After listing all of those plugins, I thought it would be a good idea to show a few ways in which to use them. One of the projects I was working on recently was a sort of illustrated look, a little comic book, a little pop art. I have commercial filters which do some of these, but wrote up a tutorial that uses only free filters.



The filters you'll need for this are Xero's SuperSmooth, Xero's Lithograph, and Martin Koch's Dither FREE. This is the original image.

1. Apply the SuperSmooth filter. (All images are not created equal and may need different settings!)
2. This is the result.
3. Duplicate image to a new layer.
4. Apply the Lithograph filter to the duplicated layer, using the default settings.
5. Layer settings: Soft light at 100% opacity, and the image should look like this.
6. Merge layers, then duplicate merged image to a new layer.
7. Apply the Dither FREE filter at the default setting.
8. Layer settings can be: Burn at 50% opacity, Overlay at 50% opacity, Soft Light at 50% opacity, or Hard Light at 50% opacity.
9. Merge, save.

For a slightly softer look (as shown in the preview), duplicate the final image to a new layer, with the layer settings at Normal and 30% opacity. Then apply a Gaussian Blur set to 5 and adjust the brightness/contrast at 15/10.

( edited to add a few more... )

(( x-posted to icon_extras and psptutorials ))

Most colorizing tutorials I run across usually involve lots of layers, lots of erasing, and lots of coloring manually with the airbrush tool (like, oh, the tutorial I did here; which I should revisit one of these days.) Sometimes all that complicated stuff is the only way to achieve a desired result, but if you just have small areas to colorize or tint, it's easier to put the Lasso Tool tool to work.

To boost an existing eye color, use the Lasso Tool to select the irises of each eye, then increase the saturation level. No layers, erasers, or paint brushes required. (edited to add, you can also use the Retouch Tool, which I always forget about; it's easier to use in PSP 7 than PSP X, imo)

To tint selected areas of an image, use the Lasso and then Colorize. In both of the images below (much reduced from the working files, btw) I used the Lasso to draw around and select the lips, then went into the Colorize menu: Hue=5 / Saturation=50. I did the same for the eyes, with Hue=145 and the same saturation. (I used a round airbrush set at Hardness=0 and Opacity=20, with the color #cd5c5c to color the cheeks.)



(The original images looked like this and this; both downloaded from a public domain archive.)

I know PSPX has a saturation brush tip in the retouch tool bar, but I can never get the results to look the way I want them to (maybe I'm doing something wrong?)

( the rest inside... )

Quick and easy!

A companion to this post. I went hunting around in my computer for a bad-quality scan and this happened to be the first one I found (preliminary DMC4 Dante hitting a TV) so it gets the treatment. It may be easier to just find a nicer scan, but in the event there's nothing else available, it's really not that hard to correct problems like image compression artifacting, faded color, and graininess.

Before and After:


( the rest inside, with a couple screenshots )

My New Year got off to a great start when a bunch of middle school kids threw a football through the back of my van while my son was driving in town. Totally shattered the back window. Gaping hole, glass all over. The window people are coming today to fix it, thankfully.

Too bad my kid didn't catch the little brats or call the cops. Somebody needs at least a stern talking-to.

Anyway, I'm planning to post a series of quick tutorials on how to work with poor-quality images and enhance colors. All tutorials were made in PSPX and rely on the Smart Photo Fix feature, which isn't available in PSP7. The tutorial in this post shows how to improve a bad image and also how to approximate a faded, retro look.

Before/After:


( the rest inside, with a few screenshots )

When I have a little extra time, I'll try to recreate a few of these for PSP7. It is possible to create a similar effect using auto contrast/saturation and other tools, but it takes a few more steps.