Hi all--

I'm a noob here, but I hope someone can help me. I need to create a round image the resembles the red and blue graph indicators as shown here:



Any help would be much appreciated, and if it matters, I'm running PSPX2.
Thanks.

Fuentes

There's probably a faster way to do this, but here goes...

1. Start with a new image, whatever size you want (let it be comfortably large, since resizing down is easy); fill it with white so you can see better.
2. Go to either Ellipse or Preset Shape (Tools Menu); on the Tool Options palette, choose "create as vector," line style solid, width 2 or 3 or whatever you like; on the Materials palette, make your foreground color (the outline or stroke) black and your background color null ().
3. Start somewhat near the upper left of your canvas and drag your cursor down and to the right to create the ellipse; look at your status bar (lower left, main PSP window) and release the cursor when the height and width are equal.  Go up to the menu bar, open the Objects menu, choose Align, then Center in Canvas.  Click on select none or ctrl + D.
4. Make another, smaller ellipse as you did the first; then two more (your image above has four concentric circles), centering each one.  Don't worry about the spacing between them yet.
5. Look at your Layers palette; there will be a vector layer on top and a raster layer on the bottom.  Click on the + to the left of the vector layer, and the layer will expand to 4 sub-layers, one for each object.  The first circle you made will be on the bottom, the last on the top.
6. Double-clicking on "Ellipse" (the label of the sub-layer) opens a Properties dialog and selects that circle in the image window where you drew it.  In the properties dialog, you can change the thickness of the stroke, its color, etc.  In the image window, you can drag one of the corner handles of the bounding box to resize the circle.  So get the circles the size you want, using the Objects > Align to keep them concentric.
7. Select the Symmetric Shapes Tool.  In the Tool Options palette, look for "Mode" (to the right of Presets and Apply) and click on the star-shape rather than the closed pentagon.  Check "Create on vector"; and choose the number of sides you want (you're choosing the number of lines that will separate the segments of the "pie" from each other).  Use the same line style and width as you did for your circles,
and then repeat what you did in step 3: you want your "star" to be the same size or slightly larger than your largest circle.  You can adjust its size and other properties by doing what you did to the circles in step 5.  
8. Now you have the frame of your image set, and you need only to fill in colors, etc. by using more new raster layers. So...
9. Create a new raster layer; it will appear on top of the other two; name this one white bkg, and move it below your vector layer. Make the vector layer active and, using the Magic wand selection tool (mode=replace, match mode=opacity, check "contiguous"), click inside that outermost circle.  Hold the shift key down, and click inside every segment of the outermost circle, then do the same for the 3rd circle's segments.  Leave these selections active ("marching ants" selection marquee showing).
10. Now make the raster layer active in the Layers palette and, choosing the Flood Fill tool, flood fill the two circles with white.
11. Make the vector layer active again, and use the Magic Wand to select the segments of your second circle that you want to be blue; with the selection active, activate the raster layer again and flood fill the segments with blue.
12. Repeat for the segments you want to be red.
13. Activate the vector layer again, and select the center circle; with the selection still active, activate the raster layer and flood fill the central circle with black.
14. Add another new raster layer and put the recycling icon in it (or whatever, if anything, you want in the center of the image).  Use the Move tool to get it nicely centered.
15. Crop the image to the desired size, and save the whole image, with the four layers, as a PSPIMAGE.  Now you have a template for future use.  Then merge all the layers and do File > Save As and choose the PNG file format (best for drawings, cf JPGs for photos).
16. Done.  Or, you can open the larger image that this pie chart / radial graph / speedometer is going to be part of, and copy-and-paste the single-layer PNG image into the larger one.

It takes a while to get used to using multiple layers, and selections made from one layer though used for putting color in another layer, and getting the Tool Options palette settings right the second time (to be semi-realistic).   This is not an easy project to undertake because of all the layers and selections and leaving the selection acitve when you go to another layer, etc., but if you persevere,  you'll have your graphic.  

D!

Utterly outstanding! There may be another way, but your method allows me to tweak things to my content.
Thank you...I realize that time is precious and I truly appreciate you spending it the way that you have.

very helpful !!

very helpful !!