About Richard Moose Expertise I can answer any question about using Paint Shop Pro including, but not limited to, how to make fancy lettering, how to use layers, how to use gradients and textures, how to make 3D effects, how to make animated gifs, how and when to use vector graphics, how to choose the best format for your graphics, how to understand all the options and tools, how to retouch photographs, how to find and use filters, how to correctly understand resolution, dpi, and display size. I can answer all questions about graphics for different applications such as logos, magazines, the web, newspapers, flyers, brochures, and I have extensive knowledge of high resolution 3D graphics for posters and other types of promotional materials. I`ve used Paint Shop Pro to create video and film titles and credits as well as using it for "post production" fine tuning of graphics made with other applications like Bryce, Poser, and Maya.
Experience I've been using Paint Shop Pro for ten years, starting with version 2.0 and continuing through all releases up to the most current release. I've used it to create graphics for many personal and commercial websites as well as for print publications and film and video titles. I've been helping people use Paint Shop Pro and answering questions about it for over 8 years in my capacity as a Community Leader at a well known web building site and as an expert at question and answer sites on the web. I love helping people use this excellent program!
Expert: Richard Moose Date: 7/22/2005 Subject: Modifying and improving picture quality in PSP 5 and PSP 7
Question
As for making the picture larger, this needs to be done optically by the scanner. You can't really do it in PSP. I have scanned thousands of times, but was not aware that you can do this. How do I make rhe picture larger optically. You said increasing a picture in PSP does nothing because all you are increasing is ht eexixting information while adding no additional information, As a result you get a picture of lesser quality, because you are not increasing the number of pixels How are hyou increasing th enumber of pixels here, Do yuo get as good or better a picture using this method.
You spoke of PSP 8 and PSP 9 doing what I need to do. You see for example I will put my friends head on anther persons body woth his permission. The problem the color of his head and the body his head is going on never seem to match. Will PSP 9 or 8 do this so that the two match. How is this done. Which is better PSP 8 or PSP 9. I am looking at upgrading, which one do you recomend. I am a log time PSP 5 user and a short time PSP 7 user.
I appreciate your help,
God Bless,
Don Crosby Jr.
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Followup To
Question -
Hi,
I have some older 3x5 pictures from a trip I took with friends. The pictures are from the mid 80's and still in very good shape. I want to scan them on my scanner suing PSP 5 or PSP 7 then improve the picture quality and make a photo qua;ity copy of some of these pics for a friend. For example in one picture a friend is standing on a hill facing the camera, She is 3/16 high versus the 3 and a half inch height of the picture. I want to scan her so that she is clear as a bell so that you can see her face and smile as well as all other body details very clearly.
Can this be done so that I get the results stated above. What DPI do you reccomed that I use for this, and how big a picture can I make so that it is clear. Also any filtering setting that you would reccomend, or other suggestions in this process. Also a non related couple of questions. If I have a blue hood that I use the eye dropper on to get the RGB HSL values of the blue hood. If I have another object that I want to makethat same color blue, it is currently red. If I use the RGB HSL values above into the item that is red. Why does it not come out the same color as th eblue pixel from th ecar. Any way to make that happen.
Answer -
Hello Donald,
When you scan the originals, you want to use the highest dpi setting possible on your scanner. This will give you the best possible results when you try to manipulate the images digitally.
It is difficult to talk about "quality" because it means different things to different people in different situations. So I prefer to talk about what you can actually do and let you decide for yourself if it has anything to do with what you mean when you say quality.
The first thing to remember is that digital images are really just information and image editors cannot add information to a picture. They can only manipulate the information that is already there. That is why you need to scan at as high of a resolution as possible. You can improve the look of a picture by removing scratches, but that isn't adding quality, it is removing some of the information. Filters do exactly what you would expect from their name; they remove (or filter) information.
As for making the picture larger, this needs to be done optically by the scanner. You can't really do it in PSP. You can resize the image to a larger size, but what you are really doing is spreading the information you have over a larger area. You will need to experiment and see how much larger you can make it and still have what you consider to be acceptable quality. Do as much as you can with the scanner first.
As for changing the color of a car, that is the sort of thing that needs to be done with the Color menus. I'm afraid I only keep one version behind the current version, which means I only have versions 8 and 9 currently on my system, so I can't walk you through the menus, but if you look in the Color menus and play with the different utilities, you will find what you need. In PSP 8 and 9 it is "Adjust" -> "Hue and Saturation" -> "Hue Map". Changing the Hue Map will make global changes to the image colors, or you can use the Selection tools to select only the area you want to change.
I hope this helps. Please feel free to ask follow-up questions as needed and especially if I didn't cover well enough any of the issues you are concerned about.
Answer Hello Don,
Some scanners can enlarge by the use of a lens, or you can take the picture to some place like Kinkos or a photo developing place and they can enlarge it for you. This is done with lenses and not with software and so the result is different. Then you can scan the larger picture normally.
If you scan a picture at 1200 x 1200 dpi then you *can* enlarge it without a loss of quality to a smaller resolution. Most people see no difference between a picture printed at 130 dpi and a picture printed at 1200 dpi, so by decreasing the resolution, you can increase the size. Play with the settings in the Resize utility and you will see what I mean.
I highly recommend that you upgrade to PSP 9. It has skin tone presets that will greatly help you to match skin color. Often they work fine as is or if they don't produce an exact match, they get you much closer so that fine tuning is easier.
Good luck, and as always, feel free to ask follow-up questions as needed.
