PSP8 Survival Kit: Page 3

3. The Tool Options Palette. A victim of the big revamp is the tool options box. To select our tools In V7, all we had to do was to click on an icon on the tool box and the tool options toggle button (see below).

Ahhh...the good old days ;-)

Now look at what we get........

And......

Pretty snazzy, huh? The new tool options offer never-before-seen-levels of customization in Paint Shop Pro; you'll be amazed at what you can do. Now when we choose a particular tool we don't just get a handful of options to choose from, we literally get dozens! But best of all, you can now save your favourite settings in the Presets box (see above, left). I suggest that what you do now is have a good play with it and try it out for yourself (if you haven't done so already that is. . .). Run your mouse up and down the tool palette (see left) and as you do so watch the tool options change in the bar above. You'll see you've got heaps of new goodies that give you more power and flexibility with each of the tools. This layout is now much more similar to the Photoshop interface. Notice the fly-out menus attached to several of the tools? (They're the tools with the little black arrowheads next to them, see left.) This is where you'll notice the biggest difference....the tools have (for the most part) all been re-labelled and regrouped. They're all still there (as well as some pretty cool new ones) so don't worry if you can't spot a particular tool at first; go hunting through those fly-outs and you'll be surprised at what you find! One great thing about them is that they are interchangeable. Want to keep the color replacer on the tool box itself, instead of being hidden away in the eye-dropper fly-out? Maybe you use it more than the eye-dropper, and it's more convenient for you to have it closer at hand? Just click on it once (whether you use it at the time or not) and it will replace the eye-dropper on the main toolbar. It will also change the tool icon in the new options bar above. All of the fly-out menus can be changed like this (see below). You'll also notice how several individual options are now rearranged in different groupings (i.e. click on the selection tool and you'll see the magic wand tool on the fly-out: that one is important to know because during the Beta testing many people complained to Jasc about how it had disappeared! No, it's still there....it's just hiding ;-) Another change is that the paintbrush tool fly-out now contains the airbrush tool, the humble arrow has now been renamed "Pan" (wasn't he some kind of flute playing goat?! ;-) and that's now where you'll find the zoom tool....and so on. The new toolbox fly-out menu

Also, here's an interesting tidbit: I know I've already mentioned this before, but with this new version of Paint Shop Pro, PSP is now beginning to resemble Adobe Photoshop more and more (see comparison for yourself, below....however, according to Jon from Jasc, PSP also had a tool options ribbon way back in V4):

I think the best way to get to know these new features and locations is to just play with them. Of course, there are many, many new tools and options on the tool palette, but we're not going to go into a great deal of depth about them here. I'll be showing you some of them later in a little more detail, and I will be offering a few tuts on some of the new tools at some point (wait til you check out the Preset Browser) However, I think all this is more than enough to take in for a first, introductory look, huh?

Buuuut....let's just check out one more important thing before we kiss goodbye to the tool bars and palettes for good (what do you mean you don't wanna kiss 'em?! I'm sure before too long, you'll be madly in love with all those amazing new features! ;-).