Designing Your Custom CD Clocks

Six simple steps...

1. Click the Your pictures tab to upload your own pictures...
2. ...or click the Designs tab to pick one of our variety of designs
3. Click Hands to choose hands to suit your clock
4. Click Faces to select markings and numerals
5. Click Text to add your own personal text
6. Click the button to add the clock to your order

The slightly longer version

1. Your pictures tab
   If you have your own pictures, upload them here to see what they will look like on the clock face. With your mouse, drag and resize the outline circle, then click the Use this picture button, to find which part of the picture looks best on the clock. See Using your own pictures for full details.
2. Designs tab
   If you prefer, choose one of our range of fascinating designs, photos or just plain bright colours here. Click the tabs at the left to look through all the sections. Click on different pictures to see what they will look like on the clock. Browse through the designs with the arrow buttons.
3. Hands tab
   Click on the different hand colours to find the one that best suits your clock.
4. Faces tab
   Click on different face designs to see what the different kinds of markings or numerals will look like with your background. Or click on the blank face at the top if you prefer to have no face markings at all.
5. Text tab
   If you wish, add your own personalized message in a wide choice of text styles. See Adding your own text below.
6. Go back to any of the tabs you need to until the design you see on the main clock picture is the one you want. When you are ready, click on the button above the clock face. You will be taken to a shopping cart page provided by PayPal (don't worry, you can pay with a normal credit card if you don't have a PayPal account). You can also come back to the design page to add more clocks as many times as you like
7. If you want to see which clocks you have added to the basket, click the button on the design page. If you change your mind about any of the clocks, use the delete options on the shopping basket page to remove them.

The full story to answer all your questions

Using your own pictures

You can upload your own photos, or designs you have created yourself, and see immediately what they will look like as the background for your clock. You need to have the picture on your computer in one of these formats:

• JPEG (name ends in .jpg or .jpeg)
• GIF (name ends in .gif)
• PNG (name ends in .png)

Most pictures from digital cameras are already in JPEG format. Pictures with resolution less than about 600x600 pixels will need to be expanded to fill the space, so they may look grainy. Or if you feel like being creative, and you can use graphics software, why not create your own unique design?

Uploading your pictures

1. Click on the Your pictures tab on the design page.
2. Click the Browse... button near the top of the tab.
3. In the file list that appears, choose the picture you want, click on it and then click the Open button at the bottom
4. Click the Upload button next to the Browse... button
5. Be patient! The upload may take a minute or two, depending on the size of the picture file and the speed of your internet connection

When the upload has finished, the picture appears as the clock background for you to see how it will look. You can upload several pictures and click the Use this picture button to see each one.

Choosing the best part of your picture

After you have uploaded a picture, you will often want to adjust the part of the picture that will appear on the clockface, especially if the picture includes people's faces. The dashed white outline circle shows the area of the picture that will be used. You can:

• Click in the centre of the outline and drag it around the picture
• Change the size of the outline by clicking on one of the four arrow symbols and dragging. You cannot make any part of the outline go outside the picture, so you may need to move the outline first or drag a different arrow to make it bigger. If you are not sure, just try it out - you will soon see how it works.
• Fix the outline where you want it, by clicking the Use this picture button to see what it looks like on the clock design

Adding your own text

Click on the Text tab on the design page. Here you can change the words and the style of the text. Click the Update button to save the changes and see what the text will look like. You can try as many different words and styles as you like, so feel free to experiment!
Important: click Update to save the text changes before moving to another tab, or you may lose the changes.
You can:

• Enter two separate pieces of text that will appear in the upper and lower halves of the design. The text will automatically be centred in the design. You can have more than one line of text in each half - just press return within the text entry box to start a new line. You can use blank lines at the top of the text to move the text downwards on the picture.
• Change the text size. As a rough guide, size 1 will appear as roughly the size of text in normal print, and size 10 will allow one short word in the space available. Try different sizes and click Update to see the result. Important: you need to make sure that the text fits inside the design before you add the clock to yout order.
• Change the text colour. Examine the result to make sure that the colour can be seen clearly on your background. If there is a lot of detail under the text, it tends to break up the outline of the text and make it difficult to read - a strongly contrasting colour can help with this.
• Change the font. The Example box shows a sample of text in the font selected, but you need to click Update to see what it will really look like on the design.

If you want to remove the text, just clear both the upper and lower text boxes.

Design page
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