The decorative text on a web page, headlines, buttons, etc., looks much better if it is co-ordinated. So now we will creat a text 'look' for our page. Following the tutorial will produce a silver, textured, italic style. If you do not like it, it will at least show you how to create a co-ordinated look, and you can then change the font, colour, material and so on to create one for yourself.

This will not be the font and style used in the ordinary text on the page - a simple font like Times New Roman or Arial is best for that so that you can be certain whoever views the page will have it on their system. The text blocks written in the text style we shall create are saved as gifs and treated as graphics.

Begin by creating a new image size 640x480 pixels. It will appear on the screen at 1/2x zoom. Zoom it to 1x and pull out the sides of the box so that it fills your screen, and then move the vertical slider to the top.

Select the text tool, and set the parameters as shown below. Don't worry too much about the colour at this stage, because we shall change it later. Just use a medium grey.

If you do not have the Aristocrat Regular font, you can download it here
Download the font

Click on the left side of your image page, and in the Text Entry Box type 'The Web Page', and click Update. The words, in 3d and two shades of grey will be printed, surrounded by a selection marquee.

Click on Options, and on the various pages, make these settings:

Shading - select Metallic. Set shininess 75 strength 66

Bump - Click on the File button and use my petal.jpg (If you do not have the file, download it here and unzip it to your PhotoImpact 4 Material folder). Set density 100%. Leave Use Bump Map As Reflection unchecked

Border/Depth - set border 8 depth 30 leave Maximum border width unchanged and set Type of border In

Color/Texture Check Gradient color and Deform Image leaving all other options unchecked. Click on the colour box beside Gradient Colour. Set the parameters as shown below left

      

To select the two shades, click first on the colour box beside Two color, to open the Ulead Colour Picker. Click on the grey at the right end of the top row to open the selection of grey shades. The colours used in the right and left boxes in Gradient Fill Two Color are marked in the illustration above right. When you have selected the left one, repeat the process for the right hand colour box.

Transparency, Shadow, Reflection - leave all boxes unchecked on these options Bevel, Light - Leave the settings on these pages unchanged

Your text will now look like this. If you wanted to put this on a web page you would use Edit/Selection/Merge All, crop the text and use Web/Smart Saver to save it as a gif with transparent background. But here we are creating a look which can be saved and applied to any text.

With the text tool still selected, click the Add button to the right of Options on the toolbar. Set the box options as shown here, except that it does not matter what is in Recently Used.

Click OK and the text parameters will be saved in the Material gallery. You can check that it is there by using View/Toolbars and Panels. Check Easy Palette and click Close. In the Easy Palette window click the top left button, and from the list select Material Gallery. Click the Preset tab, scroll to the bottom and your text preset will be the last one shown. You can type text in any font, any colour, and if, while you have the text tool selected and the text not merged, you click and drag from the new text style's thumbnail on Easy Palette to the selected text you have just created, it will change to this size and style.

You can create a range of sizes for subheadings, by simply changing the text size, and giving it a new name when you add it to the gallery. You should certainly save one in size 45 for use on the buttons, perhaps calling it Button Text in the gallery.

To make a button, load button.bmp, select the text tool, click on the button, and write the button name. Click and drag the Button Text preset from the gallery to the button. Adjust the text to the right position, and use Edit/Selection/Merge All. Then use Web/Smart Saver and save it as a gif, nominating the background as the transparent colour.

Do not save changes to button.bmp because you will need that for making other buttons.