First, if you wish to understand where your tools are and how to manage them in detail, visit one of these tutorial house links for beginners. PSP help's simple beginners guide PSP help's Basic Tool Tutorials Both of the above are in my opinion the best on the net for simple get to know your tools guides, and are both curtesy of (yes, you guessed it) Paint Shop Pro Help & Hints I personally learned by trying to make avatars. Dumb way to start, let me tell you. But I discovered in reading through simple tool tutorials that I learned better by making something simple and using the tools that way. So in the next bunch of tutorials that I post, I'll be showing you how to create various images that are easy to do and will give you some light experience in many of PSP's different aspects. Just because some of the upcoming tutorials are beginners tricks, doesn't mean they aren't good looking images! Surprisingly, some of PSP's best results are the simplest to do. So with that in mind, lets start introducing ourselves to PSP. First make nice with it, realize that at times images are not going to come out the way you want, but promise PSP that you will not give up right away or uninstall it. This makes PSP very angry. Ok, just being silly. Next, open up your PSP program. You will want your tools to be listed on the side for easy handling, as it appears here to the left. You also want your basic editing options to appear as they do on top here. And lastly, the only way to know what your foreground/background and texture is set as, you need the color pallette to be showing like it is here to the right. If it isn't, or someone breaks into your home and sets it otherwise, the remedy is really simple. Just right click anywhere in your tools/workspace etc, and this popup appears. Choosing tool options, color pallette, you get the picture. If you have no tools area that is coming up when right clicking anywhere, just go to 'view' and click on view toolbars. Ok, now that you have some links to go learn your individual tools on hand so you know where to go if you run into any problems in the upcoming tutorials, it's time to move on. The first simple tutorial will be Making Framed Images for use here in your AW homesite. So before we go there, go and find some great artwork that you want to show off in your entrance, library, post or elsewhere. You can find some fantastic works of art available for non-commercial use (like in your AW home!) in this post: Great Art Sites for AW use Maybe I'll frame a Ducky. Hmm. Maybe not.