Create Your Own Tubes in Paint Shop Pro 9 and X

One of the more interesting features in Paint Shop Pro is the picture tube, or tube for short, which allows a user to paint with a collection of objects with­out having to draw them. This tool lets you scatter seashells along a shoreline, populate an aquarium with fish, fill a grassy field with flowers, and much more quickly and easily. And you can make your own custom tubes in a few steps to save and use.

Open Paint Shop Pro, and then open any image (that you own, have permission to use, or is in the public domain) that you would like to turn into a tube. It is best to use images with a single item; such as a flower, animal, tree, etc; rather than a scene, unless you want to isolate a specific item in the scene.

Right click on the layer in the Layer Palette, and then click on Promote Background Layer.

Click on the Selection Tool and make it Freehand Selection. Change the Selection type to Point to Point and Make the mode Add (Shift).

Choose a starting point on your image, click with your mouse to start the selection, and then move carefully and closely around the edges of the image, clicking to add more points. Make sure you get the entire image without cutting anything out. Once you have the image selected, right click to end the selection.

Click on Selections, and then click on Invert. Use the Flood Fill tool to remove the background, changing it to a basic contrasting color with your image. This will show you any stray pixels you missed.

You can crop the image now to make it easier to work with, especially if you isolated a single item from a larger scene.

To give the image a clean outline, you can either use the Magic Wand Selection Tool to select the stray pixels and flood fill the selections, or use the Paint Brush Tool with the foreground color set to the contrasting color you chose. Go around the image again, making sure there are no stray pixels, or they will show up in your tube. Zooming in to about 300-400% is very helpful.

Once the image is cleaned up, smooth the jagged outline by using the Magic Wand Selection Tool to select the background. Go to Selections, scroll down to Modify, and then click on Expand. Change the Number of pixels to 1 and click OK. Go back to Selections and click on Invert. With the image selected now, click on Selections again, scroll down to Modify, and then click on Feather. Change the Number of pixels to 1 and click OK. Leave the image selected.

With the tube itself created, it now needs to be on a transparent background to use. Go to Edit, and then click on Copy (or Cut). Go back to Edit and click on Paste. Choose Paste As New Image, which will make a new image with a transparent background.

To save the image as a tube; click on File, scroll down to Export, and click on Picture Tube. In the dialog box that appears you can leave all the options as the default. Name your tube and click OK.

Test your tube by creating a new image and selecting the Picture Tube Tool. Try it on different background colors and patterns.

Now you can use a favorite image over and over again easily as a tube. These steps work in both Paint Shop Pro 9 and X, although in some cases the interface has changed between the two versions. Tools and commands may be in different locations, and some may need to be added back via customization in order to be accessible.