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A Short Play in Three Acts
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Cast of Characters: Me,
Technology, & PSP
What!?! You were
expecting a more recent photo? A lady never reveals her age!
Age: Old enough to
vote, but too young to retire
Education: BA
English. However, I'm still trying to figure out what I want to be when I
grow up.
Occupation: You
really don't want to know and certainly not what I want to be when I grow up.
Pet: My cat, Jocie.
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Act One: Scene One |
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I have
taken one and only one computer class: Introduction to Computers &
Programming. At that time, mice were furry rodents. You looked out of
windows to see what was going on outside, unless your name was Tom. Click here
to see what model of computer I first learned to use.
I remember how frustrating it was
to enter the proper coding when trying to format college papers so that
text would be bold where it was supposed to be and underlined
where it was supposed to be and
centered where it was
supposed to be.
I, a friend, a
dictionary and grammar book or a combination of the sort performed the
spell checking and grammar tasks.
I had no choice of
font: dot matrix only. There was heck to pay if you didn't make certain
that the printer was also set up properly before printing or you would end
up with gibberish. |
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Act One: Scene Two |
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By my senior year of college, my mom bought our first home computer:
A Tandy
2000 complete with 2 5¼ floppy drives! You could load
the program you wanted to use on one floppy drive and then save your
data (such as a term paper) on the other floppy drive without having
to take the program floppy out, putting your floppy where you wanted
to save your data, then put the program floppy back in to continue
to work.
My brother
had a high school paper that had to be completed in the form of a
newspaper, so Mom bought a program called Newsroom Pro that would
automatically set up columns, allow you to create banners, use
different fonts (but only a few) AND add clip art to your pages. All
still black and white....but what an improvement! Remember DOT
MATRIX printer.
When I was
working in a local retail store, home office sponsored a nationwide
contest for each store to raise community awareness about saving our
environment. I used Newsroom Pro to publish a series of 12
newsletters about helping save the environment. The image to the
right is scanned from one of those pages. |
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Act Two: Scene One |
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I bought my own first computer in 1997 and started giving myself crash
courses in MS Office applications. I used to write and distribute a family
newsletter. I still didn't know anything about creating my own graphics
and used either MS clip art or clip art from CD's.
Sometime
afterwards I bought my first scanner so I could add pictures from a family
reunion to one of the newsletters and I bought MS Picture It! to crop and
otherwise clean up said photos. I thought Picture It! was the most
fantastic software I had ever used, but I had yet to learn about Paint
Shop Pro. However, Picture It! has its limitations.
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Although
it took me hours, I used MS Picture It! to create this composite
photo. I have since used PSP to shrink down not only the physical
size (1200 x960) but also the file size (363kb) down to a more
manageable 400 x 320, 25kb image. Just for giggles, if you want to
see the original, click on the new version.
And if you
have a slow connection, be prepared to wait. |
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Act Two: Scene Two |
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Now
that I had been bitten, I wanted to be able to do more. I had already
attempted to build my first web site. However, except for a couple of
photos I scanned, none of the backgrounds, buttons, divider bars were
original. Additionally, the newest version of Outlook Express allowed
users to post in html and a new craze started: Outlook Express stationery.
It was on one of the old MSN newsgroups that I first started hearing about
Paint Shop Pro. I just had to have it.
Long before I
attempted my first tutorial (and failed miserably) PSP5 mainly just took
up space on my hard drive. Every few days, I opened it up, fiddled with
some of the tools, tried to get them to perform like I thought they
should, not necessarily like they do, got frustrated and shut PSP back
down again. I tried doing a few tutorials that I found, but since I didn't
quite understand the tools, had no idea what layers were for, I didn't
advance very much at all. I even downloaded some of the freebie filters
and installed them just because I could. In the mean time, I graduated
from Picture It! to PhotoDraw.
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Act Three: Scene One |
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September
1999: I joined my first tutorial group then hosted by Onelist (now known
as YahooGroups). Even though I should have joined a beginner's class, I
joined an intermediate class instead. I figured that since I knew how to
use PhotoDraw pretty well, if worse came to worse, I'd just complete the
tutorials with PhotoDraw. As luck would have it, the first tutorial that I
had to complete was an absolute breeze to do in PhotoDraw. I can't find
the tutorial now, but you had to use the smudge and push tools to paint a
line art image of a pansy. Easy-peasy in PhotoDraw. While most of the rest
of the group was complaining, I was feeling pretty good. Who could tell
that I had not used PSP? (I fessed up to the group leader abut 6 months
later).
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I wasn't as lucky
with the next week's tutorial. Layers, alpha channels, drop shadows, mover
tool, flood fill. It took me the whole week and several attempts, but the
wood carving to the right was the first totally in PSP image I ever
did.
Joining a group that required me to complete both tutorials each week if I
wanted to remain a member is how I learned to use PSP. It kept me disciplined
and focused. Since I wasn't the
only one who needed help and quite often someone else had the same
question I did, I quickly started catching up with my peers. There will be
those that I will always be behind. |
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Act Three: Scene Two |
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