Computer Times
For the Beginner
Having Fun With The Paint Program
Since this issue's focus is "Having Fun With Your Computer," we thought we'd help you have fun with the Paint accessory that comes with Windows.
The Paint accessory in Windows 95/98 (called Paintbrush in earlier Windows) is a fun product. There are enough drawing features included in the product to help almost anyone become an artist.
Paint and Paintbrush allow you to create much more than simple stick figures and round smiley faces. Using Paint, you can create some very sophisticated artwork, as shown in the example at left. While this may look rather difficult to create, let's look at a few tricks you can use.
The image at left was created, using Word 97, by selecting the menu item Insert/Picture/Clip Art. Then copy the image by clicking on it and then on Edit/Copy.
You can also make an image of whatever is showing on your screen; simply press the Print Screen key (at the top right of your keyboard). This will make a copy of whatever is on your screen and put it on the Windows clipboard.
Then, in Paint, Paintbrush, or any other Windows drawing package, select Edit and Paste. This will paste the screen image you captured with Print Screen into your drawing package. This is a great way to make screen images for training purposes. If you browse the World Wide Web, try to do this with some of your favorite Web sites. I make images of Web sites to use in my presentation graphics for seminars on the Internet.
Once you've captured an image or drawn one of your own in Paint, you can go to a close up view of the actual pixels (the little dots that make up the image) to change them one at a time. This lets you do some very detailed editing.
To do this in Windows Paintbrush, you select the View menu and choose Zoom In. The cursor will change to a movable rectangle. Place the cursor over the area you want to magnify and click the mouse button. You can then use the left mouse button to change a pixel to the foreground color, and the right mouse button to change a pixel to the background color. To return to the full image, you select the View menu and choose Zoom Out.
In Windows 95/98 Paint, you select the View menu, and choose Zoom/Large Size, then again choose the View menu and choose Zoom/Show Grid. This will place you in a magnified view of your image where you can use all the standard drawing tools (pencil, brush, airbrush, etc.) You can also scroll up or down and side to side to view any portion of your image in this magnified view. If you want an even closer view, you can select the View menu and Choose Zoom/Custom; then, select up to 800 times the standard image size.
If you outline a specific image in Paint by using the Outline tool at the top right of the tool palette, you can then click on the Image menu and choose to Flip, Rotate, Stretch and Skew your image. In the example at right, we made a copy of the image and flipped it horizontally to face the original image. The Stretch and Skew can create all sorts of cool effects.
If you need more help, click on the Help menu. With a little practice, you will soon find yourself having a lot of fun with these programs.
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Till next month . . . Happy Computing! J