Hi Jake,
I took a look at The Gimp (google searched for their website). It is pretty impressive, however that may be the problem. It's a very advanced developmental program. Plenty of technical help if you know tech talk and terminology. Adam, you may be intrested in this one (it allows for people to add to the developement and even produce plug-ins). Jake if you want to take a look at ACDSee-8 they have a (full) trial version you can download @ www.acdsee.com You may also want to take a look at Google's Picsama.

I'll email you to get that ad, thanks. I was going to suggest you take a look at the Gimp as it seems to be quite comprehensive, as you mention in your second post, too much so. I am not aware of a lot of the terminology, and things that they seem to be clear, may be clear to them and God, but not to me. Right now though, the pocketbook is pretty strapped, so Corel is definately out of the picture, (I priced them last year, ouch!) Mostly, I use image software to tweak my pen photos, and not much else. The good news is, that I am slowly but surely learning a few things about it, and because of that, it is becoming more fun rather than a tedious task.

Thanks for your input!

Jake

No problem, wanted to get this post on before you got back.
www.gobigblu.com/temp1.html I did some examples of making text into an image file. Unfortunately the program I use is no longer in busines, but the principal is the same with all of them. When you e-mail me I will give you some pointers that you may be able to use in The Gimp

http://www.gobigblu.com/woodpenA2.jpg

That looks like what I was originally shooting for, Coffee Cup VSD allows me to enter the text with the font of my choice and rotate it an all that kinda snazzy stuff, but it is still text and requires that the end user have the same font file in order to read it as written. One image editor I have would let me use whatever font I wanted to add to an image, but would not allow me to rotate it to match the image. The Gimp lets me add text, but doesn't give me font options. Publisher allows me to save an image as a gif, but I don't know how to take and strip it of the background color in Gimp.

I have downloaded the trial of ACDSee 8 and I love the way it allows me to catalog, and am playing with it to see if I can clear up my photos so they are decent enough to post. One of these days, I'm actually going to get back out in the shop and build a few pens.

I did send an email to ask you for the ad you said you might still have laying around, and by the way, I love what you have done on www.gobigblu.com.

Jake

I e-mailed you (twice) with some info on using various programs to get the final results you want. I'll e-mail you again on how to get a transparent background with gif files.

I think you will find the ACDSee program very much worth the price (if you decide to purchase it first go to their website and sign up for the news letter, then wait for them to offer one of their other programs with it for free. I got their "Foto Slate-4" for free when I orderd mine).

Thanks for the comments on my site, It's kind of bulky but that's because I write straight from code (HTML) except for the CC software programs, I don't use any style sheets, templates or editors. I'm waiting for VSD V.5 I'm not to high on WYSIWYG or drop and drag type programs but I want to get my site a little better in confromity from page to page so I'm going to try it out. From what I've heard, you can't use gifs in V.3 (it automaticly converts them to jpeg)so you have a little time to learn how to do it since you would have to redo any gifs you are using in V.3 anyway. By the way, you site is pretty good looking also. Since I have a lot of teachers and students that view my site I'll put a link on to your site if you don't mind.

P.S.
Feel free to use any of those images if you like. Or if you have an idea that you would like me to try and do for you let me know.

I'm using CCHTML Editor and FS.

I've created http://www.darwinaccommodation.com.au and I'm really quite happy with it.

Modifying http://www.redco.com.au/redco.asp with FS and I think it's just too big for FS. Rather than purchasing MM/Adobe's alternative, I'm just going to cut down the Flash content as FS really is quite good and does it's job well as long as you realise it's limitations and work within them.

Here are my websites:

http://www.Insurance-Fact.com

and

http://www.Loans-Fact.com

It took me ages to create the design and template so i thought i'd use the same one for both sites!

Eskil,
That looks great! I shall have to tell my brother about this new discoverey of yours as he was looking into a cart too.
Ciao,
Janys

Am new but have done several sites. Any input would be appreciated. Just keep in mind I am a novice.
www.tomscypress.com
www.tdsbottles.com
www.clfbest.org
www.mistymeadowshome.com
www.wepent.com
www.sfhs1977.com

Hi there,
I am using xp on IE6, resolution 1024x768 and am getting some really bad overlapping on the front page of this site
http://www.clfbest.org/
You might want to address that problem.
If I can find the time, I will try to do a screenshot, though I have a suspicion that you might be using non-default fonts which are causing that. I will look at your source code and see if it gives me a better idea.
Janys
p.s. Took a look and you are using "Signature" and "Tahoma". The first one in particular could cause problems. To get over that you would be wise to create images to make sure that font remains constant on all browsers