Using the Materials Palette

With Paint Shop Pro you can paint, draw, and fill with a variety of colors, styles, and materials: solid colors, gradients, patterns, and textures. A style is the color, gradient, or pattern. A material is the style plus the optional texture. You select materials on the Materials palette.

In general you use foreground materials for brush strokes and background materials for fills. When you paint with a raster brush, right-clicking the brush paints with the background material, and for fill tools, left-clicking fills with the foreground material. When using the Art Media tools, the current foreground color is used to apply pigment in the Mixer palette. For text and vector shapes, the foreground color is the stroke (or outline) of the text or shape and the background color is the fill of the text or shape.

About the relationship between the Material and Color boxes: Since you can select colors by clicking the Material boxes, you may wonder why the Materials palette includes Color boxes too. With the Foreground or Background Color box, you can select a new color even when the Material box displays a gradient or a pattern. The Color boxes provide a quick way to change colors without changing the other parts of the material.

In general, it's best to select the tool you want to use, select the color/material on the Materials palette, set the other tool options, and then use the tool.

Note that when using the Art Media tools, some functionality of the Materials palette is disabled.

The main components of the Materials palette:

Frame tab This is the first tab across the top. It displays an outer Hue rectangle and an inner Saturation rectangle, as well as a strip containing white, three shades of grey, and black. You can drag the vertical slider to adjust lightness, and drag the horizontal slider to adjust saturation.

Rainbow tab This is the second tab across the top. It displays the Available Colors panel, where you can click to select a color. At the bottom of the tab you can click to select white, black, or three shades of grey.

Swatches tab Displays swatches, which are materials you can save to use again. For more information, see Working with Swatches.

Foreground and Background Color boxes Display the current foreground or background color.

Foreground and Background Material boxes Display the current foreground or background material (the style color, gradient, or pattern plus the texture).

Style button Specifies which style is currently selected, color , gradient , or pattern . To change between the most recently selected color, gradient, or pattern, click the Style button and select a new style. To define a new color, gradient, or pattern, click a Material box. Note that these options are disabled when using the Art Media tools, which only use the solid color style.

Texture button Turns the current texture on or off. To choose a new texture, click the Foreground Material box or the Background Material box.

Transparency button Specifies whether the foreground or background material is transparent (in other words, it has no style or texture). You use a transparent material primarily with vector objects and text. A transparent foreground has no outline (the objects or letters are filled only) and a transparent background has no fill (the objects or letters are outlined only). This button is unavailable for tools that require a foreground or background material.

All Tools check box If the check box is marked, the selected foreground and background materials apply to all tools. If the check box is cleared, the selected materials apply only to the active tool (such as the Paintbrush tool or the Preset Shapes tool).

Note: The All Tools check box does not apply to the Edit Text command.

Using the Materials Palette

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