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With this tutorial you will learn to animate text right in PI without needing Gif Animator.
We'll be taking some plain text and fancying it up with a fireworks effect.
The resulting tag will be sized for use on the PhotoImpact International Bulletiin Board. This was written for inclusion in The Beginners' Workshop for PhotoImpact as an "In-House" animation. Because of this, I am assuming you know the basics of how to open a new image, and where the tools are located.

What you will need:

PhotoImpact 11 or higher (You might do it in an earlier version, but I can't vouch for that.)

Let's get started!
  1. Open a new white canvas 200 pixels by 50 pixels in RGB True Color format.
  2. Choose your Text tool and set it up as follows:
    Font: Comic Sans MS
    Color: Black
    Style: Bold
    Size: 48
    NO Border and NO Shadow.
  1. Now type a name. You can adjust the size of the text afterward if it's too large for the image. You want the text to just fit inside the image, but it should not hang over anywhere or it will be lost when you save it.
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  1. Use the Pick tool to Align the text both horizontaly and vertically to the center. (Center Both)
  2. With the text still selected, open your Easy Palette and the Creative Lighting Gallery under the Image Enhancements Heading.
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  1. Choose Fireworks and find Fireworks 13. Right click on the thumbnail and choose "Modify and Apply" and the following window will open...

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  1. Click inside your displayed text and the cursor will change to a crosshairs and a larger plain black cross hairs will appear behind it. Move this arround until you like where the fireworks center is located. When the animation runs they will begin at this point. In my example I chose the dot of the letter "i".
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  1. Now click on the "Animate" button near the bottom on the right.
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  1. A new set of controls opens above the button.
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  1. Click on the Play button and watch the fireworks as they cascade through your text. You can stop it at any time or not, your choice.
    Now click on the OK button on the bottom left. You will get a choice fly-out like this.
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  1. Choose the second one. A save screen will open that will allow you to choose where to save your animation and to name it. Notice that transparency has been preselected. This is why we didn't use any shadow on the text. It will enable your animation to display without that white background behind it. There is also a place to change the frame delay. Increasing this number will slow down the animation making it nicer to look at. Any number from 25 to 50 should improve the speed of your animation.

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  1. Notice how much nicer my slowed down version looks with a Frame delay of 25.
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Of course your animation won't run in your PI workspace. To see it you can preview it in your Browser. Or you could open it with Windows Picture and Fax Viewer.

Examples

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There are other choices or changes that could have been made. But I will leave experimenting up to you and your imagination. A nice fat font like Impact would make for a great version of this tag. I chose to use a font that is standard and easily recognizable. But you are free to use any font you like. And of course, you could use any color you like, although I think the effect would get lost in a pale or pastel color.