Entries Tagged 'Photos, Images, Fonts' ↓

Paul Hood

“Don’t forget to remember me.” In today’s hustle and bustle world, making people remember is very important and it is a must to have something that they will remember you by.

The competition is fierce making it necessary to have all possible avenues explored and tools utilized. Making the right choice is vital for one’s success. The use of brochures is an effective way of promoting your business. They serve as a tool for communication between you and the reader, giving them an idea of what it is that you have to offer. But a poorly designed brochure will only prove to be a waste of time, money and a lot of paper. A well-designed brochure, on the other hand, is a formidable weapon in today’s cutthroat market. Creating the right one is required for the successful promotion of your company.

The first thing to do is to ask yourself what it is that you want to relay to your target reader. Your brochure should be tailor-made for your intended audience for them to be able to relate to what you are trying to say. Think of it as giving your Pop a pant and not a skirt. Next would be the layout of the brochure itself. This aspect requires good planning. You need to have a good cover page that includes information like the name of your company as well as a photo or other information that you may deem important. People are likely to read more if the reading material is attractive. Moreover, the sentences included in the body must be straightforward. There is no need for fancy words but just a direct to the point narrative with the use of powerful words that ought to capture the reader’s attention. Proofreading will also have to be done to avoid occurrence of misspelled words and wrong grammars. It certainly is not attractive for a brochure to have incorrect words and sentences.

Colors also play a big part in making brochures. Make it a point to use colors that are pleasing to the eye. I think you’ll agree that it’s not good to read something with a glaring bright yellow background and a neon green text. Try to put yourself in the shoe of the person who is going to read your brochure and you’ll understand. Finally, all these factors come down to one very important thing. Paper. Choose high-quality paper when you finally have to print your brochure. Remember that the quality of the paper you use will speak a lot about you and will help people make impressions about the truth of what you have been saying.

The brochure you provide will leave an impression more lasting than you can imagine. How well they perform will depend on how good you planned, designed and produced your brochure. If you’ve done your homework then there’s no need to worry.

Author: Lewis Leake

There are millions of web sites trying to get listed in the top 20 to 30 spots on the major search engines. That’s a lot of competition! So if you’re having a hard time getting those spots, maybe you should try some little used but effective seo strategies to get those prized listings.

One way to do that would be to do a search on Google, Yahoo or MSN using the keywords that someone would use to find your website. The key then would be to advertise on the top web sites. Now advertising on these top spots would probably be very expensive.

If you don’t want to spend any money, you could use the ten seo strategies listed below. Remember though, some of these strategies may not apply to every web site.

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Unique Grunge Effects on Photoshop

Author: kay zetkin

Grotesque and ungainly images onscreen ignites in us different emotions and creates quite a stir on our moods. In fact, grunge manipulation are common in horror pictures and gothic scenes. Dark, mysterious, haunting, even sinister images have their own charm once they are used appropriately or as a certain site calls for it. Our web design need not entail that everything should be bright, happy, shining and attractive. In fact, it is also quite necessary to create the exact opposite of these bright and attractive images.

Images that scream of grotesque shapes against a dark aura have very shattering effect our senses that the way it was done often escape our notice. If we observe closely enough, these kinds of horrible, washed up or torn images are made out of very ordinary textures that we encounter everyday.

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Slideshows Galore by Photoshop Elements 3.0

Author: kay zetkin

Now, you can create your very own slideshow, store them, add suitable audios for them and distribute them all around for your friends to see. Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.0 offers you this exciting prospect � indeed!

Image enhancement and organization are among the popular features of Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.0. Also, this image editing software has a lot of tools that perform many a task. In fact, due to its many features, some of them are quite overlooked

So, we got out this feature into light for you. We know that you would enjoy this very much. Photoshop Elements allows you to create slideshows out of your digital still images. Since digital cameras have become less costly and more folks have been able to acquire them, the next question would naturally be — what other things can you do with your digital images? Slideshow presentations are one way of immortalizing memorable occasions and experiences. Anything you want to store up and treasure forever, in beautiful order, digital slideshows will be an effective alternative for you.

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Author: Jeff Colburn

You’ve decided to have a website for yourself or your business. Great! You know what you want to say, how you want it laid out, what pages you need, and all the other good stuff that goes into a great website. But what about graphics? Where do you get buttons, banners, title art, photographs, animation, bars, backgrounds and all the other things you need to make your website look visually interesting?

I asked myself that same question when I created my first website. It took me more than a few days of scouring the web to find what I needed. I Googled and Yahooed for many terms, including: art, clipart, clip art, graphics and free art. In the end, I found some great sites.

Depending on what kind of website you have, finding these things can be easy or difficult. There are three main types of websites, personal, nonprofit and business. The first two can find dozens to hundreds of places to get free artwork that fits the theme of their site. A business site will have a more difficult time. This is because the people that make this artwork usually don’t have a problem giving it to people who won’t make money off of their website. Most personal sites don’t make any money, and giving stuff to nonprofit sites is just, well, the right thing to do. But for a site designed for a business that plans on making money, the artist wants his cut. The artist’s opinion is that, “The business can afford it so they should pay.”

For a business site, before surfing the web for graphics, you may want to consider making your own. You can draw the artwork and then scan it, or create it with Photoshop or any of the other graphic’s programs that are out there. Or a friend who is artistic can do the drawings, or you could even barter with a professional artist. I have done all of these. The advantage of making your own artwork is that it will be unique and perfectly suited to your site. This will also be the most time consuming since you will have to create everything from scratch.

Your next step involves using artwork created by others and available on the Internet, on CD’s or in books. Before you use any of this artwork you must check the rights that they offer. It’s back to that business / personal thing I mentioned above.

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of websites that have all kinds of artwork available for people to use. Sometimes, the most difficult thing is to wade through hundreds of images to find just the one you want. There are two main types of clip art sites. Those offering general artwork that can be used on any site, and those offering “themed” artwork. For example, I went to Celtic art sites to find the proper artwork for my Celtic themed site.

Almost every graphic art site has a “Terms of Use” page telling how their artwork can be used. To be safe, if you can’t find this information, then don’t use any of their artwork. The main reason you don’t want to take artwork illegally is that if you use it on your site, and the artist contacts you and says you are not using it according to their “Terms of Use,” then he can make you pay for it or force you to remove it from your site.

“Let them try,” you say? If you don’t play fair, all they have to do is contact the host where your site is, tell them that you stole the artwork on your site, and the host will shut down your site. Besides, it’s always better to play nice, and fair is fair. How would you feel if someone stole something of yours? Plus, if you spend a lot of time putting your site together, and then have to remove all the artwork and find new, it will prove to be a huge waste of your time. Also, if people are use to the look of your site and it suddenly changes you could lose customers.

When you find a graphic you like, put your pointer onto it, click your right mouse button and select Save Image As. Then save the artwork to a folder where you can easily find it later. Make sure to keep track of where each piece of artwork came from. I do this in the file name, like “Dragon2-Castle-Art.gif” or in a Word file, like Dragon2.gif came from CastleArt.com. This lets you easily go back and find other artwork on this site if you need to.

Some places that have free artwork require you to put a link on your site to their site. I feel that this little piece of advertisement is well worth it for the artwork. I created a section on my Links page for all the people who supplied artwork for my site.

Not exactly free, but close are the sites on the Internet that offer artwork and photographs for a fee. You usually pay a flat fee, and can download all you want. In cases like this, I usually set a day or two aside, pay for the shortest time I can, usually a week or a month, and do nothing but download artwork. I can then use this artwork whenever I want. Again, check the “Terms of Use” to be sure they say this is okay, or at least don’t say not to do this. The cost for this can be anywhere from $8 to hundreds of dollars.

Another low cost option is sites that have large collections of artwork on CD’s. You pay for the CD and shipping and they send you a CD filled with hundreds of graphics. For these sites, I would want to see what would be included on the CD. If they don’t show everything that will be on the CD, they should show at least 100 images. I would hate to be shown 10 to 20 great images, pay for the CD, then find out that the rest of the images on the CD look like garbage. Again, check the “Terms of Use” for these images.

Along these same lines, art supply stores often carry clipart books; some include all of the images on a CD too. I have several from Dover Publications that have great stuff in them. Clipart books range in price from $5 to $25. Most are in the lower price range.

When you are designing your site, be sure to think ahead. Maybe your site is a personal page now, but if think it may become a business site somewhere down the line, then be sure the graphics can be used on the business site. This will save you the hassle of recreating your site at some future date.

Before I tell you where to get all this free stuff, let me give you a piece of advice. The Internet if mercurial. The most amazing site can be there one day and gone the next. Taking with it all that artwork that was perfect for your site. For this reason I suggest that when you come across a site with great artwork that you can use, first, bookmark it or put it in your Favorites folder. Then copy everything you may need right away. It will save you time and heartache down the road. Of the dozen sites where I found the artwork for my site, ten were gone within a year.

Now, for all of those free sites you’ve been waiting for (Drum Roll!):

Photographs * All Royalty Free (they have artwork too) - http://www.allroyaltyfree.co.uk/ * AltaVista Photo Finder (click on the images tab) - http://image.altavista.com/cgi-bin/avncgi * BigPhoto - http://www.bigfoto.com/ * Free Images - http://www.freeimages.co.uk/ * Free Stock Photos - http://www.freestockphotos.com/ * Free Stock Photos - http://free-stock-photos.com/ * FreeFoto.com - http://www.freefoto.com/index.jsp * Geek Philosopher - http://geekphilosopher.com/MainPage/photos.htm * Morguefile - http://www.morguefile.com/ * Picsearch - http://www.picsearch.com/ * Stock.xchng - http://www.sxc.hu/ * Stockstash - http://www.stockstash.com/ * Yahoo! Picture Gallery - http://gallery.yahoo.com/

Artwork / Animation * 1,001 Free Fonts - http://www.1001freefonts.com/ * Animations ($7.95 for a week) - http://www.animations.com/en/index.mc * Aon Celtic Art - http://www.aon-celtic.com/cfreeware.html * Barry’s Clipart Server - http://www.barrysclipart.com/ * Castletrash Clipart (medieval, Egyptian, fantasy clipart on CD’s) - http://www.castletrash.com/index.htm * Clipart ($7.95 for a week) - http://www.clipart.com/en/index * CoolArchive - http://www.coolarchive.com/ * CoolText.com (create logos and other cool stuff) - http://www.cooltext.com/ * Crystal Cloud Graphics (spiritual graphics) - http://graphics.elysiumgates.com/ * Dinc! (Retro fonts and clipart) - http://www.girlswhowearglasses.com/info.html * Flash Components ($24.95 a month) - http://www.flashcomponents.com/ * FontFreak (fonts) - http://www.fontfreak.com/index2.htm * Free-Graphics - http://www.free-graphics.com/ * FreeGraphicLand.com (links to other graphics sites) - http://www.freegraphicland.com/ * Gif.com - http://www.gif.com/ * Graphics Hunter (links to other graphics sites) - http://www.graphicshunter.com/ * Homepage Tools - http://www.homepagetools.com/ * House Ravenscroft (Celtic images) - http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Lofts/3374/index.html * Rowan’s Icons (Celtic images) - http://www.conjure.com/ICON/icons.html * Top20Free.com (links to 20 graphics sites) - http://www.top20free.com/

This should be enough links to keep you busy for a while. So have fun, spruce up your website, be sure not to use too many large graphics and read those “Terms of Use.”

About the author: http://www.CreativeCauldron.com Jeff Colburn is a website designer and writer. His goal is to make the process of creating or updating your website easy and simple for you, while creating a website that meets all your needs and expectations. Jeff can also create all of the copy for your website.

Copyright 2004 Jeff Colburn

If, like me, you never go to Google’s home page you may have missed Google’s acquistion of Picasa:

Picasa. Everything you need to enjoy your digital photos in a single software product:

Download Picasa

Google didn’t disclose how it plans to integrate the Picasa products into its offerings, saying only that its technologies fit with the company’s existing capabilities. “Picasa enables users to easily manage and share digital photographs, and its technologies complement Google’s ongoing mission to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,” said Jonathan Rosenberg, VP of product management for Google, in a statement.

Google Acquires Picasa

When you have a directory of pictures open you can use Coolio’s gallery bookmarklet to create a thumbnail gallery in your browswer (IE and Mozilla anyway).

If everything went well you’ll get a gallery of all the images in the open dir, click on an image and the image will open in the original size.

While designed for surfing adult sites it can be used for any image gallery.

Open Directory 2 Gallery Tool

An entertaining online image manipulation toy.

The rasterbator is a web service which creates huge rasterized pictures out of relatively small image files. The pictures can be assembled into extremely cool looking posters! … You will need: Macromedia Flash Player 7 and Adobe Reader

The Rasterbator

Long ago I was looking for a typewriter font to use for my used bookshop’s logo. Wish this site had been around back then (of course the web had yet to come into being).

Free Typewriter Fonts

Regrettably I discovered that I don’t have the talent to design much of anything and given a photograph I only make things worse. But this list of royalty free stock photographs and images might save somebody a little time.

StockStash is a free stock photo/art site geared toward web designers and graphic artist. The photos offered in the gallery may be manipulated any way you wish for online use. The art work, however is not to be manipulated in anyway. All we ask in return is a link back to us.

StockStash

To make a purchase on iStockPhoto, simply contribute $10 or more to our micropayment engine. Your money is converted into 20 download credits, worth $0.50 each. Save up to 25% on credits when you purchase in quantity.

iStockPhoto

Stock.XCHNG was launched in February 2001, as an alternative for expensive stock photography. The idea was to create a site where creative people could exchange their photos for inspiration or work.

Stock.XCHNG

You can freely use pictures in your personal or any non-profit project (web pages, screen savers, student paper, postcards etc.). With no commitment and no restrictions. … If you need a picture for any other (commercial) purpose you can buy it.

Piotr.Pix

Picsearch is a search engine for pictures and images …

Picsearch

It started scanning its collection in 1992 and launched its first e-commerce site in 1994. The agency now has more than 650,000 images available online- …

Index Stock Imagery

I haven’t looked at DeviantArt in a long time but it appears to be thriving.

Corbis can be searched for royalty free pictures licensed for personal use.

Please feel free to add any stock photography, digital image sites you think worthwhile via the comments form. Worthless self-promotion will be deleted.