I have seen many articles and examples about creating smooth circles in Paint Shop Pro. The main reason these examples have been made are because of the jagged shapes that PSP create. When you choose shapes from the geometric shape tool they are pretty rough. Well I found, quite by accident, that there is a better way to do these shapes. It involves using ding bat fonts.

There are two basic fonts, one should have come with your windows 95 system, the other is a new one that you can download from Microsoft. The first one is called Wingdings (wingding.ttf). The second is a new font called Webdings (webdings.ttf). The only difference is the size of the circle.

I use a program that is a Windows main stay called Character Map. You can add this from the control panel Add or Remove programs. It is under the Windows Setup - Accessories option. This program allows you to see the characters in any given font, including the ALT selections. PSP will allow ALT characters by holding down the ALT key and entering the 4 digit number.

The circle in Wingding is the lower case letter "l" (L). In the Webding font it is the lower case letter "n" . Again the only difference is the size of the circle. Winding is approximately 78 pixels in diameter for every 100 pts. of type. It is approximately 134 pixels in diameter for Webdings. The only limitation I have found is the probably related to memory. If I make a circle above 500 pixels in diameter PSP crashes, while rendering the text, with an error in a unknown module.

Step 1. Open a new file to the size you want. I chose 200 x 200 in this example. Open with 16 million colors and a white background. Make sure that your foreground color is white.

Step 2. Select the Text tool. Make sure the Antialias and center options are selected. Choose your font and the character.

Step 3. Center the shape and fill however you want to. I used a linear fill here. ZAP ! It's that simple. The circle is at least twice as smooth as PSP can produce.

One thing to keep in mind, do all your changes without deselecting the object. If you do then use edit undo immediately. The magic wand will pick it up but if you try any transformations after this they will be jagged.

You can resample at least twice the size and still maintain a pretty smooth circle. You can also resize into an ellipse by turning off the maintain aspect ratio. Here I re-sampled to 120 x 60.

Add a couple of filters and who knows what you'll end up with.

Use them as frames or masks, they work well. Lots of other shapes and objects to be found in the Ding Bat fonts. Have fun and keep the creative juices flowing with Paint Shop Pro.

PSP 4.0 Tips and Tricks Index