Here is a tutorial on misting that I made so that people can use it to enhance their creativity. Nothing worse than wanting that perfect mist and you just can't find it huh? Well now you just go to Google and search for the image you want and then mist it yourself! This was made in Paint Shop Pro 11 but it is pretty much the same going all the way back to Paint Shop Pro 8 and I am sure that the Photoshop and GIMP people can figure it out ...

First you need an image that you want to mist. Yeah so I chose something a little sexy but those usually make the best mists ...

First thing you need to do after you open any JPG or GIF file in Paint Shop Pro is convert it to a raster layer or else the background won't be invisible. The first time you forget to right click and convert layer to Raster you will know it because the background will be all white instead of invisible and then you will have to start over again ...

See all set, and we are ready to start misting the tube ...

Select the freehand selection and then adjust the settings like it shows you below ...

When you have your settings all finished you just need to start drawing around the part of the image you want misted. Because it is all going to be feathered it doesn't matter how neatly you do it and it will be a trial and error based on your tastes. I like to keep the lines tight around the image and set it to 40 so I have a nice big semi opaque area around the graphic but if you draw further around and have a smaller feather it will give the same results just not as nice of a fade ...

Here you will see how the marching ants jumped out the 40 pixels and now are walking around the amount of image that will end up misted. For the most part the parts outside of those ants will be invisible when we are done and from the location you drew to the point where the ants ended up after feathering will be semi transparent ...

 Now here is the part which switches everything around so you can get rid of all the crap you don't want. Just click "Selections" and then "Invert" as shown above and it will do what happens next ...

Now that the marching ants are walking in the other direction it tells you that it is working with the opposite part of the image from what you selected originally. This is a good thing because that is what we want to eliminate. At this point you want to hit the "Delete" key on your keyboard to get rid of the stuff that you want invisible ...

This is what you will end up with which basically is your mist but I would suggest at least hitting delete twice so it is nice and clean. Some people will hit delete about 24 times but all that does is remove the semi transparency and then the tube ends up looking like crap. Just play around with it until you have a way you like as far as amount of times you delete ...

Here you would hit "Selections" and then "Select None" in your drop down menu to get rid of the marching ants ...

If you want to save the mist you have to save it as a Paint Shop Pro format and I would suggest using "PSP Animation Shop (*.psp)" ... The reason is because you can now share it with your friends and it will be compatible with just about every Image program made. Saving it as a "PSPIMAGE Paint Shop Pro Image (*.pspimage, *.psp}" is a crap shoot as to whether it will be usable in even a friends copy of Paint Shop Pro even ...

Here is an example of my mist being put on top of another image and then the opacity being set to 40% ...

Here is an example of my mist being placed on top of another image and then the pallet being set to "Soft Light" which is a great way to use mists ...

This is my personal favorite pallet effect if the image has a lot of black, you can set it to "Screen" and all of the black will become transparent ... Looks cool huh? ...

Now here is something that a lot of people forget to do on their mists which is the main reason to make your own. Note the parts inside the mist that don't need to be there either {like that obnoxious bright white around the chair and in the shoes etc} ... Just do the misting process again for the parts you also want out but DON'T invert it ... When you hit delete it will get rid of the parts that will look wretched when you apply the mist ... Hope you got something out of this ... Jeremy Crow {angelis deZines}