical sense.  So starting from the left, I have New, Open and Save as the first three icons. I'm either making a new transparent image, or opening a saved image or saving my current image.  That's why I have those three grouped together.

The next group is Copy, Paste As New Image, Paste As New Selection, Paste Into Selection, Cut, Paste As New Layer, Toggle Layer Palette.  All of these functions have something to do with the copying and pasting of things.  Well, technically speaking, the Layer Palette doesn't do any of those things, but I use it often along with the Paste As New Layer.  So it seems logical to put the Layer Palette right after Paste As New Layer.

Since I'm doing all the copying and pasting, it then seems logical to have my Undo and Redo next.  I undo a lot of things!  Almost  in the middle of my toolbar is the Browse.  It is usually the first thing I click on after starting PSP up.  I want to get back into the last folder I was working in.  So being in or near the very middle makes sense to me.

To the right of the Browse is Gaussian Blur and the Unsharp Mask.  Why the Gaussian Blur?  It's what I use all the same to soften borders and things after Expanding or Contracting Selections.  Why the Unsharp Mask?  That is the sharpen method I use most of the time.  It gives me the best results with the least amount of image spotting.  If you have done any of my tutorials, you will note that I almost always give directions for this Mask.  There are times I do use Sharpen, just not that often.

Next is Brightness/Contrast.  It is normally found under Color/Adjust.  It is the one single color adjustment that I make all the time.  The next three all go together.  I feel you have to have these on your toolbar:  Select All, Deselect, Invert Selection.  You will see deselect and invert selection constantly in one of my tutorials.  The next two are also used very often:  Flip, Mirror.

Ok, here we go, the must haves!  Toggle Tool Palette, Toggle Tool Options Window, Toggle Color Palette.  The first and last, tool palette and color palette, are ones I will toggle off when I want more work space.  But the middle one, Toggle Tool Options Window, is extremely important to be able to get to in any tutorial.

The next four icons all go together also: View Transparency, Set Transparency, Decrease Colors to 256, Increase Colors to 16 million.  I have a special tutorial called File Saving that will state that you must have three of these icons on your toobar.  So I won't repeat all that here, just visit the tutorial.  It will help you a lot!

Finally.......I put the Toggle Effects Toolbar, Acquire, Current Image Information and Question.  That Effects Toolbar is my extra toolbar below my first one.  I don't use it all the time, so I put a toggle so I can remove it easily when I need more room.

I've liked having this second toolbar around.  I also tried to set it up so that it made good working sense.  The first few icons deal with 3D Effects: Drop Shadow, Inner Bevel, Outer Bevel, Buttonize and Cutout.  Next is the Circle Deformation followed by the two Illumination Effects which I use quite often, Lights & Sunburst.  I didn't want to put all the Effects on the toolbar, so I think I chose wisely with Patterns, Sculpture, Sandstone, Blinds & Texture.  The next two deal with Color; Colorize and Grey Scale.  I end up my first half with Add Border and Add Picture Frame.

For my second half of the extra toolbar, I start off with a collection of Layer shortcuts.  First is New Vector Layer.  Next, it's useful when working in Vectors to have the Paste as Vector Selection.  That is followed by Convert to Raster Layer. I've found it very helpful to have Bring to Top, Move Up, Move Down, Send to Bottom, on here.  I just click and it's done.  I finish up layers with Merge Layers & Merge Visible.

My next batch of shortcuts all deal with Text. Edit Text, Fit Text to Path, Convert Text to One Shape, Convert Text to Curves.

At the very end I have Contract Selection and  Expand  Selection.  Those are used often in tutorials.

This is the window that will come up.  Standard Toolbar will be checked, and Customize may be grayed out.  To change that, click on the check mark next to Standard Toolbar.  Customize will pop up.  Recheck Standard Toolbar and then click on Customize.

Important tip from Robin of Graphics by Robin!  She found the way to save the Workspace so it can be backed up and loaded if you have to reinstall PSP.  Go to File/Workspace.  Here is where you both Save and Load a Workspace file.