1. Once you have saved the template you want, you’d have to open a picture that you want to use the template in. Make sure that your image is the same size as the template. If not, resize your image to fit the template or find an appropriate sized template.

2. When you’ve found the right image, open your desired template. Press CTRL+A then CTRL+C then go back to your image file and press CTRL+V so that we could paste the template in a new layer. The image should look like this: (In some cases you will only see the avatar since you pasted it in a new layer, overlapping the main picture. Don’t panic. That is normal.)

3. Now, making sure you are in the layer where your template is, select every area that is “outside” the template (signified by the white lines in the figure below). You can use the Magic Wand Select Tool for this purpose.

4. Press delete. The image should look like this now:

5. Now, to save the image and to make all the transparent areas transparent in all backgrounds, make sure that you have no background layer. Simply put, you should only have two layers, one for your image and one for the template. Then, go to File > Save for Web. Select a color matte for your new image (I choose bright green) and check the Transparency box. Then click Save. The image will be automatically saved as a GIF file and there you have your new avatar!

This tutorial was given to me by my friend Maddy to use.

Firstly I’m Teaching how to make a blinkie using ‘Adobe Photoshop‘ and ‘Adobe Imageready‘ . You can also use other programs too if you don’t have these two.

Let’s start. Open Photoshop and got to ‘File‘ > ‘New‘ and in the Dimension asked Use ‘Width‘ as 100 and ‘Height‘ as 11.

Now Select the Pencil tool and choose the brush ‘Hard Round 1 Pixel‘

Now select the ‘Zoom Tool(Z)‘ and Zoom ‘Layer1′ to your own Convenience.

You can Draw something similar to the following picture using the Pencil tool on the layer (usually) named ‘layer1′ .

Now make another new layer and fill it with a lighter color than the border like the picture below. Always make sure that ‘Layer1‘ is always on top of the other layers.

Now we have to fill in the letters.Make a new layer, Take the same pencil tool , choose a different color and write down the letters on the new layer like this.

Now is the part that is important for Animating the Blinkie. We have to make new layers for each of the letters with a different color or any other effect that you’d like. Each letter should be in a new layer.

Now ‘Jump To Imageready (Ctrl+Shift+M)‘ , If you see the Animation window, then it’s all right if not, then go to ‘Window‘ > ‘Show Animation‘

Now to the Animating part. On the Animation Window, click on the ‘Animation‘ Tab. You’ll see a slide there with all the layers. Remove all the Layers that you don’t want on your first slide (i.e.., The eye should disappear on the layers window.)

Then on the ‘Animation Window’ Press the Button on the below image

A new layer is formed. Now add the layer of the individual letter that you made in ‘Photoshop‘ (The eye should appear on the layers Tab) Leave the other layers as it is. Now go on making new slides and adding and Removing layers as you like.When you are finished Press the ‘Play‘ Button and you can see your new blinkie.

It should look something like this

Hope this helped. This is only a simple Tutorial on how to make simple Blinkies.

I was playing around with the best method on how to do this and luckily I found a way. ^_^ This effect seems to be the most ask whenever someone visits my site. How to create scan lines.

1. Open a new document and make it 1 pixel in width and 2 pixels in height. Make sure it is transparent. Then set your Navigator to view at 1600%. The image should look like this:

2. Now choose a foreground color (for this tutorial I chose white) and select the upper half of the document. Select the Paint Bucket Tool and paint on the selected area. Then deselect.

3. Go to >Edit >Define Pattern. You have just created your scanline.

4. Now open the picture you want to apply the scanlines to.

5. Create a new layer and using that as an active layer go to >Edit >Fill. In the Custom Pattern drop-down menu, choose the pattern we have created earlier then change the Opacity to your preference (I chose 50% for this example).

6. Your picture should now look like this. See? Wasn’t that easy?^^