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Page 4

 

blank.gif - 1kb pic21-7.jpg - 13kbpic21-8.jpg - 13kbSwitch on all your pos layers.

pic22.jpg - 20kb Your image should now look like this. If you have any circles showing, check through your pos vector layers till you find which one has its ellipse layer switched on, and switch it off.


We need now to crop away the unwanted area surrounding the text.
pic23-7.jpg - 23kbpic23-8.jpg - 18kbIn PSP7, double click on the selection tool and enter the values on the left in the box which appears.

In PSP8, click on the selection tool, and in the tool options on the one outlined in red in the upper image on the right. Enter the values as shown in the lower image on the right.

The selection should surround your text leaving a small margin all round it. If it is cutting into the text, select the mover tool,pic25.jpg - 2kb right click inside your selection and move it till it surrounds your text. If it is completely the wrong size for your text, then use the selection tool set to rectangle and drag a selection round your text, with a small margin outside it.

In both programs, use Image>Crop to Selection. Now save your psp file again. It will be saved exactly like this, with the ellipse layers and the raster layer switched off and all the text layers active, and we can open it in Animation shop and each text layer will become an animation frame. Go to the File Menu, Jasc Software Products, and click Launch Animation Shop.

pic26.jpg - 29kbIn Animation shop go to the File menu, Open, and open your psp file. It will appear that only one of your frames is there, but if you use the slider at the bottom of the window and scroll to the right, you will find all the other frames displayed one by one.

At the bottom of the frame, the frame number F: is displayed, and the delay before it moves to the next frame is also displayed - D:10 on mine which means 10 x 1/100sec.

Use the animation tool pic24.jpg - 1kb at the top right of the toolbar to try out your animation. If it runs smoothly and at a speed you like, then use File>Save As to save your animation.

If you want to change the speed, first use Edit>Select All and then Animation>Frame Properties and change the delay value. A lower number than your existing one will speed the movement up, a higher one will slow it down. Experiment and try the animation after every change until you get the result you want, and then save your animation. The image below is my animation, running at a delay of 10.

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pic27.jpg - 11kbWhen I was working in PSP8 I found that after the optimization of the animation, my text looked like this. I tried replacing the colour and re-saving, but the text was still black with a pale outline.

I have no idea whether this is a result of using a PSP8 file saved in PSP7 compatible format, or even whether it was related to the colour I used or something on my own computer, but if it happens to you, I solved the problem by going back into PSP8, switching off everything except pos1, and exporting that with the gif optimizer as a transparent gif called frame1.gif. Then I switched pos1 off, pos2 on and saved frame2.gif - and so on till I had all my postions saved as separate frames.

In Animation Shop I used the animation wizard. These are the settings to use:
default canvas colour: transparent
Image location: centred in frame - fill rest of frame: canvas colour - leave Scale frames to fit unchecked
Add image: add all the gif frames you made. You can select them and add all at once, but select your last frame first and frame1 last, or they will be added in the wrong order and you will need to sort them out with the move up and move down buttons to prevent your animation working backwards. Click the Next and then the Finish button, and your animation will be in Animation Shop, ready for testing and saving.

We could leave our animation there, but it would be a lot more fun with a wheel going round with the text, so on the next page we will add that.

 

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