How to Make a Transparent Image, See Through, for a Website with Paint Shop Pro PSP

Make a transparent see through image.

You are frustrated because you want to make a transparent image for a website and a Google search has many suggestion, all escoteric about special html and java. All the while Paint Shop Pro is quite capable of producing a picture that you can see through quite easilly. Make a PNG image.

Save this jpeg picture "dolphins.jpg" to your "Pictures" folder.

Open Paint Shop Pro. Open "dolphins.jpg" in PSP.

Click "Layers", "New Mask Layer", "Show all". A window will appear. Choose "OK". You will see a "Mask" layer and a "Raster" layer appear on the right in the "Layer" window. "Mask - Raster 1" will be highlighted. Leave it. Click "Layers", then "Properties". A window appears with a "Overlay color" on the left and the "Opacity" rate in percent on the right. Changing the color on the left will not make any difference. Changing the opacity will, but leave it at 50%. Click "OK".

Choose the "Flood Fill Tool" in the Toolbox on the left. Place the curser over the picture and click the left mouse button three times. You will see the picture become more transparent with each click.

Sometimes for some unkown reason this multi-click function will not work. There is a way around this. Click "Layers", "Properties" and "General" tab, as above. Then Choose the transparency (Opacity) you want - say 50%. Click "OK". Go ahead and use the "Fill" tool to make the image transparent. Go to the top and click "PNG". "Transparency" tab, then "Alpha channel transparency". Click the "Download Times" tab and you will see a download time of 14 seconds for a dial-up 56k connection. This is quite high, but with PSP you cannot make it any smaller with the transparent properties. Click "OK" and save it as "dolphins2.png"

Open your website writing software program and insert the PNG image into a webpage. Preview it. You will see that the image is transparent.

AN EASY WAY

Now let's do it the easy way. Load the dolphin.jpg image. Double left-click the top color. Select a shade of gray, say R.192, G.192, B.192. Go to "Layers, "New Mask Layer" and click "Show all". Left click the image with the "Fill" tool. Save it as a PNG image with "Alpha channel transparency" ticked. There you are!

Why doesn't PSP tell users that the program will create transparent images? It would certainly help sales if they did. And by the way. Get yourself and older Jasc Paint Shop Pro 8 version. The only bug when running it on Vista and Windows 7 is you have to begin cropping an image from the bottom right to top left. Resize any picture you are working on in this way.

The new PSP software by Corel is rubbish.

I use WYSIWYG Webbuilder. It is an excellent program for building websites and has image transparency built in so you can do it on the fly without having to directly modify the image. Another program that creates see through transparencies is Snagit, but this is complicated to use.

P.S. To make the multi-click function work:

Download the Filters which are a set of 9 bmp images.

Put the images in the "Texture" folder of PSP8.

Before you select "Layers", "New Mask Layer", "Show all" do the following:

Choose a main color like "blue".

Double left click the top color in the "Materials" window.

Tick "textures".

Choose Filter 40.

Then do "Layers", "New Mask Layer", "Show all" and continue.

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Installed Quicktime on Firefox but There Is No Sound

You installed Quicktime on Firefox but there is no sound.

There are two reasons for this:

1. Webpages are written in HTML and the code orders that ".mp3", ".wav "and so on, will be played by Windows Media Player (WMP).

2. WMP is set as the default device to play all media.

Quicktime is seldom chosen by PC users as the default device but it is necessary to install Quicktime in Firefox because some webpages direct that Quicktime must play the film clip in the webpage. When Firefox is freshly installed and it detects any media in a webpage it asks whether you want to load Quicktime. This is despite the fact that it really wants WMP.

Download Quicktime for Firefox here - QUICKTIME

Download the Firefox WMP plugin here - WMP

You may have to go to the Download folder, either the one in C: or the one in the user folder (your name), and double click "QuickTimeInstaller.exe" and "wmpfirefoxplugin.exe" files to install Quicktime and WMP.

When you go to any website now music and video will automatically be played by either WMP or Quicktime.
    
Also View This Article: 

Mozilla Firefox Will Not Play Web Page Background Music/Sounds, Firefox QuickTime plugin has crashed, WMP Plugin

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Menu Bar Is Grayed Out in IE8: Do this for all grayed out IE bars

So you installed a program and then when you opened Internet Explorer 8 the Menu Bar is grayed out and you cannot click it on.

Don't mess around with "gpedit.msc" or edit the registry. Vista Home Edition Does not allow gpedt.msc to run anyway. It is blocked for reason of that old cliche - security.

Go to "Start", "Control Panel", "Uninstall a program", "View installed updates", "Update IE8". Right click "Update IE8'. Then click "Uninstall".

Your computer will shut down and reinstall IE7.

Everything will then be okay.

Which is best IE8 or IE7.

Neither. They are both rubbish! IE9 Beta is much, much worse. It is in development now. I dumped it and went back to IE7 using Firefox for most work. IE9 Beta permanently disables the "Open File Location" function. A window keeps popping up asking you to disable Add-ons and it can't be turned off. The old "will not run ActiveX" warning window continues to annoy. Pressing "Alt" brings up the Menu Bar, but it disappears again straight away. Joining the problem solving team didn't help. They just sent silly simplistic advice that corrected nothing.

Firefox is by far the best and it doesn't have those silly security warnings that you cannot disable.

Internet Explorer safety is overrated. It is no safer than other browsers. It is just full of problems that confound the innocent Internet user - despite thousands of developers being paid millions of dollar they create a monster.

By pre-packing IE with the Windows system I believe Microsoft is breaking trading code practices in many countries. IE is built as part of the operating system when it should be totally separate.

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IE Does Not Remember Name and Password: Sign into Blogger, Blogspot, the easy way

Get Auto complete working your way.

For most PCs using Internet Explorer, the Blogger Dashboard (http://www.blogger.com/home?pli=1) will not remember the name and password. Do this if your blogger sign in details are the same as your Gmail account.

Go to the Google/Blogger sign in page:
"https://www.google.com/accounts/Login?service=blogger"

Type in your username usually your email address and password.
Sign in.

You will be taken to a page with all your Google owned sites listed:
"https://www.google.com/accounts/ManageAccount?pli=1".

Note: Blogger is on the list.
No, dont click it yet!

Now right click the mouse and add the Google sign in page to "Favorites"- the "https://www.google.com/accounts/ManageAccount?pli=1" page (see this URL in IE address window).

Click Favorites at the top of IE.
Go down to the end of the Favorites list.
Note that it is there at the bottom as
https://www.google.com/accounts/ManageAccount?pli=1.

Left click on this Favorite and drag it up onto the "Favorites Bar".
Right click and rename it "Blogger Account".


Next time you open Internet Explorer go to the Favorites Bar, click on the "Blogger Account" icon. When the Gmail page opens click on "Blogger" and your into the Blogger account very quick.

Oddly, if you have signed out of your Blogger account (like at Startup) and click the "Blogger Account" icon in the Favorites Bar, the page will now probably open with the normal Blogger sign in page and the autosave name and password feature will be working! Internet Explorer is a very peculiar creature

Another odd thing is that after you have done the above, Slim Browser which works by using the IE system on the computer will load you directly into Blogger using the "http://www.blogger.com/home?pli=1&pli=1" link (note it is a different sign in page) without even asking for a name and password whether you are signed in or out of Blogger (but not IE). It makes you wonder just how many sign in pages Google and Blogger need?

P.S. Make sure "Protected Mode" is ticked in "Restricted sites", "Local intranet", Trusted sites" and Restricted sites" in Security on Internet Options. Otherwise, Blogger could keep opening IE after IE, over and over, because Internet Explorer is weird.

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You have unsent messages in your Outbox. Do You want to send now?

After you close Windows Live Mail this message appears:

"You have unsent messages in your Outbox. Do You want to send now?"

This is due to an email somehow getting stuck in the system. This usually arises from the wrong email address when you last sent a message, or incorrect POP or SMTP when you set up your email program. It could also be from initially misspelling your own email address when setting up, then sending a test emal.

Do this:

Open Windows Live Mail.

At the bottom of the list of folders on the left you will see "Storage folders". Click on this folder.

Delete all of the email in this folder.

The "unsent messages" window will not be seen again when you close Windows Live Mail.

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