We're Off To See The Wizard! The Wonderful Wizard Of PSP!

You now know the "manual" method to making a transparent image. But, put a large number of images on the page and you now have a problem with it taking too long to load. PSP6 has a special feature just for this. A wizard to guide you through not only creating a transparent .gif, but it performs a better compression as well! Can't beat that with a stick, or in this case....a wand!

Open the original image in PSP and merge all layers. Now, go to the menu, choose "File" then "Export" and then "Transparent GIF". The "Transparent GIF Saver" pop up window opens.

Here you can work through the tabs and make adjustments to the settings to get the image at the file compression size and look you want. There's alot of information to learn in this pop up window, so you might want to take your time and learn how each of the functions specifically work. But, the wizard is here as well so you can get your graphic completed in no time at all.

Step By Step

Click the "Use Wizard" button on the bottom left of the pop up window. The "Transparent GIF Wizard" opens. From here you simply follow the prompts in the wizard until your graphic is just how you want it. Here's how The KROW got the red square button to have a transparent background:

There are just 5 steps to the processes (the wizard calls them pages).

1. Drag your cursor over the color box. Click the color box and choose "white" from the color palette. Now choose: "Convert matching colors to transparent" and click "Next".
2. Click the color box and choose white again, then click "Next".
3. Choose "Yes-use Web-safe colors only" (default) and click "Next".
4. Now...this is where it get amazing! Move the Slider bar ALL THE WAY the bar to "Smaller File Size" and click "Next".
5. This shows you how your final graphic looks. See something different? Yes..ok...I mean besides the background is transparent. Anything else? YEP! The actual file size! It's incredible. The wizard has compressed our graphic down to under 2K! Click "Finish" and the wizard automatically asks you where you want to save your cool new, web-ready graphic! Now, just save it, drop it into your web page and now you can do more than "pull a rabbit out of a hat!"

   Cool KROW Clue

The second half of this Module will be in 2 weeks. Be sure to bookmark this page and come back as often as you need to!

In the next lesson, we'll "dig" deeper into Layers and learn some more fancy tricks with vectoring!

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