ImageComposer tutorial-creating banners

ImageComposer, which comes with FrontPage 97, is an image application that allows combination and manipulation of multiple images into one. For example, the below is an image ImageComposer used to illustrate its capabilities:

It is my belief that ImageComposer by itself may not be enough to handle all your graphics creations- I recommend you also use PaintShop Pro or another graphics program in conjunction with ImageComposer to make life a lot easier. Having said that, ImageComposer is very well integrated into the FrontPage Editor. You can easily drag and drop images directly from ImageComposer to the Editor, and vice versa. Like I said, this section will only cover the very basics of ImageComposer, and nothing more. Here are basically the three areas that will be talked about in this tutorial:

We'll start off by creating simple text. Click the text button, select your desired font/ size, and type some text. Example:

Ok, nothing surprising. But lets see what we can do with the above by using the Wrap/Filter button.

Click Relief three times	Click Edge two times
Click Edge Only One time	Click Relief five times, than Edge one time
Click Edge Only once, than Edge twice WITH COLOR OF BLUE.	Click Add Shadow once

You get the picture. By experimenting, you can combine different options and get different results; the sky's the limit.

And that's only the OutLines feature! You can also alter the dimensions of the text by selecting other features such as Warps and Warps Transformation options. Play around with them, that's the best way to learn.

Ok, so you've created these lovely banners, but how do you save them? you could either drag and drop (cut & paste) the image onto your page, but the image will usually look distorted. The way to fix it is to first save it as a graphics file type, such as gif and jpg, and than insert it onto the page. This may seem like a hassle, but the fact is, you have to save the image sooner or later anyways. To do so, select save selection as...You do not want to choose save as, since you don't want to save the whole page!