Setting up Ani Shop and animating

Been PSP'n for some years now and I tend to forget that

some of you are just starting out and need things explained better

so I'm making this one to refer to for those

who are beginners with Animation Shop 3

First let's look at File - Preferences - General Program Preferences

Here are the settings mine is set too.

Paste after current

is this buttons function, you just hit it to add the next layers

behind your current one, every time you copy a new one

from PSP

View Animation

Hit this button to see the animation, and then go on to save it.

When you're ready to save an animation File - Save as...
hit customize... when you're on the box you see below

The only thing I might change on the 2 boxes you see below is to vary

between Optimized Octree and Optimized Median Cut (in the first bow below)

Depending on if the first save looks grainy I might try the other option

to see it it looks better.

Other than that you don't have to go in here every time you save

just hit Next on all the boxmessages you get in your saving process.

Think I've managed to cover most of the general things you need

to do my tuts ;)

If you have other things you need explained don't hesitate to ask

I might be able to help ;)

Manual color correction tool

I don't know why PSP have decided to keep this awesome tool

so well hidden and not out on the table where it belongs.

It's the tool to use when you want to change elements to whichever colour you might need.

Basically, its the tool you never knew you needed but absolutely love when you find it, and will wonder how you ever managed without it. 

This is the button I'm talking about 

If you don't have the Manual Color Correction button visible :-

On your toolbar go to View - Customize

On the Commands tab choose All Commands 

Scroll down the list of tools in the box & find the Manual Color Correction button

For easy use you can place into your toolbar, to do this:

With the box visible, as the previous screenshot,

Click on the icon with your mouse and holding it down, you can drag it out and place it where you like in your toolbar. 

This is where I've got mine

Now you know where it is, to use it just highlight the layer of the

element you want to colour change and click on the icon you've just placed

into your toolbar 

then you get this box

In this example I've used a greyscaled butterfly to show you 

I've had it in Effects - Photo Effects - Black and white film first 

(play around with the filter color and see what looks best there)

If the element has just one colour you don't need to greyscale it, 

but often when it has 2 or more colors you might struggle to get a colour you 

want without greyscaling it first.

On the image above you see I've picked a dark grey from the butterfly

and chose a green as Target colour.

(just rightclick on the butterfly to the left, the before shot, to pick source colour, 

play around with it, and you see the different results you get on the right, 

it's real fun )

If you have the tag you're working on beside the window

you can just click on a colour from your tag to pick it for your element.

When you find the colour you want to use, just click on the image to fix it into the source box and OK it.

Can't believe it took 3 years before I came over someone mentioning this

button, now I can't live without it !

Anything else you wonder about, just ask .