With Paint Shop Pro 6 came several new image effects
one is the Picture Frame. You can add your own frames to
this by simply opening an image of a frame and if
necessary make a few minor modifications and save it to
your \Frame folder in your Paint Shop Pro 6 folder or any
where you like in Paint Shop Pro 7. I have listed below some
of the modifications that might be necessary to prepare a
frame picture for saving.
First open your image and make sure it is on a
layer. You will also only want one layer for the
whole image. If the area in the center of the
frame is not transparent then use the wand or
some other selection method to remove this area
and make it transparent. Once this is done you
should have something similar to Fig. 1 below.
Fig. 1
Now you can save this as a *psp format file with
the extension *.pfr in your \Frames folder. You
can set up PSP to save a *psp file with the
extension by going to File > Preferences >
File Format Associations and find psp. Now click
the Extensions button and add pfr, click on OK
then OK again and it is all set for you. Now when
you save, just select *psp as the file type and
type in your name plus the .pfr extension. Once
saved it will appear in your frame list right
away, usually at the very bottom of the list.
Oval frames you will need to add a selection mask
for the frame and save it to an alpha channel. To
do this first get your frame setup as above and
you should then have something like Fig. 2.
below.
Fig. 2
Now we need to make a selection so select the
transparent area outside the frame with the wand
as show in Fig. 3. Now simply do Selections >
Invert and then Selections > Save to an Alpha
Channel. All that is left to do is save your
frame as a *pfr file in your frames folder as
described above.
Fig. 3
Now when you use this frame, you will be prompted
to use the a color, foreground color, background
colors or transparent that will be used for the
area out side the selection.
NOTE: Joe has some frame sets available for download on Nightingail's
download
page that are free for personal use.
