Ninique's Minidollz

Palettes:

• To create a colour, double-click on any of the 16 colours in the colour box, then click on "define custom colour". When you finished choosing the colour you want, click on "add to custom colours" and it will appear in one of the white spaces on the left. Click OK to send the colour to the colour box.
• You can create more that one colour at once in the edit colour dialogue. Just change the parameters on the left and click on "add custom colour" again. However, you can only send one colour at once to the colour tool box.
• I usually use 5 colours in my palettes and space them by about 16 "units" of luminance.
• The colours at the bottom of the colour chart are grayish, whereas the ones at the top are really bright.
• If you are using a lot of colours, of if you want to continue your doll another day and not loose all the colours you made, place your palettes on your canvas using the brush tool. Note that to edit colours on your canvas, you choose them with the dropper tool then go to Colors>Edit Colors

Selections:

• You can change the background of the selection from opaque to transparent (the "background colour" will be the transparent colour) in the toolbox, or by going to Image>Draw Opaque
• The "star" selection tool is harder to control than the rectangle selection tool because it is three pixels wide.
• When you press the Ctrl key while moving a selection, it duplicates it
• When you press the Shift key while moving a selection, it creates a trail
• You can flip or rotate a selection by going to Image>Flip/Rotate

Zooming:

• MS Paint has 6 magnification levels: 1X, 2X, 4X, 6X , 8x and 10X. 4X is the default level, but once you selected another level, it is only accessible by going to View>Zoom>Large Size or by using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+PgDn
• To access the 10x magnification level (only in Windows XP), you have to click between 8x and the bottom of the box. It may be hard to find the the right place at first, but you'll manage after several clicks (this tip was submitted by Beth)
• If you want to "see" the pixels, you can show a grid by going to View>Zoom>Show Grid (key board shortcut: Ctrl+G.) This feature only works with zoom levels 4X and above
• You can show a small window containing an unzoomed version of your picture by going into View>Zoom>Show Thumbnail. The thumbnail will disappear if you go back to 1X magnification and you'll have to reactivate it.
• The text tool only works at 1X magnification
• To view an unzoomed full screen version of your picture, go to View>View Bitmap. Click to come back to the normal MS Paint view.

Erasing and undoing mistakes:

• Always keep in mind that MS Paint has only 3 undo levels
• If you made a mistake but still haven't released the mouse button yet, right click and it will be undone. This does not count as a level undo.
• When using the pencil tool, you can change a pixel to the background colour by right-clicking.
• After finishing each piece of clothing, duplicate your doll somewhere else on the canvas. That way, if you really mess up, you can remake the piece of clothing you're working on from scratch.
• I'm sure most people know this but the eraser tool has a double function of being a colour replacer. When using the right mouse button to erase, the foreground colour is replaced by the background colour. There's a tutorial for doing this at Xandorra's

Miscellaneous:

• If you hold the shift key while using the rectangle, ellipse or line tool, it will make a "perfect" square, circle or line.
• You can set a specific size to your canvas, in pixels, centimetres or inches by going to Image>Attributes
• You can paste another image file onto your canvas by going to Edit>Paste From... This is very useful when working with bases and palettes that are saved onto your hard drive.