If you are one of the brave souls who want to try a transparent background, there are just a few adjustments you have to make from what you did here. (1) Skip the background layer and floodfilling with the grey. (2) Avoid the drop shadows at all costs. (3) When your three duplicates are all ready for saving...instead of choosing "merge all", you must choose "merge visible". (4) In Animation Shop, make sure you choose background in Screen Two as "transparent". That should make you a globe with a transparent background. Check out the sample I have done below for you to see. Now you will see, as far as I am concerned, why I always add backgrounds now. One last tip I will offer is that as well as using a smaller size on the snow tube (remember we chose 60 instead of 100), I also change the opacity sometimes. Depending on the image you choose, I sometimes find the full strength snow is a little overpowering. What I will do then is lower the opacity slider on the snow layers to fade it out a little. Sometimes I reduce opacity to 70 and I even go as low as 50 for a really soft snow effect. I hope this tutorial has given you some insight into making a globe (my way) or "an urge" to make a few more (your way). I know everyone has their own way of doing things they develop over time so I hope you have enjoyed your tour through my little world of globemaking. I hope you will check out the rest of the globes and bases I offer for your own fun. They can be found in the snowglobe section under "Bases" or click HERE . There are over a 100 there now. Hopefully one of them will inspire you to try again. Good luck and best wishes in your globe making endeavours. If you have any questions, or are having problems, feel free to email me by clicking here. BACK TO PAGE SEVEN          BACK TO PAGE ONE MAIN TUTORIAL LIST This tutorial was posted at the site of "P. Ann's Place" Oct.20,2001 and written by P. Sherman. All I ask is that you do not claim it as your own.