How to Create Your Own Banner

With Paint Shop Pro 5

Quick Links:

1. New Image
2. Select Color
3. Layers
4. Text
5. Drop Shadow
6. Decrease Color
7. Save

In this lessson, I will help you create a banner which you can use for both the GeoGuide (Member Banner Exchange) as well as Link Exchange Deluxe. You'll be learning to work with the Color Palette, Fill Tool, Text Tool, Layers and Color menu. The end result will be a banner with a solid color background, title text with drop shadows, and sub text (shown at the top of these pages).
1. Opening a New Image
	Begin by opening a new image by clicking the New icon . Set Image Dimentions to Width: 468; Height: 60; select "Pixels" from the pull-down menu. Set Resolution to 72 and select "Pixels/inch" from the pull-down menu. For Image Characteristics, you can begin with Background color: White. [However, you can choose any basic color and then skip to part 3 below if you prefer.] For Image Type, select "16.7 Million Colors (24 bit)".
2. Selecting a Background Color
	Select a background color from the Color Palette. To choose a specific color, click on the background color to bring up the dialog box shown at left. The red circle is where you can specify an exact color in the RGB (Red, Green, Blue) format.
*Note that hexidecimal color codes must be converted to RGB values. You can do this easily with your Windows Calculator: open the calculator (Start/Programs/Accessories/Calculator) then click "View" and select "Scientific". Select "Hex" from the radio buttons on the left. Enter the first pair of hex numbers using the right-side buttons. If your color is 33FF99, you would first enter "33". Then just select the "Dec" radio button and it converts the hex number to decimal - "33" becomes "51" Continue with the other 2 pairs of hex numbers. In this example, "33FF99" would convert to Red="51"; Green="255"; Blue="153". If you are using color words instead of a hex color code, then you should just choose a color which visually matches what you want. Or you could take a screen shot of your page (load your page into your browser and then hit the "Print Scrn SysRq" key at the top of your keyboard. Open PSP and select "Edit/Paste as New Image") and use the Dropper tool to select your background color.
	Select the Flood Fill tool and set the Controls to Fill Style: Solid Color; Match Mode: None; Tolerance: 0; Opacity: 100. (I believe these are default settings, but don't remember any more). Now take your Flood Fill tool and click it over your image. You now have a custom background color to work over.
3. Working in Layers
	From the Layers palette, click the New Layer icon which will bring up the Layer Properties window shown at left. Leave all the settings at default, but name your new layer "Title", then click "OK".
	Next, create another layer and name it "sub text". You can work on any layer by selecting it from the Layers palette.
The Next Page deals with adding text and effects to the layers.
See my Computer Stuff page for links to places on the web where you can learn how to use HTML. And also: Creating a page with the Basic HTML Editor Using the EZ File Upload Using Paragraph and Line Break Tags Learn to Edit Files with Notepad Using Telnet to delete corrupt email This page last updated: October 20, 2002