Banner Primer #4

     Notice this to begin with: Even though there are two images on the screen, they are not seen as equal by PSP. One of the images is in the "forefront" meaning that is the image that is being acted upon at the moment. Look at this screen capture taken from my own PSP while both images were open:

     See how the banner.gif has a blue bar at the top and the ticket1.gif image has a gray bar at the top? Look at your two images, one will be blue and one will be gray. The one with the blue bar at the top is the one that is in the forefront. That means that if you perform a copy, or a cut, or a paste, that is the image that will be acted upon. If you want the other image to be the one acted upon, then click on it. You'll see that its gray bar becomes blue and the other image's bar becomes gray. Do that - click back and forth between the images to see them work that way.

This is what we're going to do:

     We are going to take those two images, banner.gif and ticket1.gif and combine then to create a third image we will call banner1.gif. It'll look like this:

     Once it is at the forefront, click on the menu marked EDIT at the top of the PSP window. Under that menu, you'll find the command "Copy". Choose it as it shows to the right.

     You should now have something that looks something like this:

     Go ahead and move your pointer around a bit. You'll see that the little cross with arrows on the ends allows you to move the image where ever you want it. Try to get it right in the middle. Once you have it right where you want it, click the left mouse button but don't hold it. Just click it.
     The image will now lock into place and the same dotted line you saw in the crop function will appear. Click again anywhere outside of the pasted image. Don't click inside or you'll get the arrows again. The dotted lines should disappear.

     You already have the tools to create the five images above. You'll need to open four images in the PSP window for this, leftticket.gif, rightticket.gif, banner.gif, and banner1.gif. Once you have all of those images open, place banner1.gif just above banner.gif. The PSP screen should look like this:

     The reason I am having you do this is because you will use banner1.gif as a guide to create the next image. Copy and paste leftticket.gif and rightticket.gif into banner.gif so that you get a little bit of a tear. It should look like this:

     Save it as banner2.gif. Now leave banner2.gif open and re-open banner.gif. Place banner .gif below banner 2.gif. Now you can use banner 2.gif as a guide to make the next image, which will banner3.gif. The screen will look something like this when you finish making banner3.gif:

     See how I am using one image as a guide to create the next image in the sequence? That's why I am asking you to create the images by looking at the image that comes before it. What you need to do now is create banner4.gif, banner5.gif, and banner6.gif so they closely resemble the six images above. They are all made by copying and pasting again and again until the image is finished. Then save the image using the save as command.
     The image banner.gif is your palette. It is the blank space that all other items will be placed upon. You then use the image that came before it as a guide to creating the next image. remember, these images are all going to be inimated and then need to be related to each other somewhat or the final animation will look way too jumpy to be enjoyed.

     Make sure that banner1.gif through banner6.gif also end up in the same directory as the other images you have made. It's a little time consuming, but not as scary as you first thought, right?