Tutorials
To Make An Avatar With Transparency

Wow. This is my first tutorial ever. I hope it's good ^^
This tutorial will teach you how to make an avatar that has transparency in it. The programs used in this are Jasc Paint Shop Pro 7 and Jasc Animation Shop.

Step 1
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First off, get a picture that you would like to use for an avatar. For the avatar in this tutorial, I used this picture. Right click the picture and go to 'copy' Once you have your picture, open up PSP7 and right click and put 'paste new image'. Minimize that image, and then go to File>>New. Set the width and height at 100, in pixels. The resolution should be 72. The background color, set to "transparent" and the image type as 16.7 Million Colors.

Step 2
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Ok. Now to make the border. I'll just do a simple border, so it will be less confusing that way. You might want to use the zoom tool to zoom in, so you can see the lines you draw better.

The tool with the red circle around is the one you want. That's the zoom.
Now that you're zoomed in as much as you like (but remember, you don't have to.), click on the draw tool.

Pick a color you like for it. Most of the time, black is what's used.

The one that I have circled is the color box that the draw tool uses. To pick a color, left click on it. A window will pop-up.

Now you can use this to pick your color. Black is at the very top row, the far right square. (But let's hope you knew that! ^^)

One more thing before you draw the border now. You should have a tool options window open at the top of Jasc. If not, go to View>>Toolbars and check Tool Options Palette. Set yours to match mine:

Finally. Now we can do the border. Go back to that new image that you zoomed in on. Draw a border around the four outside edges, like this:

Now draw a second border, like this:

Oh, and a little trick. If you want your lines to remain straight, hold shift as you draw the lines. It will straighten them for you, so they won't look something like this:

Allright, so there's your border.

Step 3
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Ignore your border. You can either minimize it for now or leave it open. I usually leave my open, but it honestly doesn't matter. Go back to the picture you want to use for you av. Remember, mine was the catgirl picture. Maximize it.
Now, click on your selection tool.

Once again, check your tool options palette. Yours should match mine:

Pick out a part of the image you want to be your avatar. Use the selection tool to select this part of your image. This is what it looks like once you've selected it. To select it, I clicked on the top left corner of where I wanted the avatar to start and moved the mouse down and left over to the other corner while holding the left mouse button down, then I let the button go.
So now that you've selected what you want, right click on the little image bar and go down to copy.

Now minimize your big picture. Right click and go to paste new image.

The selection that you made and copied will now be pasted as a completely new image.

There's just one problem. You've probably noticed it. Avatars are only 100x100 and this picture is too big! So we have to fix this. Go up to Image>>Resize

Set the height to 100. Don't worry about the width unless it's less than 100. If it is, set the width to 100 and ignore the height. If they're both less than 100, than your image was too small to begin with and you need to go reselect it, making it bigger this time. Also, try to make it as close to a perfect square as you can get when you select it. Also, when you set the height on image resize, make sure you have matain aspect ration checked.
Well now your image is resized. It should look like avatar size now, even if it's a few pixels off.

Step 4
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If you minimized it before, bring your border image back up. Right click on the image bar of your avatar pick, and go to copy. Then go over to your border image and right click on that image bar. Go down to paste new layer and click that.

Ok, now you can figure the rest out yourself.
....
Just kidding! No, okay seriously. You've pasted it as a new layer, right? Good. Minimize the original resized avatar pic. So you won't get them confused ^^
Now, is your layer palette window open? If not, go back to View>>Toolbars and check Layer Palette. It looks like this:

Good. So go back to your zoom tool and zoom in on your avatar/border pic. From the original size, click on it four times to zoom it in large enough. Now go up to your layer palette. Set the visibility for layer 2 to between 45-50.

Make sure that you remain on layer 2. Select your eraser tool.

Now, in between those two black lines, start erasing. Depending on how good you are at erasing (and if you're just starting out with Jasc, probably not very.) this can get very tedious. If you accidentally erase the main part of the picture outside the lines, you have to hit Ctrl+Z to undo it and start over. It's often a good idea to erase part of it, let go of the mouse button, and then start erasing again. This way, if you mess up, it will only undo what you've erased since you last let go of the mouse button.
Erase until you have the whole little area between the black lines done. It should look like this:

So, now that's done. Go back up to your layer palette. Set the visibility of layer 2 back to 100. Unless you erased parts of them while erasing in bewtween them, you can't see the black lines, can you? And you need those. So here's what you do. On your layer palette, select layer 1. Go to your image and right click on the image bar. Click on copy. NOT copy merged, that's not what we want. Now that you've copied layer 1, go back up to your layer palette and choose layer 2 again. Go back over to your image, right click again, and choose paste as new selection. NOT new layer, not new image, and NOT TRANSPARENT selection. Just "new selection". Line the border back up until it's on the edges again, like this:

Click back on layer 1 again in your layer palette.
Now, go over to your flood fill tool and click it.

Set the top color to #40FF40

Oh, and by top I mean this one:

Okay, so your flood fill color is set, and you should be on layer 1. Click once on the image anywhere with the flood fill tool. This is what happens:

If you want, you can save the image now as a .psp file in case anything happens, so you won't loose it. Otherwise, on to the next step!

Step 5
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Finally! We're almost done! Okay, right click on the image bar of your avatar again. This time, choose "copy merged" rather than just copy. If you don't choose copy merged, it won't work right.

Now, open up Jasc Animation Shop. Right click and go to Paste as New Animation. Then go to Animation>>Replace Color

Under Replace, for Old Color, the color should be that same green color: #40FF40 Under With, select Transparent Opacity. Click "OK"

Your image has now lost the green around it, and has regained the transparency. Go up to File>>Save as.. and save your image as whatever name you want to give it. Mine is just saved as catgirl.gif
Whatever you save it as, the file type must be Compuserve Graphics Interchange (.gif). Otherwise, the transparency will become white and won't work.
Now close out everything you left open in PSP7, since you don't need it anymore.
Close out Jasc PSP7 and Animation Shop.
And now you're done! You have just made an avatar with a transparency!

Pat yourself on the back for a job well done. You deserve it!

This tutorial and all contents found within are Š2003 to satori and are not to be reproduced in any way without permission.