Now comes the REAL work. From here you create all of your individual images. I started by hiding all of the layers until I had my background screen. Then I UNHID the startup layer. I next selected Copy Merged from the Edit menu and created a new, blank image. (When you make a new image, PhotoShop will look at your clipboard and see if there is a picture there, if there is, the New Image you create will automatically have the right size and color depth set for you). Paste into the new image and reduce the color level to 256 colors, or Indexed Color.

Mine looks like this:

Then just use the Save As . . command on the File menu and choose Windows Bitmap or BMP to save the file in the proper format. You now have a 256 color Windows Bitmap to work with. Repeat this process until you have all three of your images saved as Startup.bmp, Wait.bmp, and Shutdown.bmp. Use IrfanView 32 to view and flip through the images to see how they look.

You are then ready to proceed to Step Three.

A note about IrfanView 32.

I hate to harp on a subject, but as I said, in my humble opinion there is no replacement for perfection. This is not an advertisement, just a word from an end user that knows what's out there. IrfanView 32 supports literally THE WIDEST selection of media files imaginable. It is a fast FREEWARE image viewer/converter for Win95/98/NT.

Supported file formats:
JPG/JPEG, GIF, BMP, DIB, RLE, PCX, PNG, TIFF, TGA, RAS/SUN, ICO, AVI, WAV, MID, RMI, WMF, EMF, PBM, PGM, PPM, IFF/LBM, PSD, CPT, MPG/MPEG, MOV and Photo-CD (Overview Photo-CD support).

Some features of IrfanView:
Preview option, Drag & Drop support, fast directory view (fast moving through directory), slideshow, batch conversion, print option, change the color depth, scan support, cut/crop and many many more.

The first graphic viewer WORLDWIDE with Animated-GIF support. The first graphic viewer WORLDWIDE with Multiple-ICO support. One of the first graphic viewers with Multipage-TIFF support.

Thank you Irfan Skiljan!       Here is his homepage