Vector tools

Most Photopaint images, whether scanned or created from scratch, are laid out much like any other image, for example, photographs and paintings. Basically there is a surface with an arrangement of colors, represented in Photopaint by combinations of pixels. Whenever you want to edit the image you have to use various techniques to change selected pixels within the whole image. In effect this is what happens whenever you use the normal paint tools to add or remove color, and the selection tools to concentrate on a limited area of the image which you may want to edit, move, scale, or transform in some other way. All of these techniques are relatively cumbersome and inexact, in that it is sometimes difficult to select precisely the area you want to edit. With vector tools you can create areas of color which are treated as objects in their own right. Although these objects are part of the image, in that they are "superimposed" on it, they can also be regarded as independent of the image, therefore easily editable in a variety of ways.

The Photopaint Vector tools use what are called vector paths to create vector objects. Each vector object has a sharply defined shape which encloses a color or range of colors. Vector objects are treated independently of other vector objects and of any image created through normal bitmap technology. Essentially a vector object can be understood as a set of coordinates with various attached attributes. The advantage in using vector objects is that they are easy to manipulate, and therefore easy to scale, move, rotate, etc. as whole objects. None of these operations is easily accomplished with normal bitmap images.

Whenever you create a vector object it is not added to an existing layer but placed above all the layers. If the object is 100% opaque you will not be able to see through to the images on the layers below. However, it is easy to edit any object so that it is transparent in some degree.

The following sections will show you how to create and edit vector objects.

Creating a vector object

Editing vector objects