Start by downloading everything you need to do this tutorial  I have created a zipped file containing the image above. (Just click on the image)

Open the zipped file by clicking above and save it to your images folder or where you keep your stationery images.

Open Paint Shop Pro and load up this image from where you keep your stationery images.  Now make two copies of this image (<CTRL + C> and then Edit>Paste>As new image or Edit>Copy and then Edit>Paste>As new image)

Now you can close the original/first image and then click on one of the copies as were going to work on that first.

Click on Color>Gray Scale and select it

You should get this result . . . . . . .

Now you want to select the colorized image and create two layers for this image. You can do this either by opening the Layers Toolbar and right clciking on Background Layer and choosing duplicate or create a new image the exact dimension of the open images and copy the colorized image across as a new layer.

At this stage you should have a colorized image with two layers - the background layer is going to be deleted later but we need to have the colorized image as the top layer as we're going to do a bit of switching about of layers in a moment.

Now you can reselect the decolorized image and copy it across to the colorised image as a new layer. Now open the Layers Toolbar and select Layer 1 and drag it above Layer 2.

then click on the eyeglasses alongside Layer 2 and Background Layer to achieve the red crosses as above. This will just leave you the Top layer showing and this will be the colorised layer . . . . . .

**** N.B. Make sure theTop Layer (Layer 1 is selected as in the image above) ****

You will need to Zoom-in x 5 to do the next bit and this can be very time consuming and does require a lot of patience . . . . . . still - Ever onwards eh!!

Zoom in x 5 and select the Eraser Tool (It looks like this )

and we are going to be using various sizes of brush tip and so you'll need to access the Floating Toolbar and change the settings as follows:

Brush tips will be square and/or round and especially need to be square for close work.

The tips will need to be set at about 20 pixels for broad areas to be erased and between1 and 5 pixels for close work

Hardness. Opacity, Step and Density need to be high and I left them set at 100.

Okay let's get busy . . . . we need to start erasing around the birds with a fine brush tip - you might find round useful to get in really close. You should start to see a chequred background show throgh (remember we closed off seeing the layers beneath and so we see the chequered transparency) . . . . .you should end up with something like this. Always remember you can do an Edit>Undo if you erase a bit you didn't mean to erase.

The top right hand bird would still need to be cropped closer with the eraser - the other two are okay.

Happy we're close enough we can erase further and further away from the birds and then switch up to a broader brush tip of 20 and sweep away the rest of the image.

Now we can go back to our Layers Toolbar and select visible Layer 2 (The decolorised layer)

This will give us the nearly finished result . . . . .

Click on the Layers Toolbar and select the Background Layer . . . . RIGHT click on it and select Delete.

Do the Layers>Merge>Merge Visible thing and you will end up with the nearly final image . . . .

I added a bit of Blade Pro and ended up with this . . . . .

You can use the method described in Tutorial 1 at this site and achieve a great background to offset this image . . . . . like this . . . . . . .

I hope you enjoy trying this out . . . . . have fun anyway!