| Sparkly Star Background in PI 4.2 | |
 |
I recently created a web page for my husband for our anniversary and made a sparkly star background for it. I got a lot of wonderful compliments from the friends I showed it to, and a lot of questions about how I did it. Well, folks, you will be surprised how easy it is with PhotoImpact 4.2.
1. First step, open a new image, I used size 120x120. You can use any color for the background color.
2.
Open the easy palette (View-->Toolbars and Pallettes-->Easy
Palette). Click on the farthest left button to make the drop
down list show. Choose the gradient gallery.
3. Scroll down through the gradients until you find one called star. Double click on it to fill your image with the star gradient.
4.
Duplicate your image 2 or 3 times (CTRL-D) so you have 3 or
4 copies of the image.
5. Choose one of your images, and select Effects-->Creative-->Particle.
6. Choose the last effect, "Star". Right click on the colors and change all of them to white, if you want. Set it up something like this:
You can adjust the density and size to your liking.
7. Repeat the above step with each image, clicking on "Random" for each one to change the pattern of the stars.
8. Now, save each one with the smart saver as a 16 color gif and we'll animate it.
9. Open up your Gif Animator, and select animation wizard. Insert your background tiles in any order and accept their defaults for the questions. This should give you your original animation. Choose view-->Start Preview to see what it looks like right now.
10.
Not quite neat enough is it? Okay, here is how we get the fading
effect. Make sure the first frame is highlighted on the left
table:
11. Select Plug-Ins-->F/X-->Diamonds A F/X. I believe this plug in comes with the program, because I haven't added any plug ins!
12. I just used the defaults, but you can play with the settings some. Repeat this for all of the frames, and then use the optimization wizard to save it. Save it with 16 colors to get the smallest file size possible.
13. I do recommend using a table with a plain background for your text with this background, because it is difficult to read over.
And that's it...so simple, yet a great background!
© 1999-2001 Tiffany Ring Deco-Ration!Web Design, licensed to About.com. All Rights Reserved. To submit your own content to this site, visit the article submission form.
