transparent gif text w/shadow ??

Hello everyone,this is my first post !
I just re-did my website,(I'm a photographer).

I have several text links that are transparent gifs.I would like to add a drop shadow to them,but when saved as trans. gifs the drop shadow breaks up.

What is the best soloution? btw,the text spans 2 colors,a blue bar on the left and white to the right.
:confused: :eek: :eek:

Art Dickinson

gotta link?

I usually do the drop shadow in ImageReady, then match up the Matte color with the page background. Seems to look okay.

Not sure I understand, but if I could see it - might help more.

Hey graphicsguy!
Just clik the website icon above to see my site:
www.corporatephotos.com

The links corporate,product and conceptual are what I am refering to.I want to give them drop shadows.

The problem I'm running into is that I want the links to span the blue bar on the left and then into the white on the right.
I'm creating a transparent file,then typing the text and adding the drop shadow.Next I go to "save for web",using PS 6.0.Since the background is made up of two colors i can't choose a single color for the mask.I end up with nasty edges!

looks good.

I'd use an imagemap to keep my drop shadows in there. You can do most every part in ImageReady. Then, just copy the code it generates into your existing code. Tweak it a little here and there, and you should be able to do shadows okay.

I'm sure there are some more code-savvy people in the forum who might have other advice though. I'm definitely better at print media than web stuff.

Anyone else have ideas?

good luck. I'm sure someone will jump in here soon and help ya out.

Drop shadowing across 2 colors might be a bit hard to do, because of the matte thing, for one... but also because of the gradient needed for the shadow... gifs just dont make clean gradients.

You might want to just re-think that area or maybe build those links into the PSD and slice them as .jpgs dropshadow-background-textlink into one slice... each link is a different slice complete with its background and then 1 slice that hasn't got linktext or anything.

Thats what I would do anyhow

ALso, you have some VERY good work up there... How long have you been doing this?

Like that

and like this

Chris,
Wow,what a guy. Your givin me good advice,samples,and compliments too!! THANKS

I emailed your sample and instructions to Tricia,
my web guru. I design my site and she does the html and coding stuff.

I've been a photographer for 26 years.Started using Photoshop w/ 2.0 on a Quadra 700 in 91.
I'm using an original Mac G4 (yikes) now.

I'll post again when we get this thing right!

I work for a commercial printer as the art director, we purchase several images a year for various projects. I bookmarked your site and made note of your contact information in my digidex.
Maybe in the future this chance meeting can benefit both of us.