Safer Images Tip

You can create safer images using GIMPshop by "creating a layer" on top of the image and placing the text "Stolen" in large enough letters to ruin the image on a new and empty layer. Go back to the original image and delete the layer that has only the text leaving your image with the word "stolen" on it. You can keep them from using print screen and copying your image by adding "Copyright Proteced" in a place that is visible but does not obscure the image. To view complete instructions and examples go to Safer images using GIMPshop.

XnView Tip

XnView makes a very good addition to GIMP as an image browser, if you add GIMP to your open with editor in XnView. To do this browse to a graphic on your hard drive and right click on it. Highlight open with and click on add program. This will open a window for you to browse through until you have located the program you want to add. Click on the program named with an "exe" extension and then click on open. This add it to your list. Next time you want to open a graphic with GIMP just find it in XnView and right click on it selecting open with the program you added. (note: in some programs it will only open the program not the image, and it doesn't work with all programs but works well with GIMP and sTile.

ThumbaWumba Tip

ThumbaWumba works very well but doesn't allow you to show the graphic image as a tile filling the screen like for backgrounds. Using Trellian WebPage you can make these alterations easily. Once ThumbaWumba is finished then open the background pages (called something like page1.htm, page2.htm, etc.) in Trellian WebPage and delete the image on the page then open page properties and use the image that was there as the background image. To show the way text will look on the background, you can click on this link sampletext and it take you to a page with colored sample text on a blank page. Then you just click on view in the menu and source code. This will open up notepad or what you use for it filled with HTML. Just use CTRL +A to high-light all the text and copy it to your clip board. Then you can paste it into your page in Trellian WebPage using insert HTML markup.

GIMP Tip

You can make a background using this program very easily by creating a new image in GIMP, with the size of about 128 x 128 pixels (or any size, but it is probably best not to go above 256 x 256 as it may load too slow). Once you have the new image open, then use the paint bucket and set the tool selection on pattern fill. Select the pattern you want to use in the pattern selection box. Now fill the new image with the pattern you selected. Now right click on the image and highlight filters, then highlight map and finally click on make seamless. Save the image to the desired location and use it. Any image you make like the one above you can alter using the many effects GIMP has built in. However once you have an image created you can save it as a pattern in GIMP, by saving it with the extension "pat" in the folder where GIMP stores it's patterns. This allows you to use your image as a pattern for future work. If you do not know where the patterns folder is, then go to your programs folder and look through the folders there until you find the GIMP folder. Open this folder and the subfolders until you find it. It will be in (GIMP\share\gimp\1.2\patterns) of course that assumes you put GIMP directly in the programs folder and not in another folder such as I did for organization. However you must restart GIMP to have the pattern available. Another way to save an image as a pattern is to simply select all the image, right click on the image selecting "Script-Fu" scroll down to selection and select "To Pattern". A window will open and give you a chance to name the pattern. A real advantage to this method is that the pattern is immediately available. See XnView tips

Trellian WebPage Tip

When you want to add some code to a page, like a counter or maybe an HTML link, if while in the editor mode, you place your cursor at the point you wish the item you are inserting to be. Then type a couple of letters like "rr". Then switch to the source mode you will find the cursor next to the letters you typed. This makes it easy to insert your code and have it appear where you want it to. Hopefully you have already placed the code you want in the clipboard by copying it. Once your cursor is in the right place in the source (next to your letters) hit the back space key to remove the letters you typed and then hold down "Ctrl" and press "v". This paste what ever was in the clipboard into the place you cursor was. Go to preview mode to see the results then go to the editor mode and save the page again.