How do you all aquire / create cool images?

  • mjwood

    (@mjwood)


    17 years, 9 months ago

    Looking at some of the Themes and Layouts some of you all have created, and aspiring to do so myself, I was struck by the beautiful images many people use on their blogs. So to that, I have a couple of questions:

    1) Are these images you have found around the internet? If so, where and under what license? (I’ve seen stuff at Deviant Art, but are there others?)

    2) If you are creating them, what programs are you using? I have Photoshop and Illustrator for Windows but confess I have not spent enough time to be overly proficient at creating images. I also use Linux (actually, much prefer it) and have tried The Gimp. Again, with limited success. Anyone know of any good tutorials?

    I have an idea for where I want to take my blog. Currently, it’s using a semi-stock theme I found. While it’s nice, it’s rather generic and I really don’t care for it from an artistic standpoint. However, now that I’m becoming more proficient at CSS and XHTML (as well as php), I want to try to create a theme that matches what I can design on paper.

    A little background — I used to do a lot of layouts for flyers and professional publications. However, I had very good artists and layout people so I did very little of the graphics creation (other than the preliminary sketches). Therefore, I feel I have a good eye for design, but no skills to back it up!

    Thanks in advance for any help! And everyone, keep up the great work! You are all inspiring me to lean!

Viewing 8 replies - 1 through 8 (of 8 total)
  • ladydelaluna

    (@ladydelaluna)

    17 years, 9 months ago

    try doing searches in google…

    “royalty free stock photos”
    “royalty free graphics”
    “photoshop tutorials”

    personally i either create my graphics myself, from scratch, or use a stock site (most have a small fee to pay for each image, but it’s a small fee) and everything i know about graphics and design came from either searching for tutorials or just fiddling around with it myself.

    Thread Starter mjwood

    (@mjwood)

    17 years, 9 months ago

    @lady – Thanks. I was having the hardest time searching for images as I could not think of the word “stock”. One of those brain dead moments, I guess.

    When you create them from scratch, are you using something like Photoshop? Or is there an easier editor out there that is somewhat simpler to master?

    I’ve got a book on Photoshop… time to dust if off and start learning I guess!

    ladydelaluna

    (@ladydelaluna)

    17 years, 9 months ago

    i only use photoshop if i have to – i tend to prefer paint shop pro as it’s a little more user friendly, takes less time to load (gah, those adobe products are a KILLER!) and doesn’t effect the quality of the images in any way.

    photoshop is more precise, i have to say. but not by enough that i’m not happy with what i can do with PSP (which is way cheaper, last i know, was around $70 US)

    Thread Starter mjwood

    (@mjwood)

    17 years, 9 months ago

    Good to know. Ya. Adobe stuff is really slow. I actually would prefer to use Gimp if I could since it’s free, and Linux. (I have a small hatred for all things Micro$oft).

    I looked around and found some nice stuff, though not as much as I thought I would. There is a lot of junk (which doens’t suprise me on the internet anymore). I also found a couple good tutorials about creating web graphics. If I find them useful, I’ll post them here.

    Thanks for all the help!

    jonimueller

    (@jonimueller)

    17 years, 9 months ago

    you need to be very very very careful about which royalty free images you use to create TEMPLATES. This caveat does not apply to one of a kind projects you do for yourself (not for distribution as a web template) or for others. The key is that templates cannot use much of the material found at, e.g., istockphoto.com, corbis.com, due to those licensing restrictions, and if you think I’m kidding about that, just go ahead and do it and you’ll get an email from them in no short order.

    Just a heads up. http://www.sxc.hu continues to be a great place to grab images for templates, as is your own camera!

    Thread Starter mjwood

    (@mjwood)

    17 years, 9 months ago

    Thanks for the heads up! I’ve been looking at the licensing agreements and see what you mean. Many say they are okay to use for personal things, but not re-distribute. I’m not sure if I’m going to turn my idea into a template or not, but this is definately something to keep in mind!

    ladydelaluna

    (@ladydelaluna)

    17 years, 9 months ago

    agreed, joni – thanks for posting that!
    any time i’ve ever used a site for royalty free images, i ensure that the license allows me to use the image in a way i need, or i don’t use it.

    typically what i’ve found is that a one-time use on a website (regardless of how it’s used on that one site, be it in a WP theme, or on a regular HTML site) is fine… it’s when you create something for multiple counts of redistribution (either for free or profit) that things get hairy…

    manstraw

    (@manstraw)

    17 years, 9 months ago

    lately I’ve found myself making use of http://creativecommons.org/image/. There are links (on the left, down a bit) to sites that have pools of images that are free even for commercial use. And there’s a search box right on the page I linked. Check the licence specific to each image of course.

Viewing 8 replies - 1 through 8 (of 8 total)
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