Animated Welcome Graphic

Creating an animated welcome graphic in Paint Shop Pro 5 is a piece of cake. The program contains all the elements you require.

To create the welcome graphic above:

  1. Open a new graphic large enough to hold your text, black background.
  2. Add a new layer.
  3. Add your text foreground color white.
  4. Apply the Filter Factory V - Poster Gradient filter (click here to the download filter - be sure to download Plugin Commander also, you will need it to configure the filter).
  5. Add a new layer. Using the Tube "sparkle" (click here to download a copy of the tube) add your first sparkle.
  6. Add more new layers. On each new layer add another sparkle.
  7. Turn off all the sparkle layers.
  8. Save your welcome graphic without any sparkles as "welcome.jpg".
  9. Turn on a sparkle layer. Save as "welcome1.jpg".
  10. Continue to turn on sparkle layers in the order you want your animation to show and save as subsequent "welcome#.jpg".
  11. When you have all all your layers saved, launch Animation Shop.
  12. Choose File|Animation Wizard.
  13. Enter your settings (I accepted the defaults except I changed the length of display from 10 seconds to 20 seconds.
  14. When asked to specify your images, add them in the order you saved your images.
  15. Save as an animated gif.

Note: Your animation will look more realistic if you don't activate the sparkles in chronological order.

To install the Sparkle.tub, open the graphic in Paint Shop Pro. Choose File|Export as a Picture Tube. Enter 1 in all the Cell Arrangment boxes. Leave all the other defaults the same. Give it a name "Sparkle" works well.

To install the Poster Gradient filter, go to my Plugins page for instruction.