This tutorial is for Paint Shopt Pro 7 and Animation Shop 3 from Jasc.com. It is pretty basic, so most users should be able to follow it. It is assumed that you know how to pick colours in PSP.

This tutorial will teach you how to make animated kaleidoscopes using only effects that are included in PSP. Some functions that you will learn:

In PSP:
- Using the effects tool called kaleidoscope.

In AS:
- Assembling an animation.
- Saving an animation at best quality possible.

1. Open a new image in PSP using these settings:

2. Set your background and foregroud colours to two colours that you like. The shouldn't be too similar because then you will see no effect in the animation. Two completely different colours or two shades of the same colour, one dard and one light, give the best result. I choose a dard shade of blue for the background colour and a light shade of bllue for the foreground colour.

3. Choose the floodfill tool and use these settings:

3. Right click on your image to floodfill it with the background colour.

4. Choose the airbrush tool and use approximately these settings:

4. Now click on your image to colour with the foreground colour. You can move the tool around or keep it in one place. You can hold it long or very short. Place dots on it or spray evenly. It's up to you. Just make sure that you do get some of the colour on there. My image now looks like this:

5. Effects>reflection effects>kaleidoscope. These are the settings I'm using:

6. You can play around with these settings if you don't like the initial effect they give but first consider a few things. You will most likely wish to make a seamless pattern with your kaleido, one that will look good as a background for example. In order to keep it seemless you should always keep the 'rotation angle' at 0 or 180. Only those two settings will work. The 'number of petals' should always be an even one. In my experience 2, 6, 8 or 12 give the best effect, unless the image you are working on is very large, then you should be able to use more and still get a good result. The 'number of orbits' and especially the 'radial suction' can be played with successfully as well as the 'scale factor'. The thing to do is experiment. When you have found an effect that you like play with the 'horisontal offsett' and especially the 'vertical offsett' to make different frames for your animation.

7. When you have found an effect (perhaps following the settings that I am using) choose ok and then save your image as 1.psp right on the desktop so that you can find it easily (file>save as).

8. Click the undo button . The image will now look like it looked before you used the kaleidoscope effect.

9. Effects>reflection effects>kaleidoscope. The tool will still have the same settings that you used before. This time all you need to do is increase or decrease the 'vertical offsett' by 5. Mine was 0 before and I now set it to -5 (try both options and see which one looks nicer). Click ok and save as 2.psp right on your desktop.

10. Click the undo button again. Do the same thing over again until you have saved 5 images. Remember that if you started by increasing the 'vertical offsett' you need to go in the same direction all the time. I will have to keep descreasing until I eventually end up with a 'vertical offsett' of - 20 in my last image. Remember also to click the undo button when you have saved your images so that you start off with the same base every time you use the kaleidoscope effect.

11. If you have saved images from 1.psp to 5.psp on your desktop you can now safely shut down PSP.

12. Open AS and choose the animation wizard . and when prompted enter the following settings 'same size as first image', 'transparent', 'upper left corner of the frame' and 'with the canvas color', 'yes, repeat the animation indefinitely' and set the display time to 15, and then 'add image' locate the images named 1.psp thru 5.psp and add them. Make sure they appear from 1 to 5. If they are not placed like that click on the title that is placed wrong and move it up or down until it's in the right position. Now choose 'add image' again and locate the images names 2.psp, 3.psp and 4.psp. You will want to add these to the list. Don't add them all at once. There is a bug in AS so if you add them all at once they might become mixed up. First add 4.psp then 3.psp and then 2.psp. You should now have 8 images on the list:

1.psp
2.psp
3.psp
4.psp
5.psp
4.psp
3.psp
2.psp

13. Then choose next until the box disappears and you have a string of images that looks something like this:

14. Assuming that you are satisfied with the look of your animation you can now save it.

15. File>save as. Name the animation and save it as a gif file. Hit save and this window should appear:

16. Slide the handle all the way up to 'better image quality' and then hit the 'customize' button.

17. On the colors tab choose these settings:

18. On the 'optimizations tab' uncheck all the options. Then hit 'ok' and 'next' until your image has been saved. You can now view it in the program that you use to view your animations.

That was easy, wasn't it? Above is one of the effects you can achieve by using the kaleido. They also make a great background for websites or email or filler for those empty cells in tables. If you use them as backgrounds you might consider using a table on top with a coloured background so that you don't write the text directly onto the kaleidoscope (it might make it difficult to read the text).

You can make this effect with all sorts of images. Not just the two coloured type that I have demonstrated here. Still you can get good effects just by using two colours. I think it looks pretty cool.

To help you experiment a bit more here are a few images that you can copy and play around with to see what effects you can ahieve. Have fun!

(This entire tutorial is © 2002 by Guðrun Jacobsen.)