Hiya Bejon!

Hopefully one of these ways should get rid of the flecks for you - if one doesn't work, don't worry, there are other ways :o)

First, we're going to try getting rid of the specks and having a transparent background for your name to see if that works... if not, then I'm pretty sure it's Animation Shop that's the problem.

So, open up the name you saved as a .gif file - it will have a solid background colour on it... that's cool :o)

Here's mine (I made it bold to show up a bit better and used a gold pattern 'cos I can't use plug-ins for some reason, so yours will look slightly different):

First we need to get all our colours back, so go to "Colours" then down to "Increase Colour Depth" and then across to "16 million Colours"

Now we're going to give it a transparent background.  Go to "File" then down to "Export" and across to "Gif Optimiser"

You should get a pop-up dialogue box looking something like this:

You can ignore most of it (I do!  lol)... the wizard will take you through everything in a couple of quick steps.  In the bottom left hand corner there's a button with a wizard's hat and wand - hit that button and the wizard will kick into action:

On this screen of the wizard, you need to tell it the colour of the background on your image.  You can do this in one of 2 ways.  In the big square in the middle, you can click on that and choose the colour - but it has to be the *exact* colour...

Or you can let PSP do the hard work (and make sure you get the right colour) - this is the way I always do it.  Just like with all other programmes in Windows, you can drag dialogue boxes around by clicking and dragging the titlebar of the window.  We need to get this window out of the way so that you can see your image, so click and drag the titlebar until it's out of the way and you can see your image:

Try hovering your cursor over your image - you'll notice that it turns into a dropper.  Single left click anywhere on the solid background of your image... the colour has now changed in the dialogue box - that's cool... it's what we want and we know for sure that it's definitely the right colour now too :o)

Click on "next" and you'll go to the next screen in the wizard:

This screen is asking you what colour the background on your webpage is.  You can only choose solid colours, so try and choose a colour that is as close as possible - it doesn't matter if it isn't exact... I've chosen a similar solid colour to this background:

When you've chosen your colour, hit "next" and you'll go to the next screen of the wizard.  There are only certain colours that webpages can display in certain browsers - this screen is asking you if you only want to use those colours.  We don't, so choose the "No, choose the best colours" option, then hit "Next":

This screen is asking you about the quality you want for your image - we want it to look as clear as possible, so make sure the scroll bar is as high up as possible, then hit "Next":

This screen gives you a preview of how your image will look.  You can zoom in and out using the "+" and "-" signs under the preview pane to show more or less detail.  If you are happy with how it looks, hit "Finish", if not, just hit "back" until you get to the screen where you want to change something and just follow the steps again until you are happy with it... there may still be some flecks around the outside - if there are, don't worry about it, that just sometimes happens... if you use a thicker font it should take off more of the flecks:

The next screen asks you where you want to save it and what you want to call it... navigate to where you want to save it, give it a name and hit "OK"

Now go back to Patti's tutorial and follow the rest of the steps in her tutorial to animate it.  If you still get the flecks, don't worry, there's another way to get around it in PSP and I think there's a way to get around it in Animation Shop too but I'll have to have a bit of a play around with that one 'cos I've only done it a couple of times :o)