THE BACKGROUND BANDWAGON!

Hi folks!
Does it seem to you that everyone in the world is creating Geoworks Backgrounds?
Just check out the library and it looks that way. In case you'd like to jump on the bandwagon and make some of your own, here's some info. for you.

1. CREATING A BACKGROUND
The easiest way to create a background for Ensemble is to use GeoDraw. You can either start from scratch and draw something there or you can import and PCX or TIF file into GeoDraw. Once imported you can even edit it if you like. Once your masterpiece is created, you convert it to a background. First save your art as a Geodraw file (this step is not necessary, just a precaution in case something goes haywire.. pick FILE/SAVE). Now, you need to copy your work to the clipboard. Click on EDIT, then COPY. You're halfway there.

Now you need to go into PREFERENCES. The easiest way at this point is to click on the blue E (express) in the upper lefthand corner of you screen. Pick Startup, pick Preferences. Now click on BACKGROUND. Click on GET BACKGROUND FROM CLIPBOARD. There ya go!

2. CREATING TRANSPARANT BACKGROUNDS: (This info swiped from GWRepBobby.. I was wondering myself.. thanks!)

A transparent background is a backgroound that has no background color of it's own, so the background color you choose shows through the black forground pixels. Like the the Full Moon background and the other ones included in the PC/Geos basic package.

There is a way to make an imported B/W picture  a transparent background. Import your image but don't copy or cut it from geoDraw. As soon as you import it open the Preference Manager immediately and from the background dialog box click on the Get Background from Clipboard button. There you have it, a transparent monochrome background simileir to the ones that are included with GeoWorks Ensemble. (note this differs from the regular background method in that you don't actually copy your geodraw image TO the clipboard). This can be a very nice way of creating backgrounds from black and white scanned mages (especially if you can't afford a color scanner like me!).

3. EDITING EXISTING BACKGROUNDS:
Here's some fancy stuff. Say you want to put a man on the full-moon background or you want to edit one of the many you have downloaded for use from the Geoworks library. Well you can't very well import into GeoDraw because it's not a PCX or TIF file so you're stuck right? Well.. not quite. Just use the Screen dumper in the EXTRAS folder of Ensemble 1.2 and Ensemble Pro and save to PCX!

This screen dumper will let you caputre or take a "picture" of any background that you can display onscreen. It would be saved as PCX or TIF (PCX is recommended) and could then be imported to GeoDraw for editing. Once you're finished editing, just follow the normal procedure of copying to clipboard, starting preferences, and getting background from clipboard.. starting to sound famaliar isn't it? :)

Have fun with Backgrounds everyone! I'm still looking for a beach background with palm trees and blue water and tropical breezes (OK so I'm getting carried away!).
Nah.. that's not a hint. No, really. :>