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Tips for Cropping, Adjusting and Sharpening Photos in Paint Shop Pro

Paint Shop Pro is an inexpensive shareware paint package for Windows. You can download an evaluation version at the JASC web site.

The following tutorial was written for Paint Shop Pro version 5.

Tips for Creating Great Photos

You can scan or import a digital picture directly into Paint Shop Pro by selecting File/Import/Twain/Select Source from the Paint Shop Pro menu bar. Once you've selected the scanner or camera, you can then open your images by selecting File/Import/Twain/Acquire.

Cropping

Most pictures will initially need cropping, brightening, and sharpening. To crop an image in Paint Shop Pro, you will want to select the area you want to crop to using one of two methods:

You can use the Crop Tool to select the area you want to crop to. Then select the Crop Image icon from the Control Palette. If the Control Palette isn't open on screen, you can select View/Toolbars and select Control Palette.

You can use the Selection Tool to select the area you want to crop to, then use Shift+R to crop to the selected area.

Be bold with cropping! There's no reason why visitors to your web site should wait to download a picture that contains mostly background. The more you crop, the more focused your image will be.

Resizing

The next step is to resize the image. We recommend that you keep the image no larger than 200 pixels in any direction. Select Image/Resize. Change the width or height to the size you want to achieve, making sure that the Maintain Aspect Ratio box is checked.

Sharpening

As you can see from our example scan, the image still needs work. This is an antique book and the original cover is rough chipboard, but the image is still too dark. At this point, you might want to start working with copies of the image, so that you can experiment with different settings.

To make a copy of the image, select Edit/Copy, then Edit/Paste as New Image.

sharpened image Sharpen the image next. Select Image/Sharpen/Unsharp Mask.Change the amount of crispness in the image by increasing or decreasing the Radius amount.

Adjusting Brightness and Contrast

The next step is to brighten the image and adjust the contrast. Select Colors/Adjust/Brightness-Contrast. In most cases, you'll just need to adjust the Contrast slider. Because this image was so dark, I also adjusted the Brightness. The last step will be to save this image.

Saving the File for the Web

Photographs always save as smaller file sizes and better quality using the JPG file format. Select File/Save As, and select JPG. Remember when you're saving web graphics that you'll make your life much easier if you always use lower case, and never use symbols (like *&%?#) in your file names. Remember to include the .jpg file extension in the file name. Our example image is named book4.jpg and the final file size is just 8K.

Commerce Solutions | Photo Tips