Created June 4, 2003 © Copyright SuzShook
Property of SuzShook
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This tutorial is my own creation;
however, most of the techniques used in this tutorial, I have learned from others.
Therefore, if you recognize any contribution you have made, I thank you.
And I thank you as well for respecting this as my work by not posting it,
in whole or in part,
in any other location without written permission from me.
Individuals and PSP graphics groups are invited to share my tutorials with others with TEXT LINKS ONLY.
You can e-mail me to let me know you are adding one or more of my tutorials to your list if you like -
it's always fun to know who is doing them.
Many people have a difficult time printing the many pages of tutorials, and others don't like flipping back and forth between screens to do a tutorial. For some of us, by the time we flip back to PSP, we've already forgotten what the tutorial told us to do! Enter the PSP 8 Learning Center and Quick Guides! This is a new method of keeping the tutorial right there in your PSP workspace while you're completing its steps. What an idea! This tutorial will show you how to take advantage of this technology for any current tutorial. I hope to follow this tutorial up with one outlining the basics of creating a good Quick Guide tutorial.
This tutorial assumes you are a relatively new user to Paint Shop Pro, Version 8, and is written in and for that version. Many screen shots in this tutorial are resized - your work will be larger than this.
Supplies - For this tutorial, you will need the following:
- Jasc's Paint Shop Pro 8 - you can get the 30-day trial version HERE.
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OK, now we're ready to begin. Grab your mouse and let's get started.
Remember to save often.
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STEP 1
The Learning Center is a nifty innovation in PSP 8 that makes doing a tutorial a lot easier. The Learning Center displays a collection of tutorials, called Quick Guides, that are installed in a particular location and way. By installing a tutorial as a Quick Guide, it shows up in the Learning Center palette, and you can keep the tutorial right on your desktop as you complete the instructions.
You can copy ANY tutorial to your system as a Quick Guide; however, many tutorials are not well suited to the Quick Guide format. Depending on how the tutorial writer set the tutorial up, they may be too wide, and undoubtedly, the images will be too large. Ideally, a Quick Guide tutorial is short, concise, and has images no more than 200x200. They may even have embedded scripts that actually show you how to complete certain tasks, or complete the tasks for you. Eventually, tutorial writers will begin writing tutorials as Quick Guides, once they understand and adapt to the new format.
All that aside, even if the tutorial is not really a great candidate for the Learning Center, it still beats printing reams of paper, and it puts the tutorial right into your work area. I use it all the time now when doing tutorials.
How do you set up a tutorial as a Quick Guide? There is a very specific structure that must be followed.
First of all, in the My PSP8 Files (or whatever the name and location of your user files), there's a folder called Quick Guides. If you don't have one in your user files folder, just create one, using Windows Explorer. Then be sure you add it to the File Locations in your Preferences (File...Preferences...File Locations, and scroll down to Quick Guides in File types window).
To use a tutorial as a Quick Guide, you must install it within the Quick Guides folder, within a Category folder which you choose, and within a Tutorial folder which you also choose. The complete path, then, to the tutorial location, would look like this:
C:\My Documents\My PSP8 Files\Quick Guides\Category\Tutorial The Category folder can be called anything you want to name it. You can use the same category for all the tutorials you install as Quick Guides, or you can install them into categories with more meaningful names, such as Text Effects, Animations, Frames, etc. I have a category called Current Work where I place tutorials I'm currently working on. This is the one I'll use in this tutorial.
Using Windows Explorer, add a Category folder to your Quick Guides folder now.
The Category folder name is the one that will show up on your Learning Center palette. Fresh out of the box, the Learning Palette looks like this:
Once I add my own Category folder called Current Work, and properly install at least one tutorial within that folder, it will look like the following (highlight added for emphasis) - of course, your new Category folder won't show up yet in the Learning Center because you haven't installed a tutorial into it, but don't worry, that's next!
STEP 2
Now that you have your Category folder set up, it's time to add a Tutorial folder within the Category folder. Say you're about to do a tutorial called Making Pansies. Create a Tutorial folder within the Current Work folder, with any name you want. I called mine Pansies - how's that for originality? When you save the Making Pansies tutorial to your hard disk, place it within the Pansies folder you just created.
Note: When you save a tutorial to your hard drive using File...Save As, the tutorial will download in 2 parts:
- A file having the name of the tutorial, with an .htm or .html extension.
- A folder having the same name with _files appended, which contains all the images used in the tutorial.
So if the name you save the tutorial under is "Making Pansies", you'll get a file called Making Pansies.htm (or Making Pansies.html), and a folder called Making Pansies_files. Here's a partial image of your file tree in Explorer showing what your Pansies folder will look like (highlights added for emphasis):
Once you've finished downloading the tutorial, go into the folder where you downloaded it (the Pansies folder) and rename the htm/html file as index.htm.
It MUST have this name, or it won't show up in PSP. To rename the file, highlight the htm/html file and use File...Rename, or right-click on the file name and choose Rename from the context menu.
IMPORTANT NOTE: If your file name appears to you as Pansies.htm, follow the above instructions and rename as index.htm. However, if the file name appears to you as just Pansies, with NO EXTENSION, rename as index, with NO EXTENSION. This difference is due to a setting in Windows that hides files extensions for known file types.You'll get a dire warning when you try to rename the file, telling you the file will no longer be connected to the images folder, yada, yada, yada, but just ignore the warning, and click Yes to rename it anyway:
Here's a partial image of the file tree in Explorer showing what the folder will look like after the rename (highlight added for emphasis):
Note: For multi-page tutorials, each page has to be loaded into a separate Quick Guide folder, just as you have to download each page separately. If the fictitious Making Pansies tutorial had been written across 3 pages, we would have 3 folders - Pansies, Pansies2, and Pansies3 - or whatever names you choose. The rename process would have to be done within each of the folders. Here's a partial image of the file tree in Explorer showing what the Tutorial folders would look like in the case of a 3-page tutorial (highlights added for emphasis):
The processes outlined in these 2 steps are absolutely essential. You MUST create a subfolder within the Quick Guides folder (or use one that's already there), and you MUST create a subfolder within that folder for the tutorial, and you MUST rename the htm/html file. The tutorial will not be visible within PSP unless you follow these directions exactly.
STEP 3
In review, here's what we've done so far:
- Set up a Category folder.
- Created a Tutorial folder within the Category folder.
- Installed a tutorial into the Tutorial folder.
- Renamed the htm/html file as index.htm, or just index, depending on your system.
At this point, we're ready to run the tutorial in the Learning Center. Click the Home button
at the top of the Learning Center, and then the Refresh button
. Click the plus sign
in front of the Current Work folder - the name of the Tutorial folder containing the tutorial you just downloaded - in this case, Pansies - should be there (highlight added for emphasis):
And if the tutorial had 3 pages, the Learning Center would look something like this (highlights added for emphasis):
Note: If your tutorial does not show up, or the Current Work category is not visible, you must have missed something in the directions. Go back and be sure you have followed every instruction carefully in Steps 1 and 2.Once everything is in place, click on the tutorial name. The tutorial is loaded in the Learning Center window. You can resize this window by pulling on the sides or bottom. Make it a size that's comfortable for you, shows most of the tutorial from side to side, and does not take up too much of your workspace. Remember, most current tutorials are not written for the Learning Center, and will probably require some side-to-side scrolling.
That's all there is to it! If you click on the Toggle Rollup button (small left-pointing arrow in the upper right corner of the Learning Center palette) so that it's an up-pointing arrow
, the Learning Center will stay open and you can have the tutorial right next to your work. When you want the palette to roll up, click the Toggle Rollup button to change it back to a left-pointing arrow
and the Learning Center palette will roll up.
And just in case your Learning Center disappears, F10 is the "quick key" to retrieve it! In fact, as your working along, and suddenly you need just a bit more space for something, F10 the Learning Center out of the way for a while, and then F10 it back!
Any time you want to return to the Home screen in the Learning Center to start another tutorial, just click the Home button
Have fun running tutorials as Quick Guides - the Learning Center is your friend!
If you have any problems, comments, or questions, please do not hesitate to Email me.
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All graphics and content © 2003 by SuzShook