In This Lesson We Will Cover: the Features of Microsoft Paint Making A
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In this lesson we will cover: The features of Microsoft Paint Making a simple drawing using Paint Add text to a drawing Other commands in Paint The difference between painting and drawing programs Learn to draw Somewhere on your computer you have a small program called Microsoft Paint. It is not a highly complex program as for example, Adobe Photoshop, but is ideal for learning the basics. Before we start looking at Paint, it is important to distinguish between the two kinds of graphics programs you can have on your computer. Paint is ….well – a paint program. This means that everything you draw on the paint screen is merged into everything that is already there – exactly like painting on a canvas with real paint. When you add something new, you can’t move it or distinguish it from the background in any way. The other kind of graphics program is a drawing program. It is a tech drawing tool or CAD program and works in an entirely different way. Everything you draw in a drawing program remains as a separate object on the screen and you can go back and change it at any time no matter how much you have added since. It is like sticking objects on to a magnetic board. You can always unstick them again and move them around. So back to Paint, the painting program.Here are some pictures created using Paint (but not by me): Features of Paint Inspired? Ask your computer to find Paint and open it. It may not look exactly like this as they seem to have updated it at some time, but all these features will be there. Select allows you to work on a section of your painting and anything you do within the selection lines does not affect the rest of the painting The toolbox contains your drawing tools: Use the pencil for freehand drawing. You can choose the width of the pencil with the line size. The Fill tool lets you fill a shape with colour – make sure the space you are filling is completely enclosed by a line or you will fill your entire screen. Add text lets you add labels to your painting. Eraser rubs out what you have drawn. You can change the width of the eraser with line size. Colour picker lets you click in an area of your painting and match the colour in that area Magnifier lets you zoom in on a section of your painting. Brush lets you choose from a selection of brushes: Let’s try drawing a simple graphic that we are going to use as a logo. A simple drawing 1. Click the rectangle shape in the auto shape box then click the line size you want and click a colour in the palette. Draw a rectangle in the centre of the Paint screen. To do that, left click on the screen where you want the top left corner of the rectangle to start and then drag towards the bottom right corner where you want it to finish. Then let go the mouse button. 2. Fill the rectangle with grey by clicking first on the fill tool, then on the colour you want and then inside the boundary of the rectangle. 3. Now draw a second rectangle under the first and also fill that with grey: 4. Next click on the rounded rectangle shape and black outline and draw another rectangle inside the large one. If it’s not already done, fill the new rectangle with white. 5. Select the line tool in the auto shape box and divide the inner rectangle into four by drawing two lines. Click where you want the line to start and don’t let go the mouse until you have the point where you want it and it is straight. Remember CTRL-Z will undo the last thing you did so you can repeat the line drawing until it is just about correct. My vertical line isn’t in the centre and projects into the grey at the top. 6. Make the new rectangles four different colours using the palette and the fill button in the tool box. 7. You can change any of the colours you don’t like by using the fill tool again and a different colour. If you find the colour bleeds into another section it means that the lines don’t meet and colour is running through the gap. Go back and re-draw the line that does not meet. 8. There you have it! A simple drawing. Adding text Now we can add some words to the logo. 1. Click on the text button (capital A in the tool box) and then click on the drawing where you want the text to appear. You should see a text toolbar where you can select a font, font size, font colour and whether you want it to be opaque or transparent. You will also see a dotted rectangular text box where you clicked. This is where your text will appear. 2. The text box will get longer as you add text or you can make it wider by dragging the handles with the mouse. Or you can move it somewhere else on your screen. Once you are happy with the placement of the text box, choose a font and its characteristics and type your text. (I’m not too sure about this firm’s colour sense!) Painting in detail Paint’s magnifier tool lets you zoom in so that the picture is magnified 8 times. Instead of smooth images, now you can see little blocks called pixels. At that magnification, you can modify your picture one pixel at a time. It is useful for touching up details in an image. If you look carefully at my logo above you will notice that the vertical line in the centre is a little bit too long. Let’s see what happens when I zoom in on that part of the picture: Now you can clearly see the bit of the line that is sticking up into the grey. To get rid of it: 1. Use the Magnifier tool to zoom in on a section of your drawing.Or you can drag the sliding scale at the bottom right of the screen. 800% is the largest zoom. 2. Click on the eyedropper icon for the colour picker and then click on the grey area in the drawing. This will select grey as the colour the pencil or brush you will use 3. Click on the pencil tool and then click on the black pixels. They will change to grey. If you intend painting that Mona Lisa you will need techniques like this. Cut, copy, paste You will notice in the top left of the screen or in the edit menu, you can cut, copy and paste. It is not only words that you can copy, but also pictures or parts of pictures. 1. Use a selection tool to select part of your drawing. Notice that the Cut and Copy buttons on the top left are now active and no longer ‘greyed out’. 2. Choose copy to copy the part of your drawing you have selected. 3. Choose a blank area of the screen and choose ‘Paste’. 4. The pasted part appears inside the selection tool and can be resized or dragged anywhere on the screen. 5. When you are happy with where it is, click anywhere outside the selected area and the copy will be permanently added to your drawing. 6. Cut is useful for removing a bit you don’t want, leaving a white background in its place. A cut piece can also be pasted. 7. Multiple images can be re-coloured to make an eye catching graphic for a party invitation or flyer. This image was made by inserting a star autoshape and then copying it and moving the original almost on top of it. Then the dual star was copied another four times. Lastly, the stars were coloured and the ‘shadows’ coloured in a lighter shade. Crop, resize, rotate There are a couple more tools available to you. Near the selection tool you will see Crop, resize and Rotate (you will find these in the image menu in older versions). Crop lets you chop off bits of the image you don’t want. For example, you could use it to trim ragged edges on your drawing. Imagine my red lines are the edges of a beautiful drawing. I have selected the area I want to keep (inside the dotted line). Now I can click on Crop and my drawing is tidy. Resize will let you change the size of your image. First select your drawing by drawing a box around it. Then click on ‘resize’ and you will bring up a menu that allows you to change the horizontal and vertical sizes. If the ‘Maintain aspect ratio’ box is ticked, changing one dimension will change both in the same ratio. You can also skew your drawing horizontally or vertically. Clicking on Rotate gives you a menu which allows you to rotate and flip a drawing: The original star on the left has been rotated 90° to the right in the first copy, 90° to the left in the second and by 180° in the third copy. Colour Palette The last thing you can do in Paint is change the colours in the Palette. Click on the EDIT Colours button on the right at the top of the screen (or double click the palette) and a custom palette appears.