This week we covered the use of the Flood Fill tolerance and opacity settings, then went on to work with the Mesh Warp tool and finally used the VM Filters to create effects on our images. A very involved series of lessons but I sure learned a lot!

The image below shows what happens when you change the tolerance level before flood filling an image.

Next we went on to work with opacity and at first I assumed our instructor meant the opacity of the layer - WRONG! Anyhow I am including my examples as it's interesting to see the different way opacity in layers works from opacity with the flood fill tool. First the three images I did using different levels of opacity in the layer slider. I then added another layer, moved it to the bottom and filled it with white before merging visible. This kept the colour of the reduced opacity layer as pure as possible.

Next onto the use of opacity with the flood fill tool:-

And finally some background fills using 50 per cent opacity and different gradients with the same colour for the background.

And finally a special - I love to add textures to my background fills to give a 3D effect. The colours were not a filter but were one of the bitmap patterns which comes with PSP.

Next we went on to play with the Mesh Warp tool - yes Rollie you may add my Max to your collection!

And then we went on to play with the Warp Brush - I used a sparkle tube I created recently with PSP 8 and if you click on the white image you can download it and use it as you wish. It is not in a Zip file so you don't need to unzip it before you can use it. The border of the sig image is the Spirograph VM Filter.

Finally my favourite exercise - playing with filters! First the original photo.

I applied Radial Pox to this one.

To this one I applied Origami Radial Folder, Kaleidoscope and Deep Crunch.

To this one I applied Pins and Needles, Mosaic Ripple and Round and Round.

Finally this picture was treated to the Psychedelic filter, then I selected a circle using the Selection tool and applied Crystal Ball the ball appeared a few pixels in from the edge of the selection. Finally I played with the Pearl's Girl filter to draw the green star - a very ugly final result but quite amazing to watch the changes take place.