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What is Paint Shop Pro and what is it used for?
Description of Corel Paint Shop Pro and PSP Tubes 
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Paint Shop Pro is an image manipulation software utility. It comes with several different filters and effects to allow very interesting results to your picture files. Manipulation of your image files with PSP will offer you unique results. Paint Shop Pro is very popular due to its affordable price, and for allowing you to work in layers.
| Example of a layered image |  |
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Corel® Paint Shop Pro® Photo X2 Ultimate combines ease of use with full professional power. Fix brightness, color and photo imperfections like red eye in a few clicks, or use precision photo-editing controls to create photos you'll be proud to share.
(see coupon offer in right sidebar above)
What are PSP Tubes and how do I use them?
You can use tubes for all your web & graphic design projects
I am a PSP Tube forever in time. I started off as a pixel, and grew into a creative design. My owner loved me so much they extracted me to the tube gold mine. Due to the tender loving care that went into my transparent kind I will not end up on a crinkled piece of paper this time.
The best way to describe a tube is to say it works like a stamp with ink that never runs out. Below you will learn more about tubes, and you will see a tube in action.
What are graphic tubes? A tube is a graphic that you save within the program called Paint Shop Professional as a .psptube, and it will be available for use whenever you need it. Tube Tips. The current versions of PSP use the tube extension known as .psptube
The PSP tube graphic: originated from the program called Paint Shop professional. These tubes can also be used in a few other programs such as Impact, and there are a few plug ins that will allow you to use tubes.
PSPIMAGE vs. PNG Graphics: Sometimes you will find tubes that are in the .tub, .pspimage or .png format. The .pspimage format can be placed into your PSP tubes folder and should work with most current versions. Neither one is better than the other. It is just simply easier to get started using the tube if it is in the standard psptube format.
Our tubes have been featured in the Official Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo Magazine
How To Use PSP X2 Tubes?
Learn how to use Paint Shop Pro Tubes
The PSP Tubes Tool and Option Bar
The above image shows you what the standard tubes tool and option bar looks like. To use the tube tool you will have to load up the Paint Shop Professional program. In the program you must start a new image first, and then you can activate the tube tool by clicking on the tube icon 
within the tools menu bar.
See our short mini video clip of the PSP Tube Tool in action.
Quick Links to Tube Vault
| Page: | Tubes Home | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | |
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Where Do the Graphic Tubes Go In PSP? 
Learn how organize, extract or save PSP X2 Tubes
The big question is where do I put my psp tubes?
Paint Shop Professional has many versions, and where you put your tube files depends on which version of the program you're using. Below I will discuss where you will find the file locations for PSP X2 and PSP X2 Ultimate.
New users of the program can become very confused as to where these files go within the program. New users may not know that Corel has set things up so that you can stay organized. When you install the program it automatically sets up a section that contains the files that came with the program, and then installs a very special section just for you. Once the program is installed you will be able to see these sections listed below.
- The special section made just for you can be found here. Notice they gave you a tubes folder? You can save all of your own personal tubes, and tubes you've downloaded into this folder. You can also set up sub folders to hold themes, colors, and more.
C:\ Documents and Settings\Name \ My Documents \ My PSP Files \ Picture Tubes - This is the location where the program installs the tubes that came with the program. This location is specific to the program itself. This folder contains all the default - free tubes that came with the program.
C:\ Program Files \ Corel \ Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 \ Corel_10
Which should you use? I suggest that you use the program as Corel has suggested. They made the special section in your documents folder for a reason. I am going to offer you some ideas on how you to can stay organized. Trust me with all those fabulous tubes out there on the Internet, I am sure your collection will build if quite fast, and you will appreciate these suggestions
If you want to organize your graphic tubes into themes, subjects, colors and more you just need to make specific folders. Once you make the folders and stuff them with all of your great tubes you will then need to tell the PSP program where those folders are. Go to your "My Documents" folder, and locate the "My PSP Files" and you will see the "Picture Tubes" folder (see above). The folder called Picture Tubes is where you will keep your tubes from now on. IF by chance there is no folder there called picture tubes you can make one now. Now, if you have several types of tubes you want to keep in order I suggest you make new sub folders INSIDE the Pictures Tubes folder. Example of this would be animals, flowers, dolls, cars, bugs and so on.
How do you set up Paint Shop Pro to use your graphic tube folder(s)
The steps here are the same for most PSP file types.
In the program go to FILE - PREFERENCES - FILE LOCATIONS
The file locations window will open (see image 1) On the right panel locate the PSP Tubes folder called Corel_10. Click on that folder. You will see on the right panel there are some paths already listed. The paths shown are what Paint Shop Pro is using to store and use your tubes. Make sure you choose your My PSP Files - Tubes folder, and put a check mark in the "use sub folders".
You will also want to set up a folder where you want to save the tubes "YOU" make yourself. In this sample you can see I am saving the tubes I make into My PSP Files, Picture Tubes, mpstubes. Click OK when you have your tube locations selected. The program will now use the correct tubes, and save your tubes into the correct folder.
Image 1
If you organized your tubes by themes and did not want to use sub folders you can tell PSP to use those theme folders. Simply go to the "Add" button (see image) It will ask you to locate the folder and set it to be used within the program.
Issues with Paint Shop Pro plug ins - drivers can happen, but I cannot tell you exactly which one you need. I suggest checking out
as this will likely resolve your issues.
If you have a lot of tubes you may not want to have them all being cached by the program as this can lag and crash your program. Only set paths to the tubes that you prefer to have in your program at all times. When you need to use a tube that is not active within the PSP program, you just go and set the path to use that folder at a later date.
What To Do With All Those Graphic Tubes You Downloaded?
If the tube is in a compressed file called .zip .rar or alike you can do these steps to easily put the tubes into your tubes folder for easy use.
1. Open the zip (compressed file) - Depending on the program you're using it may have a button that says to "extract" or "export". If you click on one of those buttons it will ask you where you want to export the files (if not please check your options in the unzipping program).
2. At this point you can tell the program to extract - export the tube files to your psp tubes folder. WARNING: Some people double compress and or add text files with their zip files. You may want to be careful and only extract out the psptube files only.
- If you have downloaded tubes in the .png format and you are not sure what you need to do then simply follow these steps to convert your PNG files to PSP Tube Files.
1. Open the .png image with Paint Shop Pro
2. Go to file
3. Choose Export
4. Choose PSP Tube
5. Name the tube and save it.
One quick hint: If the .png image has a lot of transparent space around the main image you can crop it down before exporting it out.
NOTE: If you do not have the PSP program, and would like to use these graphics you can use the FREE software that opens Paint Shop Pro psptube files and then convert them to the PNG format. This format is also known for it's transparency. The software I recommend you use is XnView and Irfanview. However, having the PSP program will allow you to expand more with these files.
A complete photo-editing software solution
Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 Ultimate
Includes everything in Paint Shop Pro Photo X2, plus:
- Enhanced! Support for more than 250 camera raw formats
- New! Background remover plug-in to change the background of a photo
- Enhanced! Creative content pack with 150 new photo frames, photo edges and Picture Tubes™
- New! Certified for Windows Vista® for better performance and enhanced security
- Bonus! 2 GB USB flash drive to store and transfer your digital photos
- Bonus! Corel® Painter™ Photo Essentials 4 to turn photos into paintings in 3 easy steps
- Bonus! Media recovery software to retrieve images, movies and sound files, even from reformatted memory cards
Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 Ultimate and get FREE Background Remover plug-in, Painter Photo Essentials 4, Media recovery software
Cool Black light Poster Made with PSP X2 & Tubes
You can make so many cool graphics with PSP, Tubes, and Effects
IDEA: Blacklight Poster effects Here is a cool black light poster graphic I made. This was made with a dinosaur tube. I expanded my fill to give my dino the green overflow color, then added some noise, and I used plug in effects called Illumination, Sunburst, then added rainbow colorings. It is amazing how you can take a simple tube, and turn it into something like this for your website's, banners, and so much more.
Graphics on site: This website's graphics were all made, colored, and or enhanced by me using the Corel Paint Shop Professional program. I have optimized the images for web viewing (72 dpi) so that the pages will load faster. Images you make within the PSP program for craft projects will be magnificent at 300 dpi. The images I made are tubed into a transparent format so that I could always use them again in the future. The images have also been saved in layered raw format so that I can edit them if needed.
Web Design & Graphic Tutorials 
