We are going to make what I call twinkles, they may be called something else from makers of PSP.

This can only be done in Digital Image 10. It could be possible in DI9, but only if you click to make the one pixel a solid color about 100 times...LOL! So here we go! Open new project and resize it to 50 x 50 pixels

Now you need to zoom in on your little 50 x 50 work area. In pixel painting you are always zooming in and out. A handy thing to use is also the little pan window, this allows you to see what your project looks like farther away when you are zoomed in a little window on your work area. If yours is not on, then go to VIEW/PAN. But for twinkles you wont really need the pan window. To zoom, you can either use the lever at the top tool bar

Or if your tracker ball/mouse has a wheele on it, you can use this to zoom in and out, it comes in very handy with pixel painting!
Now we are set to start. In making twinkles, it takes quite a few frames for the animation. So you will need to know where you save your frames. I usually choose to do so in MyPictures or on my desktop, but you could choose to make a new folder for your work.
You will now go to your toolbar and go to EFFECTS/PAINTBRUSH/FREEHAND. You can also click ALT+SHIFT+B as a short cut. You will need to set the brush size as "1"

This means you are going to paint with one pixel. If you know the program you can skip the following part :-).

For some information on using this area of the program for beginners: The color in the big square is the color you will get if you click in your work area

If you click on any of the little squares to the left you can get different colors

If I click green.

Then on the right side you see a pallet of different greens

If you click on any of the little squares to the right, you will use that color to paint with. If you want more colors that the pallet offers on the left, then you can click

Here you can choose a different color altogether or you can change the hue of a color. There are 2 little balls that you will choose to move here. First the one in the middle will change the darkness/lightness of a color

If I move this ball, you can see the old color and new color in the center circle.

If I move the outside ball, I can get any color of the rainbow!

Again you can see the old color and new color in the center circle.

Once you have the color you want, click DONE and go back to the work area. When you do, you will find that the color you chose is now in the big square, and a small pallet of colors of it is to the right!

If at any time you make a mistake... and you will! You can choose to UNDO last action or RESET.

You can undo many steps, in pixel painting this come in handy because you can go back to where you need to go. Or to completely start over just hit reset.
A little info on the actual painting is that it may be a little confusing at first to get your little pixel where you want it. So you may need to practice a little with it. When you go to your work area you will see the paint brush looks like this

You need to remember that the area that decides your placment for the pixel is the lower right corner of this tool.

So if you place a pixel, then want to place another, you will have to place the tool with the right lower corner above the area where you want it to go.

So if you want to place a pixel at the bottom, you will overlap the top pixel to do so

The more you use this, the better you will get at it.
If you make a mistake you can do 1 of 3 things. You can click UNDO, or you can use the eraser tool

Or you can click the color of your background and paint over the mistake. But remember if you paint over a mistake that is outside of your projects painted area, and want it to be a transparent background, your white paint will show up, so be aware of this when using this option.
Now that you understand how to paint with a pixel, we can make something! You will start with a single pixel, what ever color you want. In the middle of your 50 x 50 work area zoomed in at 1000.

Click done, this is your first frame of your twinkle. You will now go to FILE/SAVE AS. Save your first frame as t001.png. I put 2 00 infront of the number because you have so many frames that you need them to line up properly when you open them all, because your folder sets them in order by numbers. You see your program will Open 1-9 fine, but then when you go to 10, it will go by the 1 so you would end up with 1, 11, 12, 13 ect. when you use 001, then it would go 009, 010, 011, 012 ect. Anyways, if you use 00 in front it just makes is easier!
Ok, once you have saved your first frame you will now go back to effects/paintbrush/freehand and now paint pixels like this

Again, you will click done, save as, t002.png. You will repeat these steps for each frame, for as big as you want your twinkle.

Once you get your twinkle as big as you want it, you can now start to delete from the inside out. I do this by using one of 2 tools if I want it trnasparent, then I would go to EFFECTS/TRANSPARENCY/TRANSPARENCY BRUSH or ATL+SHIFT+t

With these setting

Another option would be to click here

In the selection window you would need these settings

IF your selection window did not appear when you clicked the selection icon on the toolbar, at some time you have closed it by using the close button

If this happens, then go to VIEW/SELECTION OPTIONS and click it to make it come up. You other option to delete is by painting with white (or the color of your background) if I am painting on a solid background like on a tag.

The last frame will just be your blank 50 by 50 area. Once you have all your frames, now you want to animate them. Again if you know how to use flipbook animation, you can skip this part! This is for brand new users who may not be sure how to animate something.

You will now FILE/CLOSE ALL. Once you have done this, you will now open your frames. To do so you will click

at the top of your tool bar. When the window opens, find where you saved your frames at. If you made a new folder it should be listed here

Click on it and then find your frames. The easiest way to open them is to click once on the first one, then click and hold down CTRL and then click on the other...in order. Once they are all highlighted, then click OK. You will see them all listed under your FILES to the right of your work area and the last frame will be in your work area. Do not change them, but go to the top and click TOOLS/FLIPBOOK it will ask if you want to

just click NEXT> at the bottom of the page. You will now see

just leave it as it is and again click NEXT at the bottom. Now you will see

Here is where you will need to remember the size of your frames, you know it is 50 x 50, so you will click the drop down menu, choose custom and in the first box type 50

Now click NEXT. You will see this

This is the speed of your twinkle, with these little guys, depending on how big it is to how fast you might want it to go. You may try .05, you use the little arrows to go up or down.

It is OK if you don't know, you can always go back and change it before you save it. Now click NEXT, you will now see the animation of your twinkle! If it moves too fast or too slow, you can at this time click the arrow at the bottom to go back and change the speed. But if you like it, click SAVE As and name it! You have made your first twinkle. Here are some other examples of using twinkles!