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For this tutorial you will need: |
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This is what we will
be making
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Complete
Program Window As you can see here, there are 7 tabs across: body, header, footer, left, right, 3D effects and finish. I normally don't use the left and right windows, but I do use all of the rest. Here I will show you how to create a stationery. |
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1.
Pick your graphics, you will need a central image and a tile if
you are going to use a tile for the background (like what I have
in my web page in the background). If you want to make a left
bordered stationery, we will create that next. You don't need as
many graphics as shown here, I just like to play with
backgrounds and have a number of choices before I start.
Something very important to remember is to put all of the
graphics you will be using into the same folder, and leave it
where it is. If you want to readjust the letter later, and you
have moved or renamed any of the graphics, when you reopen the
stationery in Letter Creator, you will see red exes where your
graphics should be. Letter Creator reads the graphic from the
location. I have a folder on my hard drive called Letters
Created and inside of that folder are subfolders with the
stationery name on it, and inside each of these subfolders are
the graphics for each letter, plus text notes on fonts and
colors if I need them. |
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| 2. Open your Letter Creator program. I usually insert the main graphic first so click on the "Header" tab. This is the window you will see. We will be using the image button and the center button. |
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| 3. To insert the main graphic, click on image and browse to where your main graphic is. Click on "open" or double left click the highlighted file, it will now be on the left side of your stationery. Now click on the alignment button and a dropdown menu will appear, click on "center". |
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| 4. Now it is time to work on the body of the stationery, so click on the "Body" tab. This is the window you will see. We will use most of the buttons here. |
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5. Either insert your
tile by clicking on image, browsing to where you have your tile,
and click on open or double left click the highlighted graphic
to choose. You will now have a single tile in the upper left
corner of your stat. 5-a If you choose to have a solid background, use the sample button shown here and use the eyedropper on your graphic to find a nice color for your background. You can also just click on the color button right next to the sample button and choose a color from the color picker there. If you choose a solid background, skip the next step. As you can see, I picked a solid color for mine. Actually I made a strip in my graphics program, 1280X200 and filled it with a gradient going across horizontally with two colors I picked from my graphic. I then used this strip for the background, tiling it just like I tiled the tile as shown below. |
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| 6. To make your tile cover the entire background, click on the tile button as shown here. Your tile will now tile seamlessly across the entire background (providing you used a seamless tile). |
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| 7. I now adjust the margins. I always make the top margin 20 and the left margin 30. This makes the header center properly and it's not flat up against the top of the stationery. |
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| 8. Now's the time to pick a font and, for myself and font fanatics everywhere, please don't leave it at Times New Roman. Picking the right font can make a huge difference in a stationery. I sometimes take 1/2 hour to pick just the right one and the right color. And when I snag other people's stationery, I rarely do if the font is Times New Roman. That's why I am so careful to offer the correct font with my stationeries. Pick a font from the dropdown menu that appears when you click on the little arrow next to the font name. |
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9. You also pick the
size from a similar drop down box by the font size. Make sure
you pick at least font size 18, larger if it happens to be a
small sized font. Nothing worse than peering at a letter that
has a font size of 10 or 12, it's barely readable. To learn how to add more fonts to your Letter Creator fonts, I have a tutorial here. |
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| 10. Time to pick the font color. Click on the sample button to pick a color from the graphic or from the color swatches as shown. Or, if you choose, click on the text color button and the windows color picker will open up. |
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| 11. Add this color to the custom colors in the Windows color picker (click on the text color button). When the Windows color picker window opens, the color you chose for the text, no matter how you chose it, will be in a square at the bottom titled Color/Solid. Click on the button below it that says "Add to Custom Colors". It will now appear in the first of the tiny squares below the color swatch squares. Click OK. |
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| This is what it mine looked like after adjusting the fonts attibutes. Compare it to what it looked like in step 6. Much better now. |
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12. Now we adjust the
link color, this is the color of all of the hyperlinked text in
your stationery. We do it the same way we did the body text
color, but choose the Link Color button or the Sample button
next to it to choose a color with the eyedropper from the
graphic or the color swatches as shown. We do not add this color
to custom colors as we did for the body text. Now is also the time to change the signature color to match as closely as you can your text color. Click on the dropdown arrow next to the color box in the Signature Color line. The choices are very limited here so pick as well as you can. |
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| 13. Now go back to the header window. Because you adjusted the margins you need to readjust the main graphic. Click on the alignment button again and hit center. The graphic will move slighty. This will keep it from doing unexpected things when people use it, like shifting around as they type. |
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| 14. Time to insert the footer information. I always put the font name in my footer, not only so the users know what it is, but also so I can remember what I used. Believe me, after awhile, you will forget! I also add the artist's (or tuber's or photographer's) name if I know it - always give credit when you have the information, it's only fair. After all, they created that beautiful graphic you are using. I have just started adding a tutorial link so if anyone wants to try the tutorial I used, the link is right there for them. And I add my logo and link it. Click on the footer tab. This is the window you will see. I don't use any of the footer background color buttons, only the ones in Footer Content and Layout as shown. |
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| 15. Click in the blank window and start typing in the information. It will appear alighned left side. Put in all of your info, if you want to insert a logo, click on the image button and browse to your logo, click on open or double click it to choose it. Once this is done, put the cursor at the top left, just before where you see the letter F for Font in my example. Now left click and drag the mouse down so everything is highlighted in the window. |
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| 16. With it all highlighted, click on the alignment button and pick "Center", as shown. Leave highlighted. |
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| 17. Pick Footer font by clicking on the font dropdown window and choosing the same font you used for your body text. Leave highlighted. |
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| 18. This is why you added the body font color to custom colors. Click on the A with the little color bar on it next to the alignment button, and this window you see here will pop up. You see that your custom color is still in there. Click on it and your footer font color will match your body text color. |
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| 19. This is what my footer looked like after I adjusted it, both in the footer window and in the preview window for the stationery. |
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| 20. If you would like to add a link to some text or your logo, this is how you do it. Highlight the text or image you want to hyperlink, and click on the Link button as shown. A Hyperlink window will open, and you can choose to link either to a Website, with the http option, or you can have it open an email to you by choosing mailto by choosing it from the dropdown menu labelled "Type". Add your website link or email address to the box labelled URL, after choosing the type of link. There are many other link types available in the dropdown menu, such as file, ftp, etc. but I have only ever had need to use those two options. |
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| 21. You are getting to the home stretch now. If you make any changes to the margins after completing this step, make sure you go back into the header and footer windows and re-center what's in them. | |
| 22. Now we will add some animation to your stationery as it's coming or going in the recipient's or sender's Incredimail. Click on the 3D Effects tab. By default, the little box at the bottom that says Auto Preview is checked. When you click on one of the 3D effects, your stationery preview will show you what it will look like. I normally only choose a 3D effect for the Send and Receive boxes, but you can choose all or none if you like. Letter Creator will pick a default one if you don't change it, but I really can't remember which one it is, as I usually pick. I like the Butterfly one the best and use it the most. |
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23. Time to save your stationery and import it into Incredimail. Click on the Finish tab and you will see this window. A. Give your letter a name, and to make sure it is not overwritten by another stationery with the same name, also put your initials or something similar in the Letter Name box. I usually add ET to the end of my letter name. B. Pick a collection for it to go into. If you don't it will always end up in My Collection and that folder can get huge, no one will be able to find your letter. You can type a folder name into Collection Name and it will appear in your Incredimail Stylebox in that folder. You don't have to make the folder in Incredimail first, this will work. C. Pick a type, whether Letter or E-Card, frankly I don't know the difference between them but I always pick Letter. D. I add my name to the Credits and this will appear at the bottom of the stylebox window so people will know who made the letter. I put Ellie's Treasures in there. E. Now you can hyperlink again, the same as you did in step 20 when you hyperlinked in the footer. If you hyperlink here, the name you put in the credit box just above will be hyperlinked to your website or your email address, depending on what you chose. |
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| 24. It's time to save your statonery. Click on the Save Project button as shown. |
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| 25. This window will appear. Rather than save to the Letter Creator default window, I have a folder set up elsewhere, called My IM Letters, and this is divided into subfolders for categories, such as Children, Angels, Flowers, Scenery, Cats and Dogs, etc. I browse to the correct folder on my hard drive and save it there. It will save as an ltw file and also as an imf file at the same time. The ltw file is what you would browse to if you wanted to reopen it into Letter Creator to edit it. |
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| 26. This window will appear after you click ok to the save, telling you that the ltw file and imf file have been saved, where it's been saved, and how large it is. |
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27. Now, to import
the stationery into Incredimail, click on the Add to Incredimail
button that is right next to the Save Project button. It will
import into Incredimail into the folder you picked in step 23-B.
The save window on the right, bottom is what you will see. It
will tell you it saved successfully and the size of the
stationery. Occasionally it doesn't import, even though it says it did. You won't know this till you open up Incrdimail and look. You can either bring the letter back into Letter Creator (by clicking on open and browsing to where you saved the ltw file) and click on the Add to Incredimail button again, or go to the folder you save the ltw and imf file and double click on the imf file to install it to your stylebox. Your stationery, also known as your masterpiece, is finished. If you want to make a left border stationery, click here. If you want to make a top border stationery, click here. |
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| If you have any questions or suggestions, click on the email button below to contact me. Have a wonderful day! | |
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