Placing images in shapes with the Frame Tool
The Frame Tool lets you place images in shapes, such as rectangles, ellipses, squares, and circles. It offers a fast and easy way to place images into a layout. The frame and image can then be moved and sized as a unit, or adjusted separately. Images added to frames can be extracted and changed easily, making frames ideal for layout placeholders.
The Frame tool was used to fill this template with photos in just a few moments. Note: The original template was also created in PaintShop Pro (using layers, shapes, and picture tubes).
When you create a frame, a Frame Group is added to the Layers palette. When you drag an image to the frame, the image appears in the Layers palette as part of a Frame Group. It’s helpful to have the Layers palette open when you work with frames—it makes it easy to select the element that you want to adjust.
In this example, starting at the top, you can see the Frame Group layer, which you can collapse or expand to access the Frame layer and the image layer (shows the full image). At the bottom is the original Background layer.
You can also convert a shape drawn with the Rectangle or Ellipse tool into a frame.
To place an image in a shape with the Frame Tool1 On the Tools toolbar, click the Frame Tool 
.
.2 On the Tool Options palette, choose one of the following shapes:
• Rectangle
• Ellipse
3 Drag in the Image window (on the Background or a Raster layer) to draw a frame.
If you want to constrain the shape to a square or circle, hold down Shift as you drag.
4 To fill the frame with an image, do one of the following:
• Click File > Embed Image, and navigate to the image that you want to use.
• From the Organizer palette, drag an image thumbnail into the frame.
• From Windows File Explorer, drag an image file into the frame.
The image automatically fills the frame according to the longest edge, maintaining the image aspect ratio. Both the frame and the bounding box for the image are displayed.
Note: At this point, the image is active, and you can simply drag the image or an image node to reposition or resize the image. For full editing options, continue to the next step.
In the example above, a square frame is filled with a rectangular image. A bounding box indicates the area of the image that exceeds the frame.
5 Do any of the following to adjust the frame or image:
• To reposition the image, in the Layers palette, select the image layer in the Frame Group, and in the Image window drag the center node for the image to the position you want.
• To resize the image, in the Layers palette, select the image layer, and in the Image window drag a node on the image bounding box.
• To reposition or resize both the frame and the image, double-click inside the frame (or select the Frame Group layer in the Layers palette), and drag the center node to a new position or drag a node on the bounding box to resize it.
• To reposition the frame only, in the Layers palette, select the Frame layer, and in the Image window, drag the center node to a new position.
If at any time you experience issues selecting or creating a frame, check to see what is active in the Layers palette. If adding multiple frames, it can be helpful to select the original layer (such as the Background layer) before adding a new frame.
To extract an image from a frame1 On the Tools toolbar, click the Frame Tool 
.
.2 Right-click the image that you want to remove from a frame, and choose Extract Image from the context menu.
The image is removed from the frame group and appears as an independent layer that you can keep or delete. You can now drag a new image to the frame.
To convert a rectangle or ellipse shape to a frame1 Do one of the following to select a shape previously created with the Rectangle or Ellipse tool:
• On the Tools toolbar, click the Pick tool , and click a shape.
• In the Layers palette, click a vector layer for the shape that you want to select.
If there are multiple vector shapes, you might need to expand the vector layer group so that you can select a specific shape.
A marquee indicates that the shape is active.
2 On the Tools toolbar, click the Rectangle or Ellipse tool.
3 In the image window, right-click the active shape and choose Convert to Frame Object from the context menu.
4 Drag an image to the frame.