Create Your Own Graphics For Free With Gimp Tutorials
By Linda | April 29, 2008
So you’re making your own web site. You’ve been working on it for a while, you have some good content, but something is still missing… cool graphics! Let’s face it: a web site without nice graphics is like a TV show without color. It’s boring and drab and won’t look very visually appealing. You want your site to catch people’s attention and make them say, “Hmm, this looks interesting, I think I’ll check it out”. One of the best ways to do this is to have a good header graphic at the top of the page.
What is this great thing you speak of?
It’s an image consisting of three parts: a background, a title, and a sub-heading. For example, let’s say you are building a web site about dogs. Your background might be a scenic view of a city park with a few dogs running around having a good time. Your title might be: “Dog Lovers Paradise”. For a sub-heading, you could either use the URL of your main web site or a line of descriptive text saying what your site is about: “all the info you need to be a good dog owner”, “buy discount dog food here”, “how to take care of your dog”, etc. If you are running on online business, you could put your business slogan here.
How do I get the goods?
There are 3 main ways to get header graphics, depending on how much time and money you have available:
1. The expensive way - hire a professional graphic designer to make them for you
2. The cheap way - buy a customizable set of pre-made graphics from the Internet
3. The free way - make them yourself for instance with Gimp Tutorials!
Option #1 may be great for big corporations that have a lot of money, but it’s not so practical for small businesses or individuals who make web pages as a hobby. Sure, you might be able to hire a freelance graphic designer who will charge $50 per image or something like that, but even that’s a lot of money for most people.
When I design web sites, I prefer option #2. This is a great balance between time and money. It’s easy to find good image packages that cost a lot less than hiring a professional. Such packages typically provide a number of different generic backgrounds and styles so you can pick one that fits the topic of your site. Files are given to you in a format that makes it easy to edit the individual elements of the image, such as the popular Adobe Photoshop .psd format.
In a .psd file, image elements are organized in layers that can be turned on and off, or changed as you see fit. So you could pick something that you like, change the title and sub-heading to be whatever you want, and then save the new image as a .jpg file for your web page and you’re done! It’s that easy! You can have a nice, professional looking header for your web site in as little as 2 or 3 minutes! All you have to do is spend a little bit of time and money finding a good graphics package to use.
If you have a little more time and want to make something truly original, then you can go with option #3: do it yourself. Making your own header graphics can take a lot of time, but the rewards are well worth it and if you use the the Gimp its free. If you are good at it, you could even go into business for yourself as a freelance graphic designer or make your own graphics package to sell!
Make your own headers and images with free software using the Gimp Tutorials to show you how.
Topics: Affordabe Web Design |
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