Paint Shop Pro

[Redrobes]

Arithmetic can be very useful. You can take two images and make another based on math between them. So for instance in the image below is the color texture and light map for some terrain. By multiplying them then the result is the ole shaded relief.

By using masks you can mask in stuff too. Although PSP mas masks as a feature I think its easier to use arithmetic. By using a combo of lightest, darkest, multiply and add you can mask in stuff or create extra effects over and above those in the effects menu.

[Redrobes]

Theres loads more but it would be like trying to write the whole manual to do it justice. I think PSP is a capable paint program. Its on par with Gimp and PS for basic mapping stuff though there's bound to be additional features which it lacks. If I had to start from nothing I would go with Gimp but as it is I know this app well and I don't see any need to change. If you have it then its not a big problem to stay with it.

Its not good for everything but then neither is Gimp and PS. As Johnn said its not easy to scale and rotate tokens on a map as easy as other apps like mine, MapTool, or DungeonForge for example so if you have a LOT of that to do like we do in mapping then its best to take the images into that and run from that instead. You wont need to have zillions of layers to ensure that you can keep modifying the image. For strong vector work I would go with inkscape too but my style is not very vector based.

[Redrobes]

Wade in with more stuff or ask questions and ill do my best. Heres my first one, Johnn whats the differences in UI and capability between this one and V8 ?

[Orville]

Looks like you have a great deal of it in detail.

I have V7. I hate and avoid the Arithmetic part. Use the program to create Perlin Clouds the hard way. I think there may have been a filter/effect that made clouds automatically, but it must have expired its free trial thing.

[Redrobes]

I use PSP for looking at images, loading and saving them in the very general image management kind of way. For actual image changing I cut stuff out of photos, color balance and do that stuff and I use the arithmetic bits quite a bit.

I use another program to generate my noise too. PSP noise effects are absolutely bloody awful. Still you can create a very small greyscale image, noise it up a lot then resample (bicubic) up 2x, maybe add a little blur then add more noise to it, resample up 2x again and keep going and eventually it makes for some good noise that way.

If you know of a good way to get cloud like noise in PSP then shout it out.

[Steel General]

Guys I found this plugin (see attached). It's actually for Photoshop but it worked in version 10 of PSP - not sure if it will work in older versions. It seems to work pretty well, and has several options which the standard FILTER > RENDER > CLOUDS (In Photoshop) doesn't have.

Here's a sample I created with it.

[Orville]

Still you can create a very small greyscale image, noise it up a lot then resample (bicubic) up 2x, maybe add a little blur then add more noise to it, resample up 2x again and keep going and eventually it makes for some good noise that way.

Basically that method, with layers and 50% Layer Opacity on each layer.

[Redrobes]

jfrazierjr jas asked me to show how I make maps with PSP but the thing is that generally I don't map with PSP. It isn't a dedicated mapping program and so some of the things I want to do for a map cant be done with a paint app - PSP, Gimp, Photoshop or any other. Or at least its a bit tedious to do it with them.

Below is what I use it for. I have created a mask for mud in my wooded village which is then put with others similar to it into my texture compositor to make the whole village terrain.

Another thing is taking photos and cutting out the color and alpha shapes out of the images to make up a token widgety thing. That is then put into my ViewingDale as a token and I put them on a map.

Either of these processes could have been done with PSP. You can take the mud mask and add it in as a mask layer with the mud texture and build it up. You would have many mask layers and texture layers to do it but it would work. Thats not quite as good as how I do it but its not all that tedious either.

You can also take the token B&W mask, scale and rotate it, position into the map and then use the mask layer or the arithmetic to black out a section on the map then you can take the color and do exactly the same but overlay the color in instead of masking with it and it will put that token down onto the map with full alpha blending. With V8 it seems to handle PNG's with alpha so thats half that work but even so for either of them that really is tedious.

By using a mapping app like ViewingDale, DungeonForge, MapTool or Dundjinni you can spend a little effort making the token but then its available at any time to put as many down as you want and in multiple maps. You can reposition and change its rotation instantly with no layer changes and no disruption to the pixels causing loss of quality. You can set the rotate center point instead of rotating at a corner. Also the scaling will be perfect every time. You can snap tokens to a grid and have the grid set in real world units. Also, with mine, you can build up hierarchies so that man can hold sword and sit on horse. Then horse, man and sword can go in and be positioned and rotated in one go instead of doing each man, each horse and each sword every time. To my mind, its a no brainer. Also, since the tokens can be made with maximum native resolution then we can just export a map at quadruple res for sending to GP for print and it will have that detail in it. If using a paint app then you only have the map at the resolution that you made the map in. If you wanted to be safe then you can make all your maps at high res but then you have to keep scaling everything down for other res scales. All this is bypassed with a mapping program. The absolute killer tho is when you want to put one map into another - like a map of an inn into a village. By keeping all the tokens outside of a raster then any changes to the inn are automatically updated to the village. That's a manual job in a paint package all assuming you have the village with layers holding the inn so that you can delete the inn and put a new version in.

PSP is a capable program for painting but I don't think that a raster paint app alone is the best way to map. That's my opinion of course and many people produce great maps with just a paint program.

[Orville]

Producing the Perlin Clouds, I Create an Image (1st image) with the Add Noise and Copy/Paste into a new image (2nd image-1st Layer). Go into the 1st image and resize 2x Copy/Paste as 2nd image's 2nd layer go into the 2nd Layer's properties make it 50% Opacity. Go back to the 1st image resize again at 2x, copy/Paste to 2nd image as 3rd layer also, make this Layer at 50% Opacity. Keep repeating all of this until you reach 6 Layers in the 2nd image. Then move each layers around in the image until you like the result. Merge layers.

Take notice that you only need 6 layers to make a Perlin Cloud Image.
Example is Here:Perlin Noise
Go down until it says: "Some noise functions are created in 2D"