Aperture menu text

Hi,
I am currently trying to customize the "Aperture" pagekit a little bit.
I read the Help Tutorial on how to edit the menu text using the PSD files. And that was really helpful, but I have a slight problem...

The original Pagekit uses a dark reddish background for the menu, however I have changed the background to black. The original Menu Text I am using looks really great on a black background, as the edges of the text is sort of a fuzzy dark red, and it looks really cool with the rollover effects.
However if I add text to the PSD and then export that gif, the background is no longer transparent (like the menu gifs included with the pagekit). It is now that dark red.
I know how to create a new text image with a transparent background, but then it will just be a boring white text. I want to create text like the gifs included with the pagekit, they look really cool, they are white text, with a fuzzy red effect around the letters and a transparent background.
DOes anybody know how I can go about recreating this text?
I was thinking of maybe creating them with the red background and then painting it over in black pixel by pixel around the edges to try and recreate the effect, but I'm not sure if that is a stupid way of doing it or if theres an easier way.

Sorry for the long-winded post, I hope that all makes sense.

Hi Tara,

The Aperture menu back ground colour is that dark red, so first change the bgcolor of that menu file ("menu.html") to black.

You'll then see that the menu items still have that rusty colour at the edges of the "glow". The glow itself is actually white, rather than red, but because it was originally going to be on the red background, the edges are red to get the "fade" effect. It's called "antialiasing".

To get just a red glow that looks nice, you'll need to re-export the menu items as new gifs. Open up "menu.psd" in Photoshop, and change that background color to black.

Now at this point, I'll explain that the layer "menu copy" is what's producing that nice glow - you make one gif with it off, and one with it on, for the on and off states.

This PageKit was made before the excellent "Blending options" of newer version of Photoshop and i'd suggest you use the outer glow effect instead, switching that on and off for export.

I've made a quick version of this at:
http://www.elated.com/grabs/aperture_menu_tara.psd

When you export, it doesn't really matter if the backgrounds are transparent or not really, since it's all just off black.

Hope that made some sense.

Simon
ELATED : )

--
ELATED : )
http://www.PageKits.com
Professional Website Templates