Spinning Text            Copyright 2003 - JMA - All Rights Reserved
Animatin Shop offers a variety of animated effects that can be applied to text and other objects to give your web page a professional look and feel. In this tutorial we will discuss how to create a simple animation using spinning text.
For the purpose of presenting the tutorial instructions, the text sizes chosen are typically larger than you would use on your web page. When creating an animated effect, size the text or other objects accordingly so as not to overpower the web page.
Create an image on a transparent background having the dimensions of 200 x 200.
New Image Size Window
Single Animation Frame
Select the Text Tool on the Tool Palette
Place the cursor anywhere in the Animation frame and click the left mouse button. When you do, the Add Text dialog window will open and allow you to choose from the available Fonts, Sizes and Styles.
For this tutorial I have chosen an Impact font, Regular Style with the Size set at 22 points. In the Text Effects box I have checked Antialias and set the Alignment to Center.
Now we want to create 3 frames to apply the transition effects. On the Main Menu bar select Edit > Copy. Then Select Edit > Paste > After Current Frame. Stretch the window to see all three frames. Frame number F:3 should have the blue border around it.
Place the mouse pointer in Frame F:2, the second frame and Left click the mouse to make it the active frame. Go to the Main Menu bar and select Animation > Mirror. The text inside the fram should flip around as shown.
Now move to frame F:1, the first frame. On the Main Menu bar select Effects > Insert Image Trnsition. PSP will open the dialog window shown below.
Select Spin for the Effect and then click the button labeled Customize. In the Customize window click Vertical for the direction and Fill the unused pixels with Canvas Color. Don't let the direction fool you. We are spinning about the vertical axis like the prop on a helicopter.
When you click the OK butoon PSP will generate 13 frames, each displaying a portion of the transitional effect.
Notice that frames 1 through 11 are highlighted with the Blue border. Now click the frame F:12 and then go to the Main Menu bar and select Effects > Insert Image Transition. In the dialog window simply click the OK button. Animation Shop will now create Frames F:13 throgh F:23. DELETE the last frame by selecting it and then pressing the Delete key on your keyboard.

Now save the animation by choosing File > Save As . The file can be saved as a Compuserve Gif file or one of five other format. Fo rthis tutorial we will choose the *.gif format. Enter a file name for the animation and press the Save button. The first time the file is saved, Animation Shop will open a series of windows that will allow you to optimize the animated file.
The above settings produced the final animate image shown below.