The great thing about good graphics programs, you can tear up an image and put it back into any order you want. These two programs give you this freedom. We use Paint Shop Pro for all our graphics and have been extremely happy with the results.


Graphics Programs

Paint Shop Pro With Paint Shop Pro you can do wonders to about anything. You can install plug-ins that make your images look like a crystal ball to making text look like it was carved out of gold. If you decide to go with a graphics program, look at the bottom of the page. We give you all kinds of sites that show you how to get the plug-ins and how to use them. After doing that, it's simply a matter of using a little imagination. Believe it or not, it's fun!

Photoshop We have not played with this program. From everything I've seen on the internet, you can do the same things as you can with Paint Shop Pro. On their site, you can download a few plug-ins too.


Sites with Plug-ins

These Plug-ins are called "third party" plug-ins. Although the sites are geared for Photoshop, the plug-ins can also be used for Paint Shop Pro.
PC Resources for Photoshop They have a library of sorts that shows you what each plug-in can do. I had thought when I started, that each plug-in did just what you saw at that site. Boy, was I wrong. You move sliders back and forth on different settings and you get a different effect for each. Do me a favor, and don't fill up your hard drive with these things. It's easy to do.
The Plugin Head In Tips and Tricks I tell you about this site. There's a lot of stuff here. Links to all kinds of sites about graphics. In particular the plug-ins. There's even a place to get a program that lets you build your own plug-ins. We haven't gotten to that step yet. Give us time, we probably will.

Sites with tutorials on how to use Paint Shop Pro


Webweaver Webweaver has all different kinds of walk throughs. I'm sending you to the basics first. From there you can choose to go to text effects and or image effects. He does a very good job. The banner for this web site was made using one of his text effects.

Nuts and Bolts Nuts and Bolts has some good tutorials to go through for backgrounds, paper textures and 3D effects. Easy instructions, step by step. Go ahead and try some. Once you get the feel for it, do some experimenting. Have fun!

Paint Shop Pro JASC has some excellent tutorials you can follow along with. They'll even point you to some other sites that will teach you as well. They also will tell you how to do transparent gifs. As soon as we get that to work, we'll be happy.


Sites to download graphics

The Free Graphics Store You can download as many graphics as you can carry. Some of them are quite good.

Elated They do have some interesting graphics. You need to hunt through. As with all graphics sites, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Button World He has all kinds of buttons. Long, short, round. Great if you want to put your own text on 'em.

Icon Bazaar They have a lot of graphics. Have fun.


Animated GIFs

A+ Art Animated buttons, bars, bullets, construction, cartoons, e-mail, globes, and more! Again, you can take what you can carry. Have fun!

Animation Factory These folks have more than a few animations. Get lost on their site.

Tom's Gallery He has some cool animations. Some are big, some are small, but most are very good!


There are quite literally hundreds of sites on the internet where you can find things that are related to graphics. It took us a long time to surf the internet and put together all the "clues" to the "big picture" ; ) The purpose for giving these sites is simply to give you a beginning.

The important part to remember about graphics is that they are only limited by your imagination. With the plug-ins you now have at your disposal, the ability to make graphics without having to know how to draw. (In my case, this is good, I have two left hands when it comes to drawing.)


Please feel free to e-mail us and let us know how you do with your graphics. If you build a page for the internet, we would be happy to put your link on this site.

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