1. V203.02 Material obtained from a July, 2014 summer workshop in Guildford County

2.  The first thing that must be determined in developing a bitmap image is the preferred color mode (color, pixel depth.)  Then choose a color background or transparency.  Next, determine the correct image size and resolution: monitor resolution is set at 72 -96 dpi; photographic quality is between 150 and 200 dpi; for simple black and white line art, the resolution should match the printer.

3.  There are three color swatches used in the painting: Paint, paper, and fill.  The paint color affects the Paintbrush and text tools.  The fill color affects the objects such as rectangle, ellipse, polygons, or any closed shape.  The paper fill only affects the paper color used in making new images.  To load new colors, color pallets can be used for different types of output.

4.  Painting shapes can include an outline along with fill colors.  The paint mode is called a merge mode because it allows the interaction between the shape color and the color of the pixels in the objects. Different types of merge exist to provide a variety of effects for the painted objects.  Painting techniques and methods are very broad and provide many different ways of enhancing images. These include painting effects, fills, and interactive fills.

5.  The preferred method for selecting areas to paint on an image is the mask. This protects areas of your image from changes or effects when painting. Masks are made from different types of mask tools such as shapes, brushes, lasso, scissor, and magic wand tools.  When a mask is selected, a marquee called marching ants surrounds the selected area. This indicates the section of the image that can be modified.

6.  Masks over top of images mask only currently selected objects, not the entire image.  Masks can be moved by selecting and dragging.  Masks can be edited or modified by adding to or taking away from the selection.

7.  The magic wand is a great masking tool to control the tolerance of the selected areas of an image. The magic wand is useful for selecting similar colors.  The mask freehand tool is useful for producing editable freehand areas by selecting different brush widths and styles.  Masking effects produce unique effects such as feathering, making borders, smoothing, and clipping masks.  A mask marquee can be used as a window on the object being modified. This allows for further modification of the pixels to produce unique special effects.

8.  Objects can be combined with other objects in the scene. Their arrangement can be changed including alignment, transformation, groups, opacity, and transparency.  Objects can be feathered to look like they are fading into the background or into another object.  Objects can be combined with each other or with the background.

9.  Paintbrushes modify pixels of a bitmap image using selected colors.  The common paintbrush tools include: the paint tools, the effect tools, the clone tools, and the image sprayer tool.  An art tablet is very useful in providing greater artistic control of the image.  The property bar displays the options that are available with the paint tools. These include art brush styles, brush type, paint mode, nib shape and size, and transparency options.

10.  The effect tool is used to produce a variety of effects by modifying the pixels in a variety of ways. Some of the effects include smear, smudge, and brightness.  The image sprayer provides custom spray patterns, textures and graphics that can be painted onto the image.  Cloning takes part of an image and repaints it onto an image. Cloning is very useful in using repetition of shapes textures and patterns.

11.  Different graphic effects can be achieved by using a wide range of custom and default effects. Some software programs incorporate different plug-ins to enhance graphic images. The more common effects include art strokes, blur, sharpen, texture, creative, and distortion.  Image properties can be modified using the image adjustment tools. Tone curves, replace color, auto equalize, and color balance are the more useful adjustment methods.

12.  Different image effects can also be achieved by using layer, color channels, and color mode options. Color channels are made up of RGB and other channels such as mask channels. The color channels are mixed to add a full range of colors to the image as well as creating different color effects.

13.  The more popular production of bitmap mages are photomontages, vignettes, silhouettes, collages, and posters (2-4 tones.) Each method can incorporate a variety of photo imaging techniques and processes.  A photomontage is an old technique for creating large panoramas from standard-size photos. NASA uses this technique with pictures sent back from space probes.

14.  Feathering the edges of an image to make it appear soft and not so sharp produces a vignette.  Bitmap images can be generated to simulate historical patterns and styles. Some popular techniques in photography include sepia tones, art nouveau, and modern art styles.

15.  The purpose of resampling is to control the resolution and the size of the image so it will match its output.  It is also used to show the amount of pixels and file size that the image is while it is being edited.  Resampling can also be used to convert the image into different units of measurement such as centimeters, points, picas, pixels, and inches.