hi. can someone show me how to do this smudging or painting effect thing? & show me how to do it diagonally. thanks.

Okay, I just figured it out. Open up the picture you want. Make a new layer and get a brush that makes that effect. Use black and paint a big area. Go to your layers palette and control-click on the black paint layer. Go to Select>>Inverse. Click on the image layer and press delete. Delete the black layer, and you're done. This is for Photoshop by the way.

Also ^ Save it as a .gif so you can keep the transparency on the sides

I need the tutorial for PSP. Thanks though. Anyways, anyone know how to do it for PSP?

It should be the same stuff pretty much. They pretty much are the same program.