This week we considered Tubes, Layers, Preset Shapes and the Pen tool. First we considered the different effects of setting tubes to Continuous or Incremental, random or not.

Next we went on to play with Sharpen and Hue effects and to make web page bars. I went on to make some sig tags using these effects to enhance the tubes.

Here we studied the use of Layers and the different ways of resizing.

Before anyone asks, I nearly always sign images I make and end up using them as sig tags even if they weren't originally intended for that purpose!!!

The next section of the lesson covered preset shapes - in the top left hand one I used Eye Candy 4000 to bevel the shapes and Flaming Pear Glitterato and Aetherise to create the background. All of the other effects were native to Paint Shop Pro; the bar in the top right hand one was created by using Retain Style and drawing a button on seven different layers, positioning them with the Mover Tool, using the Plastic Inner Bevel and then adding a Drop Shadow. I merged visible then added a button bar underneath on a separate layer, positioned it and bevelled it.

Finally we covered the use of the Pen Tool. The only crash I experienced with PSP was with the use of this tool; at one point it shut down unexpectedly on me - I think I ran out of RAM because when PSP starts up I have around 40-50% RAM free and I had been working on the lessons for a couple of hours at that point. However all of the effects I used to finish the images were found within Paint Shop Pro and were not achieved with the use of third party filters with the exception of the centre top one where I enhanced the line and text with Super Blade Pro.