Kaleidoscope KreatorTM Tutorial Series Adding a Photo in the Center (Paint Shop Pro)
Some kaleidoscopes end up with a hole in the center or an uninteresting pattern. Adding a photo to the center of the kaleidoscope not only fixes the problem, but adds additional interest. Adding a photo is best done after adding a border (see Adding a Border to a Kaleidoscope). When adding a photo in the center of a kaleidoscope, you can either use the same photo that you used to create the kaleidoscope or a different one. For this tutorial, we’ll continue with the kaleidoscope we used in the Creating a Hole and Adding a Border tutorials and add a different photo in the center:
Kaleidoscope that has already had the background color changed, center hole enlarged and borders added.
Photo to be placed in the center hole of the kaleidoscope.
1. Open the file that contains your kaleidoscope using either the File>Open menu command or the
File Browser. (If you have already changed the background color, enlarged the center hole and/or added a border, your kaleidoscope may already be open.)
2. Open the photo that you want to fill the center of the kaleidoscope with. You should now have both images (the kaleidoscope and the center photo) open and the center photo should be “active”, i.e. the window title bar is blue instead of gray and the photo is “on top”. (Fig. 1) (Hint: Clicking on the title bar of a window makes it active.)
Fig. 1
3. With the center photo will active, press Ctrl-A
on your keyboard to Select All. You should now see marching ants around the outer edge of the photo. (Fig. 2)
Then Ctrl-C to place the image in the copy buffer. (You won’t see anything happen at this point. You just have to trust that it’s there!)
image. The kaleidoscope window should now be on top and the title bar should be blue. (Fig. 3)
Fig. 3
5. Select the Magic Wand Tool from the Tools toolbar (Fig. 4a) and set the parameters in the Options
bar (Fig. 4b) to the following values:
Match Mode = RGB Value Tolerance = 5 Contiguous is checked Anti-aliased is checked
Fig. 1a – Tools toolbar
Fig. 1b – Options toolbar
The Match Mode determines what PSP looks at to figure out the selection. RGB Value selects pixels that match the red, green, and blue value of the color that you click on in the image. The Tolerance can be set to a value from 0-255; a low value selects colors very similar to the one you click on. Since we only want to select the white background, we set the value at 5. Contiguous selects only area which are connected; i.e. if there are any white areas in the kaleidoscope itself, they will not be selected (unless they are on the very edge.) Anti-alias will keep curves and diagonal lines looking smooth.
8. First we need to add a mask to the layer to define the center hole. Choose Layers>New Mask Layer>Show Selection. It will appear as though the photo has been “cropped” to the shape of the selection. (Fig. 7) Ctrl-D to turn off the selection. Again, don’t worry that the photo is not correctly sized or positioned. We’ll work on that next!
Fig. 7
9. If you want to resize or reposition the photo, you’ll need to use the Raster Deform Tool (Fig. 8) in
the Tools toolbar. To ensure that you resize the photo and not the mask, first make sure that the Raster 1 layer in the Layers Palette is highlighted (Fig. 9). If it isn’t, simply click on the layer labeled Raster 1 in the Layers Palette.
Fig. 8
Fig. 9
10. Once you have selected both the Raster Deform Tool and the Raster 1 layer, you will see that
the edges of the photo are defined by a dashed line with “handles” on the corners and the middle of the sides (Fig. 10) If you don’t see handles on all four corners, then your photo is probably outside of the image bounds. You can enlarge the window boundary by clicking and dragging on the lower right corner of the window (Fig. 11). If the window is too large to enlarge, use the Zoom Tool to reduce the viewing size of the kaleidoscope.
Fig. 10 – The Raster Deform Tool is active on the photo, but the corner handles are outside the boundary of the kaleidoscope image..
Fig. 11 – The image window was enlarged so that the corner handles are now accessible.
The corner handles are what allow you to resize the image. You simply click and drag on them to resize. But before you do, it is important that you understand the concept of aspect ratios. When resizing photos, you want to be careful to keep the aspect ratio the same, i.e. you want to keep the ratio of the width to the height the same. If you don’t, then the image in the photo will appear distorted. For example, in the photo above, if I were to only change the height of the photo (by click/dragging on the handle in the middle of the top or bottom edge), the photo would look a bit “squashed” (Fig. 12a & 12b).
Fig.12a – The original photo.
Fig. 12b – The photo after resizing just the height of the photo.
The Raster Deform Tool will let you resize and distort your photo just about any which way you can imagine. So in order to keep your photos safe from being distorted, we recommend that you follow two guidelines:
1. Make sure that you only right-click when resizing. This will maintain the aspect ratio.
2. Click only on the corner handles to resize the photo. If you click on the handles in the middle of the sides, you will distort the aspect ratio regardless of whether or not you are right-clicking.
Now you are ready to resize your photo! You can right-click and drag on the corner handles as many times as you wish to get your photo to the size you want it. If you need to move your photo, move the mouse pointer inside of the bounding box and then click/drag the photo to a different position. You can even rotate the photo by dragging the rotation handle (the square connected by a line to the rotation pivot point) to a new position. After resizing and repositioning the image in Fig. 11, the kaleidoscope now looks like Fig. 13.
Fig. 13 – The photo is now centered in the kaleidoscope.
11. At this point, all you need to do to complete this tutorial is to flatten the image with
Layers>Merge>Merge All (Flatten). Be aware that when you do this, you will no longer be able to edit just the photo in the center of the kaleidoscope. So be sure that you like the positioning of the photo before you flatten the layers. If for some reason you want to further modify the photo in the center, do it before you flatten the layers.
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