Tutorial

I was hoping that most people would be able to figure out the program just by playing with it for a few minutes.... perhaps you're not a member of that crowd. So here's my feeble attempt at tutoring you.

When you first start the program, you see something like this:

Of course, I've spiffed up the screen shot with a few helpful descriptions. By the way, the screen shot on the right was created using UltraPaint. No surprise there, huh?

Before I begin, may I ask whether you've used Microsoft Paint, which comes with Windows? If not, shame on you. Go check it out; it should be under Programs | Accessories | Paint in the Start Menu. This is a very basic paint program which was designed to show Windows' graphic capabilities when the pseudo-operating-system first came out in the 1980's. Since then Microsoft didn't improve it significantly, so it's just as useless now as it was then. However, it's pretty easy to use, so you should experiment with it before graduating to using UltraPaint.

When you started the program, you should have got a default, blank image; if not, go to the File menu and choose "New...". Then type in dimensions for the image... say, 200 for the width and height.

Now, in the top right corner of the window there are 10 buttons, or tools. Hover the mouse over each one to see what it's for. Click the one that looks like a squigly line—the first one over from the top-left. The next thing to do is choose a pen shape to draw with. The pens are in the top-right part of the window. See them? Good. Choose the biggest one (the fifth one). Now you need to choose a draw color. As you can see there are four little color boxes. The top two are for drawing lines and outlines—those are the ones we're interested in. The one on the left represents the left mouse button, and (you guessed it) the one on the right represents the right mouse button. Click on the left color box. You should see something similar to this pop up:

Now, pick a color by clicking on it. Click on any color that tickles your fancy except "Transparent". I repeat, don't click Transparent, because if you do, then when you try to draw something, nothing will happen. I would reccomment a shade of turquois just because it's my favorite color.

If you're running the program for the first time, then the following settings should already be set up. But just for good measure:

Okay, now you're all set. Just put the mouse on your blank, black image and begin drawing. In the example screen shot to the right, I've drawn "HI". Please excuse the handwriting; it's better on paper. Actually, come to think of it, that doesn't look all that bad...

Now, feel free to try out the other tools, like the rectangle, ellipse, and spraypaint tools. Once you get a feel for the basic draw tools, you might want to move on to something a little more flashy.

I mean, you probably noticed the spiffy background gradient behind the "hi". Currently, UltraPaint can do two-color gradients only, but other than that basic limitation, the gradient system is pretty versatile. How can you make your image look like my beautiful masterpiece, you ask?

Once you've done this, congratulations. You've got the basics of the program down pat. One more fun thing you should try is alpha blending. This makes it so things you draw appear transparent.

Before you can use alpha blending, "Enable alpha blending" on the main window must have a check mark beside it. If it doesn't, click it now. Now move the fill color alpha sliders to about the middle. Choose the rectangle or ellipse draw tools and start making circles or rectangles or whatever. You will find that whatever you draw will seem transparent—whatever you drew before will show up behind it. An example is shown.

By the way, it's a good idea always to have Enable Undo in the Edit menu checked. That way, you can always undo your last mistake by pressing Ctrl+Z (or choosing Edit | Undo/Redo). However, you can only undo your last operation... if you want to go back in time further than that, the best you can do is load up the last saved backup of the file.

Alternately, you can choose to use the Draw and Select Mode in the Edit menu. In this mode, anything you draw becomes a selection. Thus, once you draw something, you can move it with the mouse, or delete it by pressing Ctrl+Delete. If you are satisfied that you've drawn what you want, you can apply it to the image by pressing Space, which causes it to merge permanently with the image. However, if you delete the selection, you can still undo the previous operation with Ctrl+Z. In other words, Draw and Select Mode effectively gives you a second level of Undo capability.