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Table Of Contents
This is an example of a rounded rectangle
with grad color, grad transparency and
feathered edges with some text placed on
top of it.
This has a graduated color fill, light to dark
green going left to right. It also has a vertical
graduated transparency fading from top to
bottom. The feather gives it a soft edge. It
takes a couple of seconds to create such an
image, and it's automatically converted to the
right graphic when you save your web page.
In Web Designer Premium you can create
any type of graphic, photo, text with
transparency, and it 'just works'. It can also
import almost all graphics files, from Adobe
EPS, to Photoshop PSD, Camera RAW and
more.
Technical note
: Web Designer Premium automatically converts any vector graphics into PNG images, an alpha-channel
PNG if transparency is used. It uses CSS layers to replicate the object layer stacking in Web Designer
Premium. This is compatible with all modern web browsers.
Shadow Tool
A very popular graphics effect is to create a soft drop- shadow under a graphic or some text. This
serves to lift the object away from the background.
The Shadow Tool lets you add a soft shadow to any object, text,
graphics or photo. Select the Shadow Tool
and just drag on the object. You can adjust the shadow blur and
transparency using InfoBar controls.
Some text with a soft shadow.
To adjust the position of an existing shadow, go into the Shadow Tool
and drag on the shadow
Advanced note
: Note that because a shadow itself is semi- transparent (part of the objects below show through the
shadow) objects with shadows are converted to PNG images when saved on a web page (it's the only
image format that supports transparency). PNG images can be quite large, especially for photos. It's
perfect for images such the above shadow graphic.
You may find you can convert the whole graphic to a JPEG to save space. Whether this works or not
depends on what's behind the shadow. If it's a plain or static non-text background you can probably use
a JPEG which is a much smaller file size (quicker website download). To force an object to be a JPEG
use the Image tab of the Web Properties dialog.
JPEG images cannot have semi-transparent parts, so when creating a JPEG of a semi-transparent object
Web Designer Premium includes the background (what's behind the semi-transparent part) as part of the
JPEG image, but because of the pixel perfect positioning on the web page you can't tell this. This doesn't
work if the shadow or semi-transparent object is placed over some text, as the text will be included as
part of the graphic.
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