Making a gif Background
This is a gif background I did for another site. This uses plugins that don't come with psp X and it uses animation shop.
I start with a 400x400 transparent background.
I floodfill it with a color of my choice.
I use a brush or the oil brush or anything I want to apply a contrasting color and just swipe it on top of the first color.
Next I use the kaleidoscope effect in Effects-Reflection Effects-Kaleidoscope, or use one of my plugins that make it kind of wild looking. I have been using kaleidoscope then using a plugin called Deep Dream and then the SpiroFX on top of that. These two plugins are in the DCSpecial (Ms Slim, I knew someone would ask that and I had to look for it. The page is kind of weird looking but it's ok)group of plugins. I got them on line free.
I used kaleidoscope-Deep Dream and Spiro FX on this one and this is what it looks like before I used the seamless tile effect.
Next use your Effects-Image Effects-Seamless Tile, in the default position.
Sign it if you want to do that.
You can stop here and have a nice background tile that is not animated for a regular background. Just save it as a jpg.
Take your Magic Wand from selections set to Add and about a 46 tolerance located in your tool bar above your workspace Contiguous checked and just touch areas so you get a little selections all over the image. Sometimes it only takes one touch and sometimes you have to touch the image all over to get a scattered selection. Two high contrast colors work best for this because your selection wand picks one of the colors out better.
Duplicate your image twice.
Click on your first selection in the layers palette. Adjust Add/Remove Noise-Add Noise-1-Random-Monochrome
Click on your second seletion in the layers palette. Adjust Add/Remove Noise-Add Noise-3-Random-Monochrome
Click on your third selection in the layers palette. Adjust Add/Remove Noise-Add Noise-6-Random-Monochorme
I find the less noise you add in a background gif the better it looks. I was using 10-20-30 for some gif avatars I made for people like we were taught in animation class and found that the larger numbers make the animation bleed onto the page if you are doing someone's name.
Next, Selections-Select None
Highlight your first image in your layer palette, go to your work space and right click on the top bar of your image and copy.
Open your animation shop and right click in there then-Paste as New Animation
Go back to your image, highlight your second image in the layers palette, go to your work space and right click on the top bar of your image and copy.
Go to animation shop and right click on your top bar of your image there then-Paste After Current Image
Go copy your third image in psp and do the same with it, pasting it after the current image again in animation shop. Click on view animation and you should see you animated background working.
Save as a gif file and name it. I always compress my gif images.
You can have it automaticly do that for you or you can go to file-optimization wizard and do it there. It will tell you how long it will take your gif to load if you use the optimization wizard.
This is what I ended up with.
Depending on colors it looks more subtle sometimes than others.
This tut is an original by Red ©suzart2007-any resemblance to any other tut is coincidental. If you put this tutorial up for others somewhere on another website a nod to origin would be nice but not necessary.
