General:
Formats
Relative Size
Color and Format

Microsoft Tools:
Photo Editor
Image Composer - The Working Environment
Image Composer - Colors and Effects
Image Composer - Layers and Sprites

Paint Shop Pro:
Introduction
Opening/Acquiring
Editing
Layering
An insertion example
A lettering example
Saving

Images Applied:
The Web
PowerPoint (animations)

Elsewhere on this site:
General Instructional Technology
Presentation/Web
Imaging
Sound
Video
Home

Images Using Microsoft's Tools:  Image Composer - Color and Effects

Color

Simple corrections of color problems can be accomplished using "Color tuning." The most common tools will be brightness and contrast, with which you can correct pictures that are too bright or too dark. Drag the slider to the right of the icon to change the value, and click "Apply" to see the results. If you don't like them, "Reset" returns the image to its original state before selection, and "Undo" under the "Edit" menu takes you back one step. The "Channels" selector allows you to choose which primary color category will be affected, though "All" will be your most common choice. Don't expect too much from these tools.  Bleached or dark pictures have less image information than correctly-exposed pictures, and this information can't be exactly recreated through color correction. But small corrections work fine. If your results will be going on a web page or other computer-displayed application, and visibility of detail is critical, it is best to view your images on several different computers, since brightness and contrast vary from hardware to hardware, and from user to user.

Color Brighness Color Contrast Color Hue Color Saturation

Creating transparency

So much of layering depends on areas of transparency, allowing images to show through gaps, and backgrounds to disappear. There are two ways to set transparency:

• Image Composer defines transparency as the absence of color, so you can designate transparent areas by simply eliminating deleting them through erasing (using the Paint tool), or bulk deletion (using the Shapes tool). 
• Save an image, a portion of an image, or a single layer/sprite, using the "Save for the Web..." option under “File.” You will be asked if you wish an area to be transparent, and then prompted to select a color as the transparency. When the image is brought back into the composition (or displayed in a Web page), the selected color will be transparent. 

Menu items

Color Selector	Many of the other menu items - shapes, many effects, text,  paint brushes - require pre-selection of a color. Double-click on the "Color Swatch" on the left tool bar, and select the color from the "Color Picker." You may pick a color by simply clicking on the palate, or by RGB number using the sliders. If you wish to select a color on an existing image, click on the color "Eyedropper", then click on the color you want to use. The selected color then appears in the "Swatch."
Shapes	See "Color Selector" above to choose the color of your shape. Along with the normal assortment of circles and squares, you many use this menu to insert any polygon or curved surface. The interior of the shape can be an opaque color, transparent, or anything in between ("Opacity"). Its edge may be hard or feathered. Tools are given to mark and change any point along a polygon or curved surface.
Effects	These provide a variety of filters adding special color effects or textures. There are dozens, some with changeable parameters  (the "Details" tab - see "Color Selector" above to choose the color of your effect). They are most effective in providing some distortion of the original image for artistic purposes, or to disguise the original contents.
Paint	See "Color Selector" above to choose the color of your paint effect. The "Paint" tool is where you go to touch things up - remove blemishes, add simple visual touches such as lines, etc. But it is much more than that. It provides tools that colorize, swirl ("vortex"), darken or lighten small areas ("dodge/burn), and a variety of other effects.  Experiment!
Text	Text is different than many of the other tools, since it actually adds a layer or sprite to the composition, which then can receive any of the other effects or menu items. Open the "text" menu, select the font, size and color (the text color is selected independently of the "Color Selector" above), drag/create a text window on the composition, and type in your text. The background of the text window will be transparent.
Texture Transfer	This tool can potentially produce some interesting and useful results, but it's unwieldy to use. It's perhaps misnamed - it's more useful as a shape transfer than anything to do with texture. It allows for the melding or attachment of two sprites in particular ways. Since this tool requires two sprites, you must select two using the shift key before the tool works. In general, select the image source first, and the sprite serving as the source of shape or other characteristic second, before applying the effect. An example of "Shape Transfer" follows . . .

	Two sprites are created/loaded - one a geometric shape, the other a picture . . .
. . . The shapes are superimposed, and both are selected by clicking on the picture, and then holding the shift key down while clicking on the star (order is important!) . . .
	. . . The opacity slider is pushed to 100, "Transfer Shape" is selected, and "Apply" is clicked . . .
. . . When the two sprites are again separated, the picture has assumed the shape of the star.