Technical data

Getting Started 9
Seven Key Concepts
If you’re new to photo editing programs, or perhaps have only worked
with a basic painting program like Microsoft Paint, a number of the
concepts in PhotoPlus may be new to you. Don’t be daunted! Many
thousands of artists have made the leap—the rewards are well worth it!
This section collects in one place some background material that will
hopefully provide a concise introduction and save you some “head-
scratching” later on. We recommend you read through it before racing
ahead to the rest of the chapter.
1 Image size and canvas size
Sometimes a tricky distinction if you haven’t encountered it before, it’s
an important one when working with digital pictures. You probably
know that image dimensions are given in pixels (think of pixels as the
“dots of paint” that comprise a screen image)—say, 640 wide by 480
high. If you want to change these dimensions, there are two ways to go
about it, and that’s where image and canvas come into
play. Changing the image size (I) means scaling the
whole image or just a selected region up or down.
Changing the canvas size (C) means adding or taking
away pixels at the edges of the image—rather like
adding a border around a mounted photo, or taking a
pair of scissors and cropping the photo to a smaller size. Either way,
after resizing, the image and canvas dimensions are once again identical.
2 Interacting tools and tabs
The Tools toolbar (see the PhotoPlus Toolbars and Tabs diagram later
in this chapter) is at the heart of PhotoPlus. Among its many offerings
you’ll find several basic painting/drawing tools, plus tools for erasing,
filling a region, and cloning a region (all covered in detail in Chapter 4).
As you try each of these tools, keep in mind that
the Tool Properties tab and Brush Tip tab
extend each tool’s functionality by letting you
customize its settings. Only with the aid of the
tabs can you choose a wide brush as opposed to a pencil point, or
experiment with the full range of effects each tool can command.