Creating a simple background using Paint Shop Pro

Step #3 - Click on your text tool

. Select the font of your choice (here I have used the Loki Cola font. Size should be sent to 36 - your foreground color needs to be set to null or, if you would like, you can set it to black. To do this, under Styles click on the arrow - the flyout menu will appear, click on the circle with the / through it. If your Fill is null at this point, click on the arrow for the fill and select either a gradient or solid color. Make sure that Kerning & Leading are set to 0, Bold is checked, Create as Vector and Antialias are checked. Now type in your name (or whatever you would like your background to say). At this point, you will want to align your text. To do this, click on the Object Selector tool, which should be located underneath the Shapes tool. A box around your text will appear. Now right click on the text - a new menu will appear. You want to select Align Object, Center in Canvas.

Step #4 - Once your text is aligned, move your mouse over the text and on the right-hand side area of the box, you will see a rotation arrow. Rotate your text until you have it at a slant. Now, on the Layers Pallette, right click on the vector layer and "Convert to Raster". (subnote: prior to converting to a raster layer, on your Layer Pallette, click on the + sign that should be on the new vector (text) layer. A sub layer should appear that shows the first letter of what your text is. )

Step #5 - On the Layers Pallette, move the opacity slider down to around 25 on the text layer (should now show as Layer 2) - you will need to see what you are writing on your webpages and keeping the opacity this low on your text background should not interfere with your web text. Now go to Selections, Select All and then using the Magic Wand, click somewhere in your text. What appears now are the marching ants. At this point, go to Layers, New Raster Layer (do not deselect). Now go to Effects, 3D and select Cutout. use the settings shown here.

Now go to Selections, Select None. On this new layer move the opacity slider also down to around 25.

Step #6 - Layers, Merge Visible. At this point you can save your new background graphic as a jpg or gif. The best way to do this is to use the optimiser tools provided. Go to View, Toolbars, and click on Web Toolbar. You will see a new toolbar appear within your PSP screen

. Click on the Export JPEG button. A new box will appear - you want to compress your graphic enough that it retains the quality (no blurring) yet compress it enough that you will reduce the image download time for your website viewers. As you can see, doing this takes an uncompressed size of 120,040 and reduces it to a compressed byte size of 4,021!!

The fine print - Tutorial is of my own ideas & thoughts - it is ©katnapping 1999-2002, all rights reserved. Please give credit where credit is due. If you use this tutorial to create a background please use this button on your page so that others may also learn.

This tutorial is not to be shared with any e-groups nor included in any off or on line collection nor claimed as your own.