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Creating Web
Graphics You’ll want to create a superb site that attracts many visitors. Having an informative site is nice, but the key to make it attractive is through creating quality and quick-loading graphics. We’ve reviewed many of the free graphics applications that can be legally downloaded from the Internet and we firmly believe LView Pro ranks among the best of them. It supports many Web image formats and has the ability to create transparent GIF images. It’s a nice application and we highly recommend it. The only major downside it has is that it doesn’t have illustration capabilities, which means you will have to draw graphics elsewhere or buy a nice commercial illustration program. But why not draw your graphics in Microsoft Paint (which is bundled with Microsoft Windows) and copy/paste them to LView Pro? You can download a copy of LView Pro at http://www.lview.com. It’s currently available upon a shareware license. If you prefer illustrating your graphics with another program, try Imager. Imager is a nice freeware program available for download at the Tucows Network (just type in "Imager" in the keyword field). Unfortunately, it only has the ability to save in ".bmp" and ".jpg" formats but that should be fairly sufficient for your needs. If not, you might have to do some importing and exporting to save in the format you want (such as ".gif"). If you’re looking to create some outstanding graphics, you should definitely check out CoolText (http://www.cooltext.com), an incredible online graphics generator. With this site, you can easily create colorful graphics that retain a nice professional appearance. And best of all, the service is entirely free of charge and you can create as many graphics as you like. It’s important to realize the differences between the popular image formats on the Web. The two most commonly used image file formats for the Web are Graphics Interchange Format (.gif) and Joint Photographic Experts Group (.jpg or .jpeg). Although the Portable Networks Graphic format (.png) is somewhat popular, some browsers still cannot display images associated with the format. The explanations given below will discuss the differences between the GIF and JPEG file formats. GIF file format (.gif)
JPEG file format (.jpg or .jpeg)
There are also other programs that can filter your graphics to make them more Web-ready for the pressing download time requirements of Internet. We recommend purchasing a copy of WebVise to compress your graphics. This is a great investment toward the quality and value of your site. A great graphics program, WebVise (http://www.autofx.com)optimizes JPEG and GIF files for the Web and is an invaluable tool when speed is important. Another popular program, Photo Soap (http://www.metacreations.com/products/soap), developed by MetaCreations, is primarily used to make regular graphics have the appearance of being designed by professional graphic designers. Reptile 2, a program developed by Sausage Software, has the ability to create colorful textures that can be used for Web page backgrounds. It’s available as freeware and can be downloaded at http://www.sausage.com/reptile. If you really want to make an investment towards the final appeal of your site, you may want to look into commercial graphic editors. We’ve listed some of the most popular graphic editors and illustration software available on the market today. Many of these software programs area available with a trial version so you can "try before you buy" and decide which program fits best for your needs. Recommended Software Adobe Illustrator Adobe Photoshop Corel Photo-Paint Corel Draw Macromedia Freehand |
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