Tutorials Page Index.
| Photo Enhancements: Sometimes the Photograph you get is not quite what you expected and can lack certain elements to bring the picture to life. This tutorial shows how with relatively simple editing using a photo editing software package, (in this case Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 Ultimate) you can better your original photograph by combining two images. |
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| Thumbnails: Most of the images used on this web site are a combination of pictures captured with my camera or images drawn or created using different types of image software. For the most part I used Paint Shop Pro 7 Anniversary Edition to crop and re-size the pictures and then applied various "effects" filters to get the desired look. |
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| Watermark Style Backgrounds: I was introduced to combining background images with the flat background colour to give the page a more interesting appearance, (see the top of this page for an example). I worked out a technique using Paint Shop Pro 7 that enabled me to create an image from an existing picture that resembled a watermark that could be tiled in as a background with the flat background colour. |
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| The "SZ" Button: Another image program that I used a lot was Xara X1. This creates vector images that can be easily manipulated and has some really good effects filters that are applied using a slider bar rather than filling out dialogue boxes. This is a particularly good method because you get to see your creation happening in real time. File formats can be exported from .xar to .gif, .jpg, or .png for web browsers. |
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| The "SZ" Spinning Logo: Using Xara X1, Paint Shop Pro 7 and Animation shop 3 you can create a GIF animation to produce the effect shown here in the Spinning SZ logo. One of the drawbacks with Animation shop is the "Save" feature. When you have finished creating your masterpiece it wants to "optimize" (compress) your work and there is no option to stop this that I have found! |
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| Navigation Buttons: The Windows style navigation buttons generated by the, (< type="button" />) code look pretty in Internet Explorer 7 or Firefox 2 but unfortunately it does not allow a link to open a "Blank" page. To overcome this I have cheated by making my own "look-alike" buttons using images to create a rollover function using my old favourite image editing program, Paint Shop Pro 7. |
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| Sample Button Images: To complement the Navigation Button elements I have added a page with sample square Rollover buttons that I created using Paint Shop Pro 7. From this page there is access to a zipped folder containing all the example elements that can be downloaded and toyed with however you feel fit. |
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| Model Planes & False Backgrounds: Had a bit of a clear out at home and found some old photographs of some Airfix model airplanes that had been photographed in front of a false background giving the appearance that the model planes were actually in flight. I decided to build a web page to try and explain how this was done and to show the resultant photographs. |
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