I'm sure we've all seen those beautiful backgrounds....so colorful yet they don't hide the text that's on them. While it may look hard to do, it's actually very, very simple to achieve that look. To use the graphic below, simply right click and choose SAVE AS and plop it into a folder where you'll be able to find it later.
Here is the graphic we will be starting with. This is a picture that a friend sent me of a rose arrangement she got the other day. Talk about fresh roses. LOL
Open your PSP program and bring up this graphic. As you can see it is entirely TOO dark to use as a background for a web page or even for stationery. If you'd try to use a black or dark text on it you would go blind trying to read it.
Open a new RASTER LAYER for this graphic. Easy way....click on the word LAYERS in the PSP menu bar at the top of the screen and then click on NEW RASTER LAYER.
Next step is a simple FLOOD FILL of the new layer. Making sure the NEW LAYER (Layer 1) is active, FLOOD FILL with WHITE. Your graphic should now look like this:
EEK! Where did the graphic go? hehe It's there, but it's hidden now under that layer of white that you just dumped on it. LOL Somewhere on your screen you'll see a little window marked LAYER PALETTE. If you open that little window you'll see both the background layer and the active layer .. LAYER 1... Next to each of those layers you'll see a little slider bar. The one for the background will be greyed out and the other will be active. It should look like this:
Click and drag that slider until your picture starts to show underneath. You can make it as light or as pronounced as you want by adjusting that slider. Here are two samples.
and
You can safely use any color of text on these new backgrounds and still have the beauty of the picture show through. Note the size of the original graphic. You can resize to get it even smaller or make it larger to fill the entire page instead of tiling the graphic. Play with the settings until you get the desired effect.
Final step is to save your background. Save it as a .JPG for use on web pages and stationery. This is a compressed graphic form that will give you a resonable file size as well as keep the graphic details sharp. When you click on the FILE and then SAVE AS a window will pop up like the one below.
Click on YES, navigate to where you want the file saved and that's all there is to it. You've just created your first MUTED BACKGROUND. Now, let's see what you all can come up with. Have fun!
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