I want to make my page have a similar look with the burgandy left & top sides, with it curving in that upper left corner like theirs does. I also want to be able to put a similar white table over this to have the time & top tabs like they did. Basically I want to create a site with similar looks. Can anyone tell me where to begin? Thanks so much for any help.

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Shirley
It's what you learn after you know it all that counts.
Money Tree Web Design

You can do it this way.
1. Start with a blank 200w x 40h rect.
1.a. Flood fill with transparent color.
2. Select preset shapes
2.a. Select circle
2.a.1 Select antialias and create as vector.
3. Set the foreground and background colors to your desired tab color.
4. Draw a 40 x 40 circle on both left and right sides. These will be 1 solid color with no outlines. Antialias will make the curves look natural.
5. Use the Draw tool to fill in the area between the circles and bottom left and right corners.
6. Set tranparency to color used in 1.a.

1. Start with a 30pix by 30 pix square.
2. Fill entire square burgandy.
3. Select shapes and draw a white 30 pix by 30 pix circle inside the square.
4. Use Crop to crop away all but the uppper left 15x15 pix.
5. You have your corner.
6. Save and then Export>GIF optimization.

Two things to remember:
1. Colors>increase color depth
2. Check antialias.
This will make curves look more natural.

All of this takes a lot a trial and error and frustration. Don't give up.

Mike Rischard

The only question I have on your other method (the simple way) is when you say 'use Crop to crop away all but the upper left 15x15 pix, how exactly do I get all but the 15x15?

I know that's a lot of questions, but I would learn so much from your knowledge of this. Thanks for your help!!

Simple way:
1. Start with a 30pix by 30 pix square.
a. File>New> 30 x 30 pixels.
b. View>Zoom in by 5.
2. Fill entire square burgandy.
a. Use the paintbush to paint the square your dark color.
3. Select shapes and draw a white 30 pix by 30 pix circle inside the square.
a. Click on the shapes icon (blue rect and red oval.
b. Right click on shape icon to open tool propeties box.
c. Uncheck "retain style"
d. Set the foreground and backgound color to white (in upper right corner).
e. Place the cursor at the upper left hand corner of your square and draw a 30 x 30 circle. Look to your status box on the lower left side of screen to see that it is 30x30. It should just touch each side of your square.
f. You will now have a white circle inside your colored square.
4. Use Crop to crop away all but the uppper left 15x15 pix.
a. Click on the crop icon. It is the 4th one down (two crossed Ls).
b. Place the cursor in the upper right of the square and "select" an area of 15x15, beginning with the upper left pixel. Again, look at the lower left part of the screen at your status box to see that it is 15x15.
c. Right click the crop icon to open the crop "tool options" and click on crop.
d. You now have an upper left corner.
5. You have your corner.
6. Save and then Export>GIF optimization. Will make a smaller file size.

Two things to remember:
1. Colors>increase color depth
2. Check antialias.
This will make curves look more natural.

All of this takes a lot a trial and error and frustration. Don't give up.

Mike Rischard

I hope you'll be around again as I'm sure I'll be posting again with more questions! I really appreciate you sharing your knowledge.

I check in almost every day. I got a lot of help here, not always by asking, but often by just reading.

I try to help when and if I can.

Mike R

I used to do it that way . . . creating a circle first, but had trouble getting the exact crop mark before the circle started to curve back in again, thus it didn't always blend perfectly into whatever it was up against.

It's much easier and gives much better results if you just create a "rounded rectangle" and then select your curved corners from that ... that way, it blends into the straight edge of your table.

I find that the preset shapes tool (rounded rectangle, antialias checked) gives the best results. Make sure the background color is set to whatever the background of your page will be. Set your foreground color to the color you want and draw your rounded rectangle, dragging as wide or as high as you need to achieve the amount of curve you want ... (depending on whether you're making small tabs or a large rounded corner you may need to make your canvas larger so that you can do this).

From there you can crop out corners if you want ... crop out the top or bottom for tabs, or whatever.

If you're doing tabs, you might even want to set the style to "stroked & filled" if you want to give a contrasting border to the tab.

Good luck...

ginnie