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HELP FAST Pplease

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smcfarland Posts: 684 From: Nashville, TN Status: offline	HELP FAST Pplease - 2/3/2003 19:30:30 I paid for a newsletter ad for my site and they told me they are sending it out TONIGHT!!!! Please take a look-see and tell me what you think and what I should change. THANKS! The ad goes to 50,000+ http://lovelosing.com _____________________________ Summer McFarland


Kitka Posts: 2515 Joined: 1/31/2002 From: Australia Status: offline	RE: HELP FAST Pplease - 2/3/2003 20:01:36 Hi Summer, I just had a very quick glance at only the index page and the first thing that I noticed was the Love Losing.com banner is badly pixelated. I think the way to fix that is to redo it, then save it as a gif instead of jpg. Perhaps it would also be good to soften the right edge of the theme graphic too - it isn' t blending with the skintone banner very well. Looks fine otherwise. Good luck _____________________________ Kitka It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious. (in reply to smcfarland)


LB Posts: 5551 From: Montana USA Status: offline	RE: HELP FAST Pplease - 2/3/2003 20:02:32 Hi, Summer - Have you checked in multiple browser versions? I only have IE6 on this pc... it looks pretty good, but the colors don' t quite match up on some of the graphics. With that color, you won' t be able to get them to match for all browsers, but I' d suggest at least redoing the logo. You should save that as a transparent gif. What graphics editor are you using? Contest runs from 02.01.03 until 03.01.03 at 11:59:59pm EST. Receipt of prizes/products is limited to countries in which we approved to conduct business. It' d probably read better if you said February 1, 2003 until midnight EST March 1, 2003.... " in which we are approved" ? Have you tried rescanning the cellulite image on the enter to win page? If you scan at a lower resolution you might not pick up so many lines. You may also try slightly blurring it then sharpening. ....hmm... click on that image in FP and then click the resample tool. Good luck with the ad! Linda < Message edited by LB -- 2/3/2003 8:09:15 PM > (in reply to smcfarland)


smcfarland Posts: 684 From: Nashville, TN Status: offline	RE: HELP FAST Pplease - 2/3/2003 20:07:19 Unfortunately, I am using PhotoDraw and Corel only. :( I just want to scrap it all and start over at this point out of frustration. DARN IT. _____________________________ Summer McFarland (in reply to smcfarland)


LB Posts: 5551 From: Montana USA Status: offline	RE: HELP FAST Pplease - 2/3/2003 20:21:11 Don' t get discouraged! You' re doing very well so far. Here' s a transparent logo for you... I didn' t have the same font, so maybe this will be okay? Linda Attachment (1) (in reply to smcfarland)


Kitka Posts: 2515 Joined: 1/31/2002 From: Australia Status: offline	RE: HELP FAST Pplease - 2/3/2003 20:21:12 quote: Contest runs from 02.01.03 until 03.01.03 at 11:59:59pm EST. I agree with Linda on this. In Australia (and many other countries!) this date form means that the contest runs from 2nd January 03 to 3rd January 03! If you are reaching an international audience, it is best to avoid confusion by stating the month as text. _____________________________ Kitka It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious. (in reply to LB)


LB Posts: 5551 From: Montana USA Status: offline	RE: HELP FAST Pplease - 2/3/2003 20:33:35 Here' s another logo with additional text. Just right click and save to your hard drive. I reduced the colors, so if it doesn' t look quite right and you want it, I' ll send the larger file. Attachment (1) (in reply to smcfarland)


Kitka Posts: 2515 Joined: 1/31/2002 From: Australia Status: offline	RE: HELP FAST Pplease - 2/4/2003 5:26:59 Hi Summer, I found the same font as your original and assembled this for you. It is sharper than the one on your site at the moment I hope it helps a bit. The background colour is transparent. Attachment (1) _____________________________ Kitka It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious. (in reply to smcfarland)


smcfarland Posts: 684 From: Nashville, TN Status: offline	RE: HELP FAST Pplease - 2/4/2003 8:50:40 Thank you all so much (or you two, rather)... Explorer keeps shutting down on me and I have two with flus, so I gave up and went to bed. LB and Kitka thanks for taking your time... Kitka, I did use your image, as I have the same font for the categories in the cart. Outfront is full of such wonderful people :). _____________________________ Summer McFarland (in reply to smcfarland)


_gail Posts: 2876 From: So FL Status: offline	RE: HELP FAST Pplease - 2/4/2003 9:09:45 I love that font. What is it? Also, I' ve never made a transparent gif with a drop shadow that looked good. What steps and styles did you use? thanks, gail _____________________________ Digicamhelp - Easiest place on the web to learn about Digit@l Cameras & Photography (in reply to Kitka)


smcfarland Posts: 684 From: Nashville, TN Status: offline	RE: HELP FAST Pplease - 2/4/2003 9:40:55 It is Bickley Script -- I have so many fonts installed on my computer, that I ran out of space :( ... My problem was getting the shadow in there. MS Draw is not the best graphics program MS could come up with. It is looking better now that I have had a few cups of coffee... I forgot, but another ad for the same site went out this morning to 17,600 !! _____________________________ Summer McFarland (in reply to smcfarland)


LB Posts: 5551 From: Montana USA Status: offline	RE: HELP FAST Pplease - 2/4/2003 17:34:46 just noticed.... overweight children has no info on the page & there' s a space in that file name. Checked in NN4.08 ....not too good, but not terrible --- probably something with the table/cell widths not adding up.... on the bright side, there aren' t many people out there that use that version of NN. Have you checked in any Netscape browsers? Linda (in reply to smcfarland)

Kitka

Posts: 2515
Joined: 1/31/2002
From: Australia
Status: offline

RE: HELP FAST Pplease - 2/4/2003 18:24:20

quote:

Also, I' ve never made a transparent gif with a drop shadow that looked good. What steps and styles did you use?

Many thanks for the compliment

- I didn' t think it was anything special!

Not quite sure what you mean by styles but here goes:

I used Paint Shop Pro to:

select the background colour from Summer' s existing graphic
opened a new image of the same dimensions and background colour, in 16 million colours, 72 res
selected the Text tool and applied the black text as bold, anti-aliased and floating.
then I dragged it into precise position and applied the black drop shadow. I used Opacity 75, Blur 5 (I had to play around with that a bit till I was happy) with an offset of 2, vertical and horizontal.
deselected the text, reduced the colours to 256 (Optimised Median cut)
made the background colour transparent and saved it.

I hope this helps - I' m aware you use Photoshop though, so it may not translate.

< Message edited by Kitka -- 2/5/2003 10:28 AM >

_____________________________

Kitka
**It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious.**

(in reply to _gail)


Kitka Posts: 2515 Joined: 1/31/2002 From: Australia Status: offline	RE: HELP FAST Pplease - 2/4/2003 22:08:53 quote: It is Bickley Script -- I have so many fonts installed on my computer, that I ran out of space I too have thousands of fonts but the vast majority are not actually installed. To save HDD space I burned them all to a CD - good backup too! I have an excellent font management program called Font Navigator, which I use to organise and view them. I only install a special font when I need it and then uninstall it later. Windows will choke if you have too many fonts fully installed - I think 300 or 400 is the recommended maximum. Any more than that and it can cause some weird system errors or fonts will " disappear" . _____________________________ Kitka It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious. (in reply to smcfarland)


barry Posts: 742 Joined: 6/26/2002 From: Baltimore, MD Status: offline	RE: HELP FAST Pplease - 2/4/2003 22:33:28 quote: Windows will choke if you have too many fonts fully installed - I think 300 or 400 is the recommended maximum. Any more than that and it can cause some weird system errors or fonts will " disappear" WOW, I never knew that! Where on my system are fonts stored? 60% I hate and would love to stop looking at them Thanks, Barry (in reply to smcfarland)


Kitka Posts: 2515 Joined: 1/31/2002 From: Australia Status: offline	RE: HELP FAST Pplease - 2/4/2003 22:42:39 quote: Where on my system are fonts stored? For Win98/Me: in your /Windows/Fonts folder. Can' t say for NT or XP but suspect it is very similar. _____________________________ Kitka It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious. (in reply to barry)

_gail

Posts: 2876
From: So FL
Status: offline

RE: HELP FAST Pplease - 2/5/2003 16:01:04

Thanks for the good stuff, Kitka,

I do have a few questions. You are correct that all the terms do not translate.

quote:

floating.

What does " floating" mean in PSP? I suppose PS has the same thing but I just can' t figure it out.

quote:

Blur 5

What did you blur?!

quote:

select the background colour from Summer' s existing graphic.

I understand about selecting the background color but I' m not sure how you got that color to appear just as an outline around the text. I think this is the key to having the drop shadow look okay in a transparent gif. No matter what I try in Photoshop to outline the text in the background color(using a stroke, outer glow, etc.), the drop shadow appears behind it.

Just how do you make the background color appear around the text only?

thanks, gail

ps I photoshop, applying things such as a drop shadow to text or an object is called a layer " style."

< Message edited by _gail -- 2/5/2003 4:03 PM >

_____________________________

Digicamhelp - Easiest place on the web to learn about Digit@l Cameras & Photography

(in reply to Kitka)

Kitka

Posts: 2515
Joined: 1/31/2002
From: Australia
Status: offline

RE: HELP FAST Pplease - 2/5/2003 17:17:00

quote:

Thanks for the good stuff, Kitka

You are very welcome - it is a pleasure to try to help!

quote:

What does " floating" mean in PSP

The text remains selected so I can drag it into position or apply other effects to it.

quote:

What did you blur?!

The drop shadow. The base colour I chose for the drop shadow was black - a blur of 0 would result in the text being reproduced just as sharp as the original and placed according to your offset setting... so it would appear doubled. With blur, it blends the black with the background colour to give a softer effect.

quote:

I understand about selecting the background color but I' m not sure how you got that color to appear just as an outline around the text. I think this is the key to having the drop shadow look okay in a transparent gif. No matter what I try in Photoshop to outline the text in the background color (using a stroke, outer glow, etc.), the drop shadow appears behind it.

I don' t use any other effect except drop shadow. Stroke and glow etc would interfere as you found already. Reading between the lines of your next question - I' ll venture to suggest that you are not selecting and using the background colour of the page or cell you intend displaying it in finally. So if you have a pale blue background of the page - you would make the starting background of your graphic exactly the same shade. Then apply the text > drop shadow > decrease colours > and finally make the pale blue background the transparent colour.

quote:

Just how do you make the background color appear around the text only?

I didn' t!

If you save the graphic to your own computer and then open it in Photoshop, you should be able to see that the background colour is #D9A786, and that is the one I made transparent. The colours you see as the drop shadow are several darker tones, which are a varied mix of the background colour and black. They are not transparent so you are able see them on a web page.

It actually doesn' t look very good on the white background of this page, because it was made specifically to blend with the header cell colour on Summer' s page.

I hope this helps - I wish I had access to a copy of Photoshop so I can see what the process would be in there. I had a copy years ago but found PS very difficult and non-intuitive - so quickly went back to PSP.

_____________________________

Kitka
**It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious.**

(in reply to _gail)


Kitka Posts: 2515 Joined: 1/31/2002 From: Australia Status: offline	RE: HELP FAST Pplease - 2/5/2003 18:49:23 I found this Photoshop Drop shadows tutorial which might be enlightening. _____________________________ Kitka It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious. (in reply to _gail)


_gail Posts: 2876 From: So FL Status: offline	RE: HELP FAST Pplease - 2/5/2003 19:01:11 quote: I found this Photoshop Drop shadows tutorial which might be enlightening. Thanks, Kitka, I' m okay with drop shadows per se. I' m trying to learn know how to get a good transparent gif so the entire rectangle or square background doesn' t have to be colored. I want to get it to look like the examples Linda and you made above. NOT like this gif: Attachment (1) < Message edited by _gail -- 2/5/2003 7:08 PM > _____________________________ Digicamhelp - Easiest place on the web to learn about Digit@l Cameras & Photography (in reply to Kitka)


_gail Posts: 2876 From: So FL Status: offline	RE: HELP FAST Pplease - 2/5/2003 19:15:47 quote: you should be able to see that the background colour is #D9A786, and that is the one I made transparent. Hmmmm, you' re the second one in two weeks who mentioned making a color transparent. It sorta went over my head with regard to this. I always work on a transparent background, so may this has something to do with it. Do you think so? I don' t know how to make a color transparent in Photoshop....yet. Oy, another thing to learn. gail _____________________________ Digicamhelp - Easiest place on the web to learn about Digit@l Cameras & Photography (in reply to Kitka)


Kitka Posts: 2515 Joined: 1/31/2002 From: Australia Status: offline	RE: HELP FAST Pplease - 2/5/2003 19:28:02 quote: I want to get it to look like the examples Linda and you made above. NOT like this gif: I popped it into PSP and then made the background colour transparent. It is fine except that the offset looks horrible on a light background.[:' (] Attachment (1) _____________________________ Kitka It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious. (in reply to _gail)

Kitka

Posts: 2515
Joined: 1/31/2002
From: Australia
Status: offline

RE: HELP FAST Pplease - 2/5/2003 19:34:49

Hehehe - you were posting while I was playing with your graphic in PSP!

quote:

I always work on a transparent background, so may this has something to do with it. Do you think so?

Yes, I do. I always start with a solid colour - usually the same as the background colour of the page or cell.

quote:

I don' t know how to make a color transparent in Photoshop....yet.

In PSP it is really easy - so hopefully PS will be the same!

Best of luck with it.

_____________________________

Kitka
**It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious.**

(in reply to _gail)


_gail Posts: 2876 From: So FL Status: offline	RE: HELP FAST Pplease - 2/7/2003 8:08:15 quote: In PSP it is really easy - so hopefully PS will be the same! http://www.frontpagewebmaster.com/tm.asp?m=117178&appid=14&p=&mpage=1&key=&language=&tmode=&smode=&s=#117485 Attachment (1) _____________________________ Digicamhelp - Easiest place on the web to learn about Digit@l Cameras & Photography (in reply to Kitka)