Making Your Own Awards


You can make your own awards. It is very easy to do. You can accomplish it in no time by using ImageMagick.


Getting Started




Your first step will be to decide what kind of award you want to do. For example, website, email, friendship, etc.. I have chosen to do an Excellent Website Award for you today.


The next step will be to pick out the gif you will be using for your award. Let the gif be a statement of what your website is about and also let it show your personality in the process. For example, I have decided to use this gif to make the award.



Putting Text On The Award




Your first step in getting text on the award is to take the url of the gif to ImageMagick Studios. You will click on the first choice. It will say "use Image Magick". When the page comes up you will go to the box titled url. You will insert the url of the gif you are using into the box. You will then press the view button.

You will then be at a page where you can view your image. We are ready now to start putting text on our image.

Putting text on the image will be done in a few simple steps. You will see a list of options on the top of the page. You will pick "Annotate".

You will go down to the text box and you will type in your text for your first line. In our case it is going to be "00Help". You will then choose north as the spot to put the text. You will now go down to the box that says "Fill". For this award I am going to use blue. You will then choose the font or writing style for the award. I personally like "Arial Bold Italic". That is the style I am using today. You will then move your cursor back up to where it says "press to annotate". You will then click on that button. Your image will now look like this.





Our next step will be to get the text "Award Of" in the center of the gif. You will follow the same steps as mentioned above in the first step, except you would choose "center" instead of "north". It will now look like this.





Now it is time to add the final line of text to our award. It will be on the bottom of the gif. It will be the word "Excellence." You will follow all the steps above except you will pick the word "south" instead of "north" or "center". It will look like this.



Adding A Frame

Now it is time to add a simple frame to our image. You can do this at ImageMagick. You would pick "Decorate" on the top of the page. You would choose your color you wish your frame to be. I am going to use gray. Make sure the Frame is marked out of all of our choices. Push the decorate button. You should see the finished product. It is now time to get it ready to transload to your own server.


You will now choose output on the top of the page. You will make sure gif is selected in the box marked "format." On "storage type" you would choose "single file." Then you would press the output button.


You will then be brought to a page with your image in a small gray area. You will click on that area.


You can now capture the url and transload it to your own server. Here is what our finished product will look like.



I hope this tutorial has brought you a better understanding of how to make a award. I hope that it is easy to understand. If you would like one on one help feel free to email me at doranemann@webtv.net