About 2/3rds of my TSU7000 programming effort is spent working around the poor rendering of button labels. I wish the text was anti-aliased to be less jagged. And I wish the labels offered a burn-in option. (It is easy to burn-in text--just darken a one pixel shadow to the bottom and right and brighten the top and left.) Finally, I wish I could control of the text position for both unpressed and pressed states. Something like x and y pixel deflections (+ or -). The text needs to move down and right for a button to be realistically animated.

Maybe I am being too fussy, but I wind up creating 4 files (up/down & .psd/.png) for every button I use. I am suggesting an implementation to help describe my request but would be happy with any solution that produces attractive animated buttons using built-in labels.

I would also love support for delayed links and a shorthand for entering channel numbers into favorite buttons. That would put me in Pronto nirvana!

Bruce Barrington

I agree. Even the ancient LexiDraw software from Lexicon had a channel macro wizard that made it extremely quick to input channel macros.

Any of the better graphics packages will do what you want and you can automate much of the process by implementing a macro. I use PSP 8 to make buttons. For each type of button I use, I've created one or two macros that ease the pain. Usually all I have to do is type in the button label. The macro takes care of creating the 3D effect I want for text (the 1-pixel shadow as you suggest) and saving the finished button in the appropriate format. I can make a button with the text I want in (maybe) 10 seconds.

Quick user-friendly features are not PENG's strong point. For example, although you can position a frame by dragging it, you can't dimension it by stretching a side or corner. You have to type in the dimensions. Ugly.

MBurwen, care to share one of your base images and your Macro? I'd love to see how you are doing this. I have PSP8 and would like to try it out. If you don't mind, please email me a zip.

Thanks,
Lyndel

Mike,

I agree with Lyndel - I like the sound of this macro. Could you e-mail it to me too please??

Cheers,

Paul

how about posting it

mburwen,

Boy do I feel stupid. I didn't even know that there was such a thing as a Photoshop macro. I am using version 7.0 and I can't find "macro" in the help search. So I ordered version CS2. I've been meaning to do that anyway. Hope to find macro support.

Bruce

Yes! Please post the PSP Macros!

I just started using PPENG and have had to edit buttons from the pcf file to get the size I want. I am using PSP 8 and would like to fine tune the look of the buttons.