Using Stock Images Wisely

You must have in your life, been forced to use a variety of stock images or clip arts in your designs, but never wanted your buyer to know about it.

This is exactly what I’ll teach you in today’s discussion. The Free images available on the internet, are all too bogus to be used, and the ones that are good enough are always too expensive. Think again…. You didn’t get into the designing business to listen to excuses like these. Why not make your buyer believe that the image is actually yours. You may be violating a thousand image copyrights by doing so, but doing it effectively will never get you into trouble.

http://www.desktoptreat.com/wp-content/wallpapers/halo-3-game-wallpaper.jpg
Lets just have a look at this Wallpaper Here. Now the guys who must have captured the image, have tried to incooporate a brand name over the image, even though the image’s copyright may never have been in their possession. Let’s give it a better look.

And this is the version, when I’m done with it.
http://i208.photobucket.com/albums/bb243/Xenonz/halo-3-game-wallpaper.png
I used the extract tool in Photoshop to extract the guy, and adding round about 15 effects to give it a little more depth. You have just made a pretty good wallpaper on your name in just 15 minutes.

Effects added
1. Burn tool on the armour to strengthen effects.
2. Background made black and Dark Grey so that white used stands out more.
3. Winter Breeze and Ice Crack brushes used to create the effect at the back.
4. The white glow is because of the effect applied to an elipse. Gausian Blur at 30 px Radius is applied and Opacity decreased to light levels.
5. Aero Font is used to write HALO3.

No suspicions can ever be made on where the image was rendered from. You can experiment with more effects and more styles. In web designing, I usually take part of some different images and combine them together to get my intended look. The image becomes fresh and reusable at my name. That doesn’t mean, I don’t design my own stuff . I know how to do that, but its time consuming, and making use of so many different images to create one, is also an art on its own.

The same can be applied to cliparts. Most cliparts can be merged together as a single object to get a new one.

Hope this post proves useful to newbies.

Photoshop CS2 and Flash CS3 – A Perfect Combo

I never knew designing a website, would be so easy in flash. Flash CS3 and Photoshop CS2, make a perfect combination when it comes to designing ‘SIMPLE’ Flash websites, with great looking pages. If you don’t know how to work with flash, then lets get started on how its done.

First design your website in photoshop, using all the intended graphics and the layout as you may want on your flash website. Write random text, just for referrence to be used in the flash (Note: This Text will not be editable, using the above mentioned version of photoshop, so it is just for referrence).

Once you are done with the PSD, simply import it, and check the option to maintain the PSD Resolution in flash at the bottom. Wola, you have just completed your very first step.

Simplifying your Work, by choosing the right things

Today I’ll be telling about your things, that you should have on a MUST TO HAVE basis, installed in your PC to fulfill all your designing needs.

Adobe Illustrator.
For those who are good at drawing and wish to design characters, scenarios etc. Illustrator seems to be the best one out there. There are other Paint Shop Pro too, but I personally think that Illustrator along with a Wacom Bamboo seem to be a must have in my list for designing characters especially if you are not doing anything on professional level. Reasons being the simplified interface and compatibility of the two.

Your Portfolio, Your CV

Please take sometime to visit our Sponsors on this Page, Navigating to the page won’t take you away from here.

For a designer, your Portfolio is your Curriculum Vitae (CV) and believe it or not, a good portfolio pays well. Most designers are not much keen on working on their portfolios (like me ) and they prefer posting website links to check. That may be the easy way out, as obviously if your Employer can check your site, why can’t he check that? But I must say that is not the right way of presenting your portfolio. Portfolios should be made keeping in mind accessibility, ease and distinction.

Portfolio Comparisons

8 Quick Tips – Designing Emphatically in Competitions

Ever been a participant of one of the many designing contests that are taking place on the net? And was never able to win anything, because the competition was tough. Believe me for professionals that is just an excuse. Today I’ll be telling you on how to eradicate your flaws to make your designs emphatic over others.

This should be your formula to follow.
1. Read the design brief a couple of times, until you get the exact hand of it.
2. Try to design something as close as possible to designer’s need.
3. When you’re done, Save it. But don’t submit it as yet.

Professional Designing Tips For Newbies

Well I had been thinking about writing this down for all my Juniors there, who are not able to prove themselves in the designing competitions online, due to weird kind of designs they are usually submitting, MOSTLY PRE-MADE TEMPLATES.

Now I agree guys most of you won’t have much knowledge on how to design in Photoshop or Fireworks, so you tend to move to Logo Designing Softwares. There’s nothing wrong with that seriously. Even I use one sometimes to obtain graphic images for my designs, but there’s something called tactics that you need to adopt to design professionally out of nothing at all. Have a Glimpse at this Logo I recently Designed.

At first glance it may appear like a very sophisticated logo, but it isn’t really so. You can use any text at all, but I used ‘Neuropol Bold’ for main text, and simple ‘College Regular’ for Tagline. The art is just to arrange the two fonts in such a way to make them look professional and photoshop quality. Like for e.g the whole text above is made uniform, with an ‘E’ that is different from the main font. This ‘E’ will signify the forum when the whole text is not in use.

Freelancing – A more technical money making approach

Are you wasting your precious little time, sitting on your computer, waiting for someone to sign-in, so that you could proceed with a chat or maybe too much pooling at yahoo is wasting those years out of your age for no good. Well why not make the best of this time and do some freelancing.

The oppurtunities on the internet are endless, and by endless I mean endless. Every heard of Mark Zukerberg? Well I am sure you have, the famous Facebook CEO. Well he started working on a simple social networking site back in 94, and look what he’s making today. There are even more younger people out there who have made credible bucks on the internet, due to their skills and talents.

Do I need to be a Computer Geek to earn anything?
Actually No, (Sorry about the Geek Term, no offense to anyone, just a figure of speech) you don’t have to know anything major except for just some basic handling of your computer.