+PSP - Bezier8

The way to produce a bezier curve is not terribly obvious in PSP 8. There is no longer a specific bezier tool, but exactly the same effect can be achieved by using the pen tool. These are the steps.

Put the colour you want for your line in the top colour box (foreground and stroke properties) and have the bottom box (background and fill properties) set at null. If you have a colour, texture or whatever set in the lower box, your curve will be filled in instead of a single line.

Select the pen tool (second from the bottom), and set the tool options like this:
Check contiguous - leave simple and create as vector unchecked.
In the modes, select the pen in the middle
In the segment type select point to point (like an S in the middle)
Set the line style to a plain line (unless you want something different), and the width to whatever you want.

Now in your image left click the start point for your line, and again at the end point. A straight line will be drawn between your two points. Do not drag - the line appears as soon as you make the second click.

In the pen tool options, change the mode from drawing (pencil in the middle) to edit (arrowhead on the left)

In the line in your image, right click on the start, choose node type and curve after. Right click on the end, choose node type and curve before.

Now you have a handle at each end of the line that you can rotate to get the curve you want. You can only see a handle when its end is selected. Left click on one end to select it, and you can then move the handle to rotate that end, and so curve the line at that end. To start off with, the handles lie along the straight line, so if you cannot see the handle, even when the end is selected, mouse over the line. You will see rotating arrows when you mouse over the handle. You can also move the selected line end itself around to get a different curve if you want to.

Your bezier curve will be fixed when you choose a different tool. So long as you stay with the pen tool, you can make adjustments to change your curve. Once you choose another tool, your raster curve is fixed.

You can also do the curve as a vector, if you are likely to want to come back to adjust it after you have chosen a different tool. Raster curves are fixed once you stop editing them by choosing a different tool, but you can revisit vector ones by selecting the vector layer and the pen tool or the vector edit tool at the bottom, even after you have done some more different work on your image.

Although this seems rather different from the bezier tool in earlier versions, it is more versatile. In the old bezier tool, once you had done the two clicks to set the curve that was that. If it was not quite right, you had to start again. Now you can keep adjusting till it is perfect, so long as you do not fix the raster curve by choosing a different tool.

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