Sparkle background question

[lifeisagame]

Hi all O have photoshop elements 4.0 and I'm wanting to make a sparkle background can anyone explain how to do this? thanks

[Kraellin]

hi lifeisagame, and welcome to RP.

did you want this sparkle to be animated or just a still?

[lifeisagame]

Hey thanks for your reply I'd like to have it animated but eather way would work.

[Kraellin]

since you posted this in the elements forum, i dont really know if elements has any animation features or not. so, assuming it may not, you'd need something to work with. this could be anything from a simple .gif animation program to something more sophisticated like macromedia flash.

.gif's are easy to do and the programs for those run fairly cheap, with some free, more than likely. it's basically an on and off proposition to do sparkles. and since .gif animations are in frames, you'd simply have one frame with some bright lights on and in the next they'd be off. run the animation and you get blinking lights or sparkles.

your frames you can make in elements. the animation program simply puts the frames together and runs the whole thing.

i use animation shop 3 that came with paint shop pro 9. but, you shld be able to find something with a google search. i dont know of any right off hand but i do recall looking for some a few years ago and finding quite a few.

in fact, if you're running windows xp, movie maker that comes with xp might do what you want. it's not .gif but it is frames. not sure it would cycle fast enough for a true sparkle effect, though. you'll want something that can cycle the frames at at least a tenth of a second, i would think.

[lifeisagame]

thank you very much for your help I shall try that elements has a thing called save to web it does some anmation but it's pretty basic mot anything that fancy lol

[Kraellin]

you're welcome.

and if elements has an animating feature, it really doesnt have to be very complex. one frame with the 'sparkles', one frame with none and then just loop the whole thing.

[lifeisagame]

I shall give this a try thanks

[lifeisagame]

lol now I have a new problem I got 3 outta 4 stars to flash but the 4 one just will not do it how I did it was I made the background it's in jpg format then added the stars one by one and after each one I duplicated the layer so I had 4 layers altogether it's hard to explain. here is an example of what it's doing thanks so much for your help
http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b109/lisafan/b1.gif

[Peter S]

you may need a 5th layer with no stars in it at all.

Peter

[lifeisagame]

thank you very much I will try that I'm new to all this

[lifeisagame]

Peter that worked thank you very much now I need to figure out how to keep them flashing after I add a pic I want the only thing to flash on there to be the stars I added the pic after I got the stars to work and now the whole background flashes with the stars then the pic flashes lol I did somthing wrong lol