Well now you're here I will assume the incentive is that you have copied a few of my buttons and frames and want to personalise them a bit with the exercises listed below. Instead of just placing text around buttons, you want to put text on them or place a picture of mum, dad and the kids in one of the frames.

The bad news is that you have to have a painting program on your computer. Adobe Photoshop is one of the "Big Daddies" of them all. I do not know of an equivalent on the Mac (inform me please if you do) but an excellent medium level program is Paint Shop Pro for Wintel computers (v5 available now), no MS Paintbrush etc please - for your own sake. There are several medium level painting packages available from shareware sites on the Internet for most platforms, so if you don't have one go get one and return after....

....the other bad news which is, spend at least an hour or so playing with the various basic tools and help files that came with your painting program before attempting set tasks. Trying to perform unfamiliar tasks can be very difficult if you don't know a menu from an option or a Selection Tool from a Painting Tool. (selection tools make those interesting dotted lines on a bitmap - they select an area to work on - and the painting tools paint colour into the pixels)

Forget the "you beaut" squiggly filters etc., they are just toys for the imagination. Learn to manipulate the pixels first, and learn to do so, well.

I know of a Trade Teacher that says he is an expert on Photoshop - he has read a lot!. Playing with images, with limited knowledge, and changing them with easy to use/find options only teaches you what you are comfortable with. Students have commented after a week trying to produce from a complex book and also performing fun tasks, that afterwards they go away from that teachers class feeling very little was really learnt.

You too will not learn much just fiddling unless, armed with all the tedious basics, you set a goal and then work out how to reach it, like receiving instructions from a client. You have to know the basics thoroughly for then you will be inventive and go beyond them in a different way for every different job. And profiting from others demands is when you really have to learn about the consequences of a narrow learning curve.

Whether it be Web pages or quality Desktop Publishing that you work on, most of the basic knowledge required is common to both. Drawing programs, Painting programs, scanning and colour, pixels, colour depth, bezier curves, resolution, layout. If you want to independently create web pages, also study Desktop Publishing. (HTML page production is mostly an extension of DTP, and so too are most of the multimedia disciplines)
 

This is the preferred order of learning practice with these lessons

using the supplied buttons & frames

• Changing a frame or button size

• Adding a picture to a frame

• Adding the drop shadows

• Changing the colour

• Adding your text

• Adding your text to animations

additional tasks

• Make your own drop shadows

• When to use Anti-aliasing

• Creating animations - a few ideas

Photoshop tools

Photoshop Tool options and Photoshop Information Window

The Photoshop tools above are displayed in this order:

• Rectangular or Elliptical Selection Tool

• Lasso Tool - freehand selctions

• Magic Wand Tool - auto selects within a colour range

• Zoom Tool - zooms out (control, option) or in, double click for 1:1

• Hand Tool (Panning) - slide image view in window, double click to fit workarea

• Text Tool - paints text shapes onto the canvas

Add to existing selections holding down the Shift key, subtracting use the Alt key. Any combination of Selection Tools work with these key options.

Paint Shop Pro tools

Paint Shop Pro Tool options

The Paint Shop Pro tools above are displayed in this order:

• Zoom Tool - zooms out (right mouse button) or in

• Hand Tool (Panning) - slide image view in window

• Rectangular or Elliptical Selection Tool

• Lasso Tool - freehand selctions

• Magic Wand Tool - auto selects within a colour range

• Text Tool - paints text shapes onto the canvas

Add to existing selections holding down the Shift key, subtracting use the Control key.  Any combination of Selection Tools work with these key options.