Look @ the shitty pictures i can make-> WOW!!!!!!

Hi all

Can anyone tell me why my Pictures suck so much???(not the photos of me, i know those suck
;)-> i am talking bout GIFs and WEB PICTURES)

Ok so i am not an artist , nor graphics designer.

Example,

I was looking to put nice buttons with the "button"-effect( left side of a rectangle should be
whiter/lighter and the right side should be more black/darker)
That i learnt yesterday when i got a few examples from the web and on my pc.
I opened a grey button with bitmap and damn i zoomed real close and saw something that
i already knew(most of you guyz too) but didn't think about it at al till then-> the grey buttons is not just PLAIN GREY , NO PIXEL NEXT TO EACH OTHER IS THE SAME GREY(meaning lighter and darker).-> it would take me month to make one of my own that looks exactly the same if
I use BITMAP(getting all those greyz is gonna be insane.), so i jus greyed out the picture on the button(i know that is ILLIGEL,but that is why i am asking you guyz)

and even if i grey it out and make my own picture on the "button" ->IT LOOKS LIKE CRAP!!
/EXAMPLE

Well that was a easy example compared to making something look gold and 3D.

How do the pro's do it-> they must surely use some kind of tool(z).

Please help me, i really need your help.
More details will kindly be suplied.

Cheers
******

if it's just 3D buttons your wanting to create try using Z-Paint from here

http://www.steffengerlach.de/freeware/#zp/

it's a piece of freeware that you can use to help you create reasonably respectable buttons of various geometric shapes. It helps if you have something like photoshop to do some post processing (mainly cropping and general tidying up etc) If you're not happy with that try searching google because there are tons of freeware products just for creating buttons.

hope that helps

Z

thanx -> well its buttons , gifs , and anything that might contain the <IMG> tag, if you know what i mean.

but getting the buttons so far is a goood start -> thanx again.

Cheers
******

Not to be mean or anything but: when you work with **** (assuming its something like Microsoft Paint), you'll get ****. I would recommend getting Adobe Photoshop and then reading some online tutorials, which afterwards will make your pictures nice and not "suck". ;)

And to show you how easy it would be to fix your "example" in Photoshop, all you would do is use the 'Burn Tool' which would make one side dark and leave the other as it was (Very cool tool.).

= Cheers, jag291 =

Jaguar....good point... the only problem with the solution i.e. photoshop is that it is expensive to buy (yeah ok you can get cracked copies etc..... but I'm not going to suggest that)... although photoshop elements is reasonably priced... I'd suspect that Einztein is a student and therefore lacking in the cash department so an alternative might be the gimp (you listening einztein? search for it on google :) )

Z

just to clarify ZoneWalker is refering to Gimp not calling anyone a gimp - lol

Quote:

---

The GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software suitable for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring.

---

personnaly i hate it - but different stroke for different folks.....too used to psp (paint shop pro) & photoshop.....yes they are alot more exspensive (esp as gimp is free) but you can get 30 day trial versions.....if your on a dial up - and i think I remember you saying you were these may take a while to download. But if you look for copies of magasines like .net, computer arts etc they usualy give them away free on cover cds

v_Ln

ROFLMAO... yeah sorry... I should have mentioned what the GIMP is... thanks for clarifying v_Ln - didn't click with me that a gimp is also somehing quite different :D

it is true the GIMP is a 'teensy' bit idiosyncratic in the way it works and personally I prefer to use photoshop most of the time but I'd prepared to put up with the GIMP if I was broke.

Z <shuffles off wondering where it all went pear shaped>

A very popular effect with webdesign right now is the pixel effect and can be easily achieved in MS Paint. Don't underestimate this program as a designer. True, it's not photoshop, but if you know how to do pixel art, it can be a powerful program, and you'd be surprised at the amount of people who use it.

Two of my sites are done in the trendwhorish pixel art, click the banners in my signature to see what I mean. Now, I did do these in Photoshop, but I'm going to give you a quick button lesson for MS Paint or an equivalent program:

1. Fire it up...doesn't matter the size of the canvas, but large enough to accomodate a button.
2. Grab the rectangle tool, with black chosen for color and make a small rectangle.
3. Now you're going to need to zoom in to give this rectangle some depth and detail. Go to View > Zoom > Large Size and position it on your screen. If it's not large enough, go to Custom and change it to around 800%
4. For some detail, we're going to use a dark grayish color. Make the rectangle just inside the black one.
5. Now fill the white area left with the light gray on your palette using the paint bucket tool. Easy enough.
6. Now for some defintion. Beneath the dark gray line on the top inside and on the right inside of the same line, using the line tool...define a white area (see button closeup for where the highlight is)
7. Do the same for the bottom and left edge using a dark gray color. I had to define a custom dark gray color. It needs to be darker than the dark grey we used previously.
8. Zoom out and see the definition. A simple pixel button.
9. Now lets add some text. I used the word "pixeled".
10. All done. You can play around with it as you like...remember, the more definition you give it...the better it will look. For example, if you want to give it a gradient look, try using different shades of the same color in stripes through the image. Yes, it takes more work, but sometimes you've got to work with what you have.

You can create your layouts completely in MS Paint with the iframe style using a larger image as the base for your background. There are tons of tutorials out there on this.

And this isn't the only way to make one of these buttons, experiment with different shading and see what you can come up with. Pixel art is very popular and more tutorials shouldn't be hard to find searching on Google.

Here are some more examples using color schemes for buttons with the pixel style, just to show you how much more refined your image can look with a little work. The font for the arrows is Webdings.

Thank you Gg thats a neat "trick".

Thank you all, i am now no longer struggling with web graphics.

cheers
*****