Customizing Your Workspace in Paint Shop Pro X
Part A. Menus and Toolbars Buttons

Paint Shop Pro offers a number of toolbars and palettes for drawing and photo editing. The image above shows the workspace as it appears when you open Paint Shop Pro X for the first time. Only a few of the toolbars and palettes are visible in this 'default' view. 'Default' means the program's pre-set choices. Many people choose to work with the default workspace, however, as you become familiar with PSP, you may find it convenient to add 1 or more of the other toolbars and palettes to your workspace or to create your own custom toolbars.

In this multi-part tutorial we'll show you how to customize the PSP X workspace. It's very easy to do and well worth the time. Your workspace can be customized by adding/removing buttons, by floating or moving toolbars and palettes, by using AutoHide, by animating menus and other options.

Toolbars contain commands which are 'shortcut' buttons for the same commands found in the text menus. You can also create your own 'custom' toolbars for specific projects. Palettes contain information about your image: layers, settings, color, and more. In this first part (Part A) of 'Customizing Your Workspace', we'll concentrate on customizing the toolbar buttons. In Part B (coming soon) we'll discuss palettes.

This tutorial was written specifically for PSP version X (ten) but the toolbars in some other versions can also be customized using similar steps. This tutorial was also written with first time users of Paint Shop Pro in mind. Users of previous versions may discover some new tools and commands!

Step 2. Overview of Toolbars and Palettes

The image above shows PSP X with all toolbars and palettes visible at the same time. As you can see, your workspace can get quite crowded with all these toolbars and palettes filling up the screen. Depending on your monitor, this may leave a very small work area. Not good! To solve that problem, Paint Shop Pro provides a number of different ways we can customize our workspace to suit our own preferences.

Visibility for most toolbars and palettes can toggled on or off (hidden) as needed (except Menu Bar and Status Bar). Most toolbars and palettes can also be moved, resized, docked or floated. By default, toolbars and palettes are docked as shown in the screenshot in Step 1.

Toolbars: The appearance of the toolbars in Paint Shop Pro X hasn't changed too much from previous versions of PSP although there's a few new tools. Most toolbars can be customized by adding and removing buttons. Making use of toolbar shortcut buttons can really speed up your work. A list of the available toolbars in PSP X and how to customize them is contained in the following steps.

Palettes: PSP X contains 11 palettes. There's some new and redesigned palettes in PSP X compared to previous versions of PSP. Each palette has a specific function such as the 'Tools' palette and the 'Materials' palette.

Step 3. The 4 Most Often Used Toolbars

When you first open PSP X, the 4 toolbars shown above and listed below are displayed by default. These contain the most common commands and other useful information.

Menu Bar: This is the text menu just below the top PSP title bar. The Menu Bar stays visible and cannot be hidden but can be customized.

Standard Bar: Located below the Menu Bar. The Standard Bar contains buttons for the most common commands, such as open, save, undo and redo. Adding a few buttons for other often used commands can be very handy.

Status Bar: Located at the very bottom of your workspace. The Status Bar contains a lot of very useful data. When you hover pointer over a tool, a tool tip will appear in the Status Bar. Current information about image size, cursor position and colors is shown on the right side of the Status Bar. This toolbar cannot be customized or moved but it can be hidden.

Tool Bar: These are the tools for painting, drawing and other image-editing tasks. By default this toolbar is the vertical column of buttons located on the left side of the image area. Tools with small arrows next to them have additional tools in a fly-out menu (click the little arrow). Selecting a Tool button will cause it's corresponding Tool Options palette to appear above the image area and the Learning Center will display information about the tool. This toolbar can be customized, moved or hidden.

Step 4. Four More Toolbars and 3 Default Palettes

More toolbars: There's four more toolbars that you can selectively choose to display or keep hidden until needed. Select View>Toolbars from the main menu to toggle visibility on and off. Most people keep visibility for these 4 toggled off until needed.

• Effects: Commands for applying effects to your images
• Photo: Commands for enhancing photos.
• Script: Commands for creating and running scripts
• Web: Commands for creating and saving images for the Web

The following 3 palettes are visible when you open PSP X for the very first time.

Browser: Use this palette to browse thru your file folders and visually search for a particular image file. This browser in PSP X may feel very different to previous users of PSP, but cheer up....customization of PSP X includes the ability to dock the Browser wherever you want it.

Tool Options: This palette is visible when one of the buttons from the Tools toolbar is selected. Selecting a tool will cause the corresponding Tool Options palette to appear. The Tool Options palette contains settings and controls for the active tool and is positioned, by default, just above the image area in your workspace.

Step 5. The Learning Center and Materials Palette

The Learning Center palette occupies a good chunk of our image area, so let's hide the Learning Center as the first step in customizing our workspace. Click the Auto Hide button in the title bar of the Learning Center. The AutoHide button looks like a Push Pin. AutoHide will cause the palette to remain 'rolled up' until you hover your pointer over the title bar to 'unfold' it. When the Push Pin is pointing down, the entire palette is visible. When the Push Pin points left, only the title bar is visible.

Instead of using AutoHide, you could choose to completely hide the palette.

• Click the X in the upper right corner of the palette to close, or
• Select F10 on the keyboard to toggle visibility on and off, or
• Select View>Palettes from the text menu. UNcheck Learning Center to hide visibility.

Tool Options are a necessity and the Browser palette is handy, so we won't do any customizing of those 2 palettes just yet. We'll also leave them in their default position (for now).

Another palette that is used quite frequently is the Materials palette. This is where you choose your colors, textures, and gradients. This palette is accessed frequently when creating drawings and images and many people prefer to keep it open for quick access. The Materials palette is hidden when you first open PSP X. If you would like to keep it visible, select F6 on the keyboard or View>Palettes>Materials from the Menu bar.

Step 6. Customizing the Menu Bar

The Menu Bar is the main text menu at the top of the workspace, just below the Paint Shop Pro title bar. The Menu Bar cannot be moved or hidden but has other customizing options.

Menu Icons: You can add icons to the text menus. The main benefit of this is quick reference. With the icons visible in the Menu Bar, you will subconsciously learn to recognize which icon goes with which command (and there's lots of them to learn!). To add icons to the menu, right click the toolbar and select 'Customize'. The 'Customize' dialog box will appear. (see above image) Under the 'Menu' tab, check the Menu Icon box (bottom left). Select Close. Choose any menu in the Menu Bar to see that icons are now associated with each command.

Animated Menu: Under the 'Menu' tab you'll also find the menu Reset button and an option for 'Menu animations'. In the drop down list the choices are None, Unfold, Slide and Fade. Try it. You can always change back to none. Right click any toolbar, select 'Customize', select the Menu tab, choose one of the menu animations from the drop down list and click Close.

• Unfold.....This is cool effect, menu expands out from top left corner;
• Slide... Menu slides open from top to bottom, like its unfolding one line at a time;
• Fade....Menu opens gradually from a faded look to fully visible; and of course,
• None, would be a non-animated menu. None is the default setting.

Now choose something from the Menu Bar to see the change in action.

Step 7. Floating and Docking Toolbars

In addition to hiding toolbars, we can also 'float' and move toolbars to another position in the workspace. By default, all toolbars are docked. Along one side of each docked toolbar is a dotted bar. Your cursor will turn into crossed-arrows when you hover over this spot or when you click an empty space in toolbar. Use this crossed-arrow cursor to grab the toolbar and it will 'float'. Now you can drag it to another location in your workspace.

When you drag a toolbar near edge of the workspace, the toolbar will snap into place (if docking is enabled). If the toolbar doesn't snap to, docking is probably not enabled. Even with docking enabled, you can place a floating toolbar close to edge of workspace, without docking, by holding down the Ctrl key as you drag toolbar.

To enable or disable docking preferences, select View>Docking Options from the Menu Bar. The Preferences dialog box will appear. Under the heading 'Allow docking of', select/check each toolbar (and palette) to enable docking.

You can also dock a toolbar by double-clicking the title bar. Try it now. First, float the Tools bar. Hover over top of toolbar to get crossed-arrow cursor. Drag the toolbar to the center of your workspace and release mouse button. It is now 'floating' in the workspace and has a title bar. We can place the Tools anywhere in workspace - but we're going to put it back for now! Double-click the title bar and it should snap back into it's default docked position along the left side of the workspace.

Step 8. Adding Commands to Toolbars

In addition to hiding toolbars or placing them exactly where we want in the workspace, we can customize our toolbars by adding more commands, removing some, or re-arranging the buttons. Most commands found in text menus and dialog boxes have a corresponding command button that can be added to a toolbar for quick access.

To add commands, open the Customize dialog box by selecting View>Customize from Menu Bar OR right-clicking any of the toolbars or the title bar of any palette. Choose 'Customize' from popup menu.

In the Customize dialog box, select the Commands tab. All the commands that can be added to toolbars are listed here, grouped into categories. Example: The File category has commands for opening and closing files and the Vector category lists all commands related to vector drawing. You can view all commands at once by selecting the All Commands category.

To add a command button to toolbar: Drag the selected command into position onto the toolbar. For example: I like to have 'Select All' and 'Select None' on my Standard toolbar. To add these, choose the Selections catagory, find the 'Select All' command, grab it with left mouse button and - holding button down - drag the command into place on the Standard toolbar (a vertical bar | will appear to indicate your position - see image above). Release mouse button. Repeat for 'Select None'. Review each category and select those standard commands YOU use often and drag them onto the Standard toolbar.

You can also click and drag almost any command or tool to another menu or toolbar.

Step 9. Moving & Rearranging Toolbar Buttons

You can re-arrange and organize toolbar buttons by dragging buttons into position directly from the toolbar. Select the command button you want to move, hold down the Alt key and drag the command left or right as needed. A vertical bar | will appear to indicate location as you drag. Remove a button from the toolbar by dragging into image area.

It's a good idea to 'group' your buttons - placing similar commands side by side. For example, I have Cut, Paste as New Image, Paste as New Layer and others grouped together on the Standard toolbar. I also put a little space between the command groups by adding 'separators' between each group.

Adding separators: Place workspace in 'customize' mode by right clicking toolbar, select 'Customize'. Choose the command button where you want to place a separator (it will be placed left of the button), right click button, select 'Include Separator' from menu. You could also hold down Alt key, drag button slightly to right & hold, separator will appear on left.

To remove a separator. Place workspace in 'customize' mode, select command button that is right of the separator you want removed, right click, UNcheck 'Include Separator' by clicking on it. The separator should disappear.

Button Groups: In addition to buttons, you can add drop down lists to your toolbars. These drop down lists may use less space and sometimes a list is more efficient for a particular group. The commands I like to keep as a button group are Export (image maps, tubes, optimizers for GIF/JPG/PNG, etc), Toolbars and Palettes (for turning visibility on and off), among others. These button groups are listed with all other commands in the Customize dialog box. They look different. There is no icon on left and a tiny arrow on right.

There are a number of other options in the Customize dialog box that you should review. Look thru each tab. Feel free to write or visit the forum if you have questions.

We have only discussed the Standard toolbar today. You can also customize the Effects, Photo, Script and Web toolbars. You can even add more tools to the Tools toolbar or create your own custom toolbar. We'll create a custom, special purpose, Art toolbar in future additions to this 'Customizing Your Workspace in PSP X' tutorial series. We'll also go over saving your workspace so that you can have a different custom workspace for photo editing, vector drawing or art media.

Happy Trails! Arizona Kate      

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