This section will cover backgrounds and foregrounds in PSP and how to plan ahead when making transparent GIFS for your web page.

A necessity to being efficient in PSP includes having a good understanding of how backgrounds and foregrounds work. The terminology and techniques are often confusing because of how PSP uses these for tools like the airbrush. For example, if you hold down the primary mouse button (left for most of us) the foreground color will be applied, while the right button on your mouse applies the background color. Many of PSP's tools use the background and foreground differently. To go into detail on each tool to this extent would turn this course into a 10 week workshop. For this reason I will show you how to use the PSP help file. Using the help file can save you a lot of time, trust me. There are a lot of things that took me years to discover, and there they were in the help file all along.

Let's take a closer look at using PSP's help file.

1. Open up PSP and make sure the color toolbar (figure A) is showing. If it is not, click on located on the top tool bar in PSP.
2. Further over to the right on the same toolbar click on question mark with an arrow on it.
   
3. This will now become your cursor and PSP will find information in the help file regarding whatever you click on. Unlike most help files, this one actually HELPS.
4. Now click on the background/foreground image within the color palette toolbar. This will open the help file on the topic of backgrounds and foregrounds (or active colors comprehensively). Read and try a few things the help file describes.

Planing ahead when making transparent GIFS for your web page. Use the following visuals to describe what's going on here.

Possible Topics

All images have 2 dimensions, width and height GIFS --transparent vs. non-transparent-- Background of web page How can you plan ahead?

Can you Explain this one?