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

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Images Using Microsoft's Tools:  Image Composer - Layers and Sprites

Layers and Sprites

Better-quality image editing applications provide for the possibility of layers. Image Composer calls its layers "sprites," and a variety of sources of sprites are available. The sprites/layers are maintained separately, and can be altered individually or in groups by any of the effects and tools available on the toolbar, as long as the composition stays in the ".mic" format. Sprites in separate layers can be moved and overlapped as separate items. This is how collages are made, and how images can be overlaid onto different backgrounds (for instance, placing a person's head on the body of someone else, and then placing the results on the moon).

Inserting Sprites

Use the "Insert" menu to import images as separate layers or sprites. Sprites can also be cut and pasted from other image sources, including the Internet, parts of Word documents, or any other application offering "Copy" as an option. Drag-and-drop also works. From File... Browse to any image file. From Photo CD This requires a Kodak format Photo CD in the CDROM drive. Button... This is a wizard. You select a pre-constructed button image from a list with preview, and then are prompted for the text which will appear on its surface. These are intended to be used as menu icons for Web hyperlinks or such. Clip Art... This connects you with all the Microsoft clipart galleries installed on your computer. Unlike other Microsoft applications (including FrontPage), applications, Image Composer automatically makes transparent the white space surrounding clipart images.  Word Art... Just like in Word or Excel!

Ordinary text can also be a sprite - see Color and Effects/Text for how to insert this. 

Sometimes you want only a portion of an image in your composition. Image Composer offers several ways to extract portions of images into new sprites. The crudest is to crop an image by resizing the canvas, and saving the results. It works, but "Cutout" gives a much easier and faster method.  First open the "Cutout" dialog box by clicking on the icon. Two methods of extracting images are provided - "Cutout Tools" which uses shapes to select portions of an image, and "Select Color Region" which uses colors and color boundaries to select portions of an image. Which you choose depends on how complex an image you have - very color-complex images yield best to cutout shapes, whereas clipart and other simple images work best with color regions. As always, experimentation is the key!

Cutout tools:	Color Regions
Select a shape. Rectangles and ovals are more-or-less fixed in shape, whereas curves and polygons are much more flexible, and can be further altered by adding drag points along the boundaries and dragging them.	Click on the color region tool.
Use the shape to select the area you wish to cut out.	Click on the parts you want to be a part of your new sprite. It is helpful, of course, if colors are uniform. Select "Global" if you want all occurrences of the color to be included, "Local" if not.
Click the cut out button, and a separate sprite is created which is a copy of containing everything inside the shape. Clicking "Erase" simply removes everything inside the shape.	Click the cut-out button, and a separate sprite is created a copy of containing everything colored blue. Clicking "Erase" simply removes everything blue.

Once the new sprite has been pulled from the original image . . .
	. . .  it can be edited and moved like any other. It can be copied . . .
. . . and pasted many times . . .
	. . . to produce a simple collage.

You move any sprite by clicking on it and dragging it. Remember that sprites have invisible parts, so make sure you have selected the sprite you intend to move - it will have a rectangle around it, and the small squares will appear.  If you can't reach one of your sprites, <Tab> cycles through them one at a time.

Selecting more than one sprite is possible by holding the <Shift> key down while clicking - it is then possible to move several at the same time, maintaining their relationship as you do. If you wish to keep several grouped together, use menu option "Arrange/Group". "Flatten" permanently places the various selected sprites onto the same layer, whereas "Group" can be "un-grouped."

Since your sprites are really layers, one can cover another. The top layer - the layer that covers everything else in the composition - is the last one created, so the "order" (the hierarchy of layers - which covers which) is determined by the order in which they were created. You can change the order by selecting a sprite, and choosing an option from the "Arrange" menu.

Remember that sprites (or groups of sprites - use the <Shift> key) can be changed using the tools in Colors and Effects, just as whole images can.