One of the features that I really like about Paint Shop Pro is called Picture Tubes. What this clever invention allows you to do is define an object with one or more graphic images, all the same size. You can then select that tube and click it anywhere in a graphic, depositing one of the pictures at the location where you click. It's a great way to get some random images on a similar theme added to your graphic.
For example, you could create a "butterfly" tube with a hundred images of different butterflies. Now if you want to create a graphic with butterflies you only need select the tube and click around, adding a different butterfly each time.
You can do things like add flowers to a scene or place a few spiders around a picture. You can also fill a pond with frogs, an aquarium with fish or a mountain with animals.
A picture tube contains a set of related objects. For example, a "stars" picture tube might contain a dozen stars, each different, or a "spiders" tube might contain 30 spider pictures.
You can create picture tubes easily using Paint Shop Pro 6.
Using
picture tubes is easy also. You simply choose the picture tube tool from
the toolbar, set a few options if you want and click on your picture. An
image from the picture tube will be placed wherever you click.
An example of the "Tool Options" which you can select for picture tubes is shown above. As you can see, you can select the scale (size) and step (which determines how far apart images are placed when you click and hold).
For an example of using picture tubes, lets suppose you created a blank graphic 400 X 400 pixels in size. You want to populate the image with Easter eggs, so you choose the "PaintedEggs" tube from the "Tool Options" menu. Now, just click around the blank image that you created until you have the desired number of Easter eggs.
Perhaps the really cool thing about picture tubes is that many other people have spent large amounts of time creating wonderful tube collections. Use some of these and you will be able to easily create some incredible graphics with virtually no effort.
Unless otherwise noted, all photos and text is Copyright © Richard G Lowe, Jr.