I was wondering if anyone was an expert at Paint Shop Pro 8? See, I was asked to do this design for a one-act play, and it was due today but I didn't have it done. I couldn't figure out this new program my director gave me (obviously, PSP 8). So... I got chewed out today. And now, I'm determined to get this done because I'm sick of doing these (I know... doesn't make sense, but this will be my last one). To my own discontent, I still cannot figure this stupid program out. (Am I just letting my blonde incompetence get the better of me? Or am I reasonable to not be able to figure it out?) Ok... here's what I'm having trouble with:

I've put the font I need on the page with the spacing I want (Note: the font is a block-style--chalkdust). Now I want to color it black, but there are these dashed lines flashing in the shape of the text. I've tried filling in each letter with the fill button in black... but it merely outlines the letters in grey and continues to flash the dashes. So... how do I get rid of the dashes? And how do I color these letters?

After I color them... I need to blur some of it so it looks like someone ran their fingers across a couple of the words. If you know how I would go about doing that... could you please explain it to me?

I'm terribly sorry everybody if this is simply an annoying post. I know it's not 2draw related, but I do need help with an art program, and I thought someone here could help me. It would be too time-consuming to do the whole thing on here, even though the smudging would be a whole lot easier. :)

Thanks all in advance. :)

Well, no one has replied yet so I assume no one can help you. I myself do not know PSP so... you're probably out of luck if you're looking for help here. It seems to me you might need some PSP tutorials or something to figure out what is going on, and the first place to go for that would be google.

http://mardiweb.com/web/psp7/tools/ maybe this will help you with 8 *shrug* good luck

Ok...so there you are you're starring at the blinking, dashed outline font, it lookes like there is no color so you look to the right of the window in psp and find two buttons under your paint pallet, they are called the "style" buttons, each of theme have a little black triangle on the right. The top one controlls the "outline of the font (not the dashes blinking lines, the outline of the text after it's finished) I would recomend click the little black triangle on that button and selecting the circle with a line throught it so that there is no outline on the finished text. The button undet that one is exactly the same, but it controlls the "fill" properties of the text (or whatever tool you happen to be using, in this case were just talking about the text tool) So click on the little triangle for that tool and select the little icon that looks like a paint brush, that means you want the text to be a solid color. Now that button is a color..so click it again, but not on the little triangle. Now you'll see a pallet, pick a color from that pallet, then click "ok" that will be the color of the text. Now go over to the left where all your tools are. There will be a little tool that looks like an eye dropper, under that there will be a tool that looks like a little paint brush, select the paint brush. Now at the top of the window you'll see a row of other icons, one looks like a little rectangle with a blue strip across the top of it, make sure that is selected, that's for the tool properties. You'll see a little box that is grafient blue, it'll say "Tool Options"....click that and you'll see all the different properties you cand give the paint brush tool you selected on the left, make the brush big enough to easily paint the text you have over there in the other window (It's still blinking with dotted lines). Now you can paint the text with the paint brush tool, don't worry about the blinking outline yet. After you've passed the prush tool over the blinking text (it'll only paint inside the blinking lines) select the text tool again and right click anywahere on your paper. The blinking lines go away and your text is colored. Now go to the left again and you'll see a tool that looks like a little hand, select that, click the tools property box, at the bottom of that you'll see a pull down menu, scroll down untill you see an option called "smudge", you can use that to make your text look like someone smeared it.