Finally, you save the background as a GIF or JPEG. Dark text demands lighter backgrounds, and vice versa. If necessary, use the Quick Color Controls to adjust the background. All that's left is to select Create New Image and click OK.

As with most of PhotoImpact's graphics controls, an instant preview shows the results of design manipulations. The background pattern is set by choosing both a pattern and pattern Mode. The basic colors for the new background are set by shifting the hue slider and/or clicking the Edit Palette customizing controls. First, you choose a tile sizepreferably less than 200x200 pixelsby setting the tile width, height, and frequency. Backgrounds are created from color palettes, each of which can be limitlessly customized, and a scrollable pattern selector. The Web Background Designerīackground Designer lets you create an infinite variety of backgrounds for Web pages in seconds seeįigure 1. In this article, I'll discuss PhotoImpact's new Web Extensions menu umbrella, which includes the Background Designer, Button Designer, Frame Designer, Object Shadow Designer, Shift Image, Align Objects, Space Evenly, HTML Image Assistant, Image Map Tag, helper Program, GIF SmartSaver, and JPEG SmartSaver. PhotoImpact writes out to over thirty file formatsincluding JPEG, GIF, and PNGmaking it a great choice for all creative purposes, particularly Web-page design. It comes with numerous textures, gradient libraries, and objects, and is bursting with unique image-processing techniques.

It does things that no other software even tries to do, like instantly layering area fills so they can be moved around on top of an image as soon as they are created.

This is a shame, because PhotoImpact is a powerful, full-featured graphics and image-editing program. That gives it a certain stature and presence for the community that Microsoft Office targets, but also contributes to its anonymity with other users. Ulead has positioned PhotoImpact, a Windows-only application, as a graphics-software utility for Microsoft Office. PhotoImpact 3.01, this has become a reality. Wouldn't it be nice, though, to be able to work in a creative environment with tools dedicated to Web-page design that also contain all of the options expected from a high-end image-processing and graphics application? With the new Web menu that's been added to Ulead Corporation's Web Techniques: Page Design with PhotoImpactĬD Home < Web Techniques < 1996 < DecemberĪny paint or image-processing software can be used to develop content for a Web page, as long as the output is digestible for both the Web and your browser.

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