making shadow edged backgrounds

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making shadow edged backgrounds

Wicky

5:48 pm on Jul 22, 2005 (gmt 0)

hello,
I like backgrounds with a soft shadowed edge on the left and right side such as <removed>, but I find it very difficult to make them for my own sites. Most of the time I'm using paint shop pro 8. Is there somebody who can help me with some advice?

thanks,
Wicky
Holland

[edited by: jatar_k at 7:20 pm (utc) on July 22, 2005]
[edit reason] sorry no urls [/edit]

lZakl

6:13 pm on Jul 22, 2005 (gmt 0)

Assuming you are talking about the main image in the Flash on the top of the screen: I have never used Paintshop Pro, but I do know in Photoshop this would be very easy using the Gausian Blur, Lasso/Magnetic/Wand Tools and Gradient Tool. And adding a couple of layers of course.

With a little bit of masking, creating a gradient layer, and a blur layer and playing with their respected opacities would be the way I would go about it. Again, in Photoshop. Sorry, I do not know Paintshop :0(

-- Zak

Wicky

6:56 pm on Jul 22, 2005 (gmt 0)

Sorry, misunderstanding. I mean the complete site-background, or in other words: the back-ground of the main table for the lay-out.

Wicky,
Holland

lZakl

10:20 pm on Jul 22, 2005 (gmt 0)

Wicky,

I see what you meant now...

They are using CSS to do this. So I will give you the basic CSS and image instructions to do a layout like this:

First open Paintshop, and create a new image, size 80 pixels wide by 1 pixel tall. Now put a generic gradient in, dark side to the right.

Name this image bg_left.gif

Next create test.html with your favorite text editor and place the following code inside:

<html>
<head>
<title>Three Column CSS Layout with Header</title>
<style type="text/css">
body 
{ margin-top: 0;
 margin-bottom: 0;
 margin-left: 0;
 margin-right: 0;
 padding-left: 0;
 padding-right: 0;
}
#left {
 position: absolute;
 left: 0px;
 top: 0px;
 width: 80px;
 height: 300;
 background: white url(bg_left.gif);
}
#center {
 top: 0;
 margin-left: 80px;
 margin-right: 80px;
 background-color:#fffffff;
 border-style: solid;
 border-width: 1px;
 height: 300;
 text-align: center;
}
#right {
 position: absolute;
 right: 0px;
 top: 0px;
 width: 80px;
 height: 300;
 background: white url(bg_right.gif);
}
#main {
border-style: solid;
border-width: 2px;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<div id="left"></div>
<div id="center">
Your content here
</div>
<div id="right"></div>
</body>
</html>

Now play with bg_left.gif until you get the effect you want. Just edit it, and save over the old one. Once you get it right, rotate it 180 degrees and save as bg_right.gif.

These are the basics on how it is done.. I hope this helps..

-- Zak

Wicky

12:36 pm on Jul 23, 2005 (gmt 0)

thanks for the help Zak, I will give it a try

Wicky

Beagle

1:03 pm on Jul 23, 2005 (gmt 0)

Just to add -- I use Paint Shop Pro 8, and I've found that just about everything I've read in this forum about using PhotoShop applies to Paint Shop, also.

schwartz

11:55 pm on Aug 1, 2005 (gmt 0)

quicker way of adding shadow with photoshop is:

1) select layer you're working with
2) layer/layer style/drop shadow

you can then adjust easily how the shadow behaves, etc.

pixelkat

10:21 am on Aug 5, 2005 (gmt 0)

actually, you can achieve the effect using stylesheets and no images at all.
I'm on my iPAQ at the moment so I don't have access to the cross-browser code I use at the moment,but if you do a google search using 'css drop shadows'+cross-browser,it will return an abundance of good scipts. i think the best one I found came from #*$!.com, or perhaps simplebits.com. -kat