Creating Banners and Text..

ecntrc · 10-22-2005

Ok, for a client Ive made a few banners.. I know she'll ask for a background.. but I know when I put the background you can totally see the whiteness around the lettering.. I know how to that that white line that goes around when you save it as a regular gif or save for web.. but Im talking about putting like an outer glow.. and then when it saves.. it shows it saving as the white background but looks good on a full size white background.. but if I were to put a texture or pattern background on the page that white border around the letters just messes it all up.. how can I save it to where it will save the original image as I made it and not add that white background around the letters... did i explain that good enough? or understandable? please let me know..

GoldNetX · 10-22-2005

I think I know what you mean.

Here is the problem. It seems mainly to be a limitation of the .gif format. Gif's can only hold up to so many colors, so they don't work well with gradient transparency because of the number of colors needed. Here is a little of the mainstream web formats:

GIF
-Shows transparency
-Limited to 256 colors (reason why the white shows up)
-Very small size

JPG
-Don't support transparency
-Can hold easily enough colors for web images
-Sizes vary dependent on the quality, but can be very large

PNG
-Holds a lot more colors than GIF
-Supports transparency in some browsers (IE doesn't display .png transparency, it turns the transparent parts into a gray background)
-File sizes are a bit larger than .gif, but usually smaller than some .jpg counterparts.

My suggestion for making a banner would be to create the text in Photoshop and put it on the background in Photoshop as well. You then will have to then just position it correctly on the website. Hopefully that helps.

ecntrc · 10-22-2005

No that helped tremendously.. the picture formats you described I knew that already also but I knew that I wouldnt be able to get a nice pattern like background without that white to show.. theres no way if I then open the image in image ready or I also have fireworks.. would it work or look better? if not then ah thats ok.. Ill have to figure something out.. hopefully she wont ask about that! hehe

GoldNetX · 10-22-2005

It may be possible to open it in ImageReady and save it as an optimized image, but it most likely won't help a lot.

Sacred · 10-25-2005

what i would like to know is how to reduce size of a gif wid out losing quality too badly, expecially if im working on a well rendered banner

**Bub** · 10-25-2005

Not really a good way to do it without losing quality and keeping it as a gif. The way I would do it is convert it to a flash swf file. That would keep the file small but still retain the quality.

Good Luck.

Sacred · 10-26-2005

thx dude that helps me display some of the graphs i have been working on :

kristineg · 11-02-2005

BUB how do you make the grid lines in your signature? i'm new in using photoshop so would you mind teaching me how you do it?

**Bub** · 11-02-2005

Which signature? It's 3 or 4 random sigs. Which color?