Those of us who work with Paint Shop Pro, frequently use 'tubes' and think nothing of exchanging or collecting, or even creating tubes to make amazing works of art.
Basically a tube is a pre-drawn image that can be used over and over again without having to redraw that item.
Just think of “copy/paste' with attitude! This is particularly useful when creating complex works such as forests, mountains, grasses or florals and anything else your imagination can conceive. By 'tweaking' the tube, an entire forest can magically appear without replicating the original picture and thereby gives a more natural appearance if that's your desire.
Every version of Paint Shop Pro comes with a standard portfolio of tubes. Later versions also contain an 'export' wizard that lets you create tubes for later use with very little effort.
The thing that causes confusion with tubes are terms such as:
Scale (10 - 250%)- This gives you the ability to resize the item within these ranges. If you open a tube and it's too big, undo the tube, decrease the scale and open it again. Do this until the scale is appropriate for the work you're creating. If it is too small, increase the percentage until it is as big as you need it to be.
Step (IRRITATING but useful) Most tubes default to '200'. This is the distance in pixels (1 - 500) between the CENTERS of each picture tube image that you paint. At '200', when you click on the tube, the second click jumps you that far away for the next tube. This is 'average'. Decreasing the Step makes the picture paint more rapidly AND closer together. Useful on garlands, grasses, trees, rocks, jewelry and etc. Until you are comfortable working with the step size, I recommend not bothering with it.
Placement Mode (Continuous, Random) Is exactly that - the way the images are placed within the workspace. Continuous Mode evenly spaces the tube according to Step Size and is a more controlled way of working with repetitive tubes. Random Mode places the tube in increments of 1 to whatever the original Step Size is. Great for rocks and trees and grasses and clouds, etc.
Selection Mode (Random, Incremental, Angular, Pressure, Velocity) This is how PSP selects images to paint from the cells within the picture tube. Some tubes have more than ONE picture within it and as you move your cursor, another picture appears.
Random Mode just selects any of the pictures within the tube if there are more than one.
Incremental Mode selects the images one by one for top left to bottom right
Angular Mode selects the images based on the direction you drag the curson as you paint.
Pressure Mode selects images based on the pressure you apply on a pressure sensitive tablet.
Velocity Mode selects images based on the speed withwhich you drag the cursor as you paint.
In the following image, the tube Spiral Bead is shown as it's default setting and also as 'painted' with a low Step Mode. 
To paint one image of the picture tube, click once within the workspace. Clicking and dragging the cursor will place the picture in the workspace based on the settings you chose or the default settings when you you create the tube.
To paint with a tube - from your tool bar, choose the Picture Tube tool (icon varies between versions of PSP).
On the Tool Options palette, click on the picture tube drop-down window and select the tube you want to work with. Note that most picture tube previews show only ONE image rather than all images in the picture tube. To view all images, paint with the picture tube, or open the PSPTube file with the Browser.
Ok, ok so you know all this but you still have trouble with some tubes in your folder. The step size is too high, or too low or you need to change the TUBE defaults. In later versions of PSP, when you click on the tube, a little icon to the right appears that sort of looks like a magic marker and is labeled 'SETTINGS'.
When you click on this, it lets you change the aspects of the tube as outlined above without having to search for it and do the editing manually. You can tweak it all you want and when you have it right, it lets you change the default to your preferences but keeps the original settings if you need to default back to them. Cool, huh?
I use that a lot when I download a tube from a noob that I want to use. They may have the grid offset (previous post) or something else wrong. I edit the tube, save it to the way it should be and if it's drastic enough, I usually send it back to the creator with a note explaining what the problem is.
There are innumerable tubes out there in public domain. There are an equal amount by awesome artists who sell their works and if you have never seen her work, I strongly suggest you look at jaguarwoman's PSP site. I aspire to that level of expertise myself.
Here's her site: http://www.jaguarwoman.com/ and it links through Renderosity where she sells it. It's worth a look if for no other reason that inspiration.
If you have any questions about this article, please let me know. Hope it helps.
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Comments: 15
:-)
All it's for is to help you understand 'tubes' a little better. If you can open up your tubes folder as if you were going to work with one, but not select anything, you can read this and see what it means. I'll get a screen shot for reference if you still have a problem.
Instead of 'investing' in a program, try the free version available at www.corel.com
It has a conversion program built in (Batch Conversion) This will give you the ability to make the changes without paying for something you may never use again.
Thanks for the link
Shah