Technical data

Working with Paint and Text 45
The previous chapter described a variety of ways of working with
existing images—especially photographs, and usually on a single layer.
Now it’s time to look at creating elements from scratch, using the range
of PhotoPlus paint and text tools. Perhaps you need to add text to a
photo, along the lines of Chapter 2’s “cat” Hands-on Project. Or
perhaps you’re starting out with a blank canvas and want to try some
interesting graphic shapes and color combinations for a logo or custom
Web button.
Whatever your creative goals, all of the functions described in this
chapter can be applied to photographic images or images opened from
file as well as to new work!
Choosing Colors
At any given time, PhotoPlus allows you to work with any two colors—
called the foreground color and the background color. These are
always visible as two swatches on the Color tab. In this example, the
foreground color is set to black and the background color to white.
Here are some things to remember about how these colors are used:
♦ Cutting, deleting, or erasing an area on the
Background layer exposes the background color.
On other layers, removing an area exposes
transparency.
♦ To swap foreground and background colors, click
the double arrow next to the Color tab swatches.
There are a several simple ways to set the foreground or background
color.