Must Have Graphic Tips

Ready To Discover The Secret To High Profit Publishing With Little Or NO Content Needed? Reach Eager Buyers In Multiple Niches, Fast... In Card Deck Publishing Profits, you ll discover How to instantly get ideas for card decks that sell. How to create awesome designs using free drag and drop software and royalty-free images! How to easily create print-quality designs without spending money on expensive graphic designers! How to effortlessly repurpose content that you already have! How to connect with eager buyers in your niche. How and where to promote your card decks for FREE! How to find card deck ideas that are already popular and in-demand. How to easily create card decks that are ready to print! The best marketplaces to sell and produce print-on-demand decks... Where to easily sell your decks for fast profits. How to add your deck to marketplaces that already have thousands of card deck buyers browsing every day! And Much More! CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE Must Have Graphic Tips We want you to help you get the most mileage out of what you know so we re going to give you some great information that will get you on your way to understanding and designing your own images. Here are some image basics: Common Image Extensions What s the difference? When should I use different types? There are a lot of questions when it comes to working with images so we decided to bring you image basics this month to help you get started or help fill in some of the

gaps. Well start with some of the common image extensions so you have a reference to work with..jpg When you're working with images you can save the images in whatever format the software will allow. If you have a photo you've taken with your digital camera it s most likely in a JPEG (same as.jpg) file. So, in your image editor you would most likely save it back in the same format..jpg images have lots of colors and gradients which make them the best choice for photos..png If you have an image with a transparent background (which means the image is cut out so you can add it to a webpage so the background will show through) you will need to save it as a.png. If you are using an image editor such as Gimp or PicMonkey, you would be able to have layers of images on top of each other that are in different formats (.jpg and.png). If you are using one with a transparent background (.png) you would have to save it as a.png to preserve the transparency within the image. When you save it, the layers compress to make it a flat image so if you save it as a.jpg it would have whatever background that shows in the image saved with it. If you saved it as a transparent.png image the background will be invisible so when you add it to your website whatever background is on your website will show through. Example Grasping this concept was a little difficult for me at first so I want to make it as clear as possible. The ecover to the right technically has a background around the image but it is transparent (invisible). To make sure it stays transparent when I save it I have to save it as.png image. This means the image will pick up whatever color or texture that it is inserted on. The image below is a side by side example of what it looks like now on my blog (white background) on the left and if my background were red on the right. You can see the image itself is overlayed onto the background.

.gif These types of files are low resolution and used a lot for icons, logos and web images that are less than 256 colors. They can be animated. They re not recommended for photos due to the limited color palette.

.tif.tif files are generally created by graphic designers or intended to be used in print. Faxed or scanned documents can also appear as a.tif tile. They can be very large files. You can usually view these types of files by double clicking on them and your computer will open it in viewing mode. If you need to edit a.tif file you will need to have software that supports this file type. The paint program that comes with windows allows you to edit as well as Gimp which you can download for free as well as Photoshop. There are many other converter programs out there and many for free if you find you need it..psd This is the file extension for Adobe Photoshop files. This means that the image was created with the Photoshop program. To edit images with this extension you will need the Photoshop program or you can download the Gimp software for free at gimp.org..xcf This is the file extension for Gimp. I used the Gimp software a lot. Before I invested in Photoshop I used Gimp for creating layered graphics. It s powerful and free. It can be a little cumbersome to learn. Photoshop doesn t allow you to import an.xcf (Gimp) file but you can import a Gimp file into Photoshop (.psd). If you have a desire to learn more about graphics and creating your own, I highly recommend Photoshop..eps This is what is called a Encapsulated PostScript file and can contain graphics, text and images..eps files are generally created in illustration or layout software such as Adobe Illustrator, Corel Draw, Photoshop and Gimp. If you just want to view an.eps file you can do it in any of the programs listed here or you can import it into Word as a picture to view it. You can make some adjustments in Word as well but the outcome is nowhere near as good as it would be if done it the appropriate software. Common edits How to resize and crop images You may run into a time when you need to resize or crop an image to fit the task at hand. The easiest way I ve found is to use PicMonkey. To Resize an Image Open your image in PicMonkey.

To do this click on edit to open the image you want to work with. A common thing you ll need to do is resize a photo of yourself to add to your site or author block so I ll show you how to resize and crop into a square image. I opened an image of myself that has dimensions of 466 x 640. I want to resize it to around 200 pixels wide. To do that you ll click on resize in the menu to the left. It defaults to the menu (image on left) when you open your image but if you need to find it again you go to the basic edits menu which is the top icon that looks like this: As you can see in the image below the dimensions of my picture are 466 x 640. To change this you can just type in the new dimensions you want it to be. If you

want to just change one either the width or the height you can do that and the program will adjust the other with the correct dimensions if you have the keep proportions box checked. I wanted my image to be 200 pixels wide so I just added the 200 to the first box and the second box automatically calculated the proportions and submitted 275 since I had the keep proportions check box marked. It s as easy as that to resize your image. How to Crop an Image You ll find the crop icon under the basic edits menu (which is the default menu when you open the program). Once you click on crop it automatically gives you a starting point crop. If you know the size you want to use you can type it into the size box but if not, you can grab the edge of the crop box with your mouse and move it around to get the perfect size. I want to make my image 200 x 200 pixels wide so I resized as shown, in the image to the right, to 200 x 275 pixels. Now from the drop-down menu I ll choose square. From here you will have an outlined box that you can grab with your mouse and drag around or grab the edges and make it bigger or smaller. This defaults to 159 x 159 but I want my image to be 200 x 200 pixels so I ll have to grab the edges and make it bigger. Then move it around to the area I want to show within the highlighted area. Now you can see I have an image that is 200 x

200 pixels square to use. There are many programs you can use to edit your images. I love PicMonkey because it s so easy to use and it s free. How to add html code to your website to show images It s important to be able to add images to your site with html code but it s not always easy to figure out. I ll show you how to add code with a link embedded in the code (which will open to another page you designate) and without which will not be clickable. To add an image in html This is the very basic way to add an image to your site. <img src="imageurl" alt="your_text"> The imageurl is the image you want to use. The alt is the text you want to show if for some reason your image is unable to be viewed. You can add elements to this basic code to show other things as well. <h2>your_text</h2> <img border=" " src="imageurl" alt="your_text" width=" " height=" "> In the example above the <h2> is the html tag for heading 2. There are several levels of headings so you can try it out to see which one you like best for the size. img border will create a border around your image and the width and height allows you to specify the dimensions you want to show. Here is a real-life example from an image on my site: <h2>let Your Light Shine<h2> <img border="2" src="http://www.advancingsteps.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/let- Your-Light-Shine-050214.jpg" alt="let Your Light Shine" width="304" height="228"> And this is what it looks like: Let Your Light Shine

To add an image in html code with a link <a href="url" target="_blank"><img src="imageurl"/></a> In this example, you will replace "url" with the page that you want the link to go to. The "imageurl" is the link to the image you want to use. target="_blank" means that the link will open in a new window. The code below is the same real-life example as above but includes the link to my site which means the image will be clickable to the user. <a href="http://www.advancingsteps.com/be-yourself-let-your-light-shine" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.advancingsteps.com/wpcontent/uploads/2014/04/let-your-light-shine-050214.jpg"/></a>

Fonts Using Fonts Online Here s a bit of font usage information you might not be aware of. When you design a website, and use a decorate font, your end user may not ever see the font on their screen. That s because, as mentioned above, fonts are files. If the font file doesn t exist on their computer, they won t see it. Their browser will default to a very basic font in its place. The same is true when using fonts in documents. If I create a Word document with a pretty font I ve downloaded, then send you the document, when you open it, you will see it in plain font. The way around it is to embed the font file on your site in some way. One brilliantly easy way to use a decorative font online is to tap into the Google Fonts Collection. With Google Fonts, you choose a font and copy two snips of code that get pasted into your theme files. That s how Angela Wills of Laptop Lifestyle Business Club is able to use this unique font for her headings: A note for pretty font users: Make sure you use a large enough font size otherwise your swirly fonts may be difficult to read on the screen. Colors Color is a gift on the internet, isn t it? Back when I had to do a lot of design work for print, I had to use color sparingly because it upped printing costs. When I first began designing for the web, it fascinated me that I could as much color as I liked.

Colors impact people in a big way. Take a look at this screen shot: This part of a bigger information graphic I think you d really enjoy viewing. Find it here. While we can use all colors on the internet, some colors really shouldn t be used. Let s look at an example: The color Pink. I love pink! Some shades of pink play beautifully online but some don t. This shade looks just great. Even in bold text. This shade is almost impossible to read online. These shades even when enlarged and made bold are an uncomfortable assault on the eyes. The same will usually be true of any neon colors. You can use neon colors online, but take special care with the shade and get some outside opinions for making a final choice. What looks great on your screen may appear differently on others. I find this is especially true of laptop users.

Use conflicting colors to capture attention I love Deep Red, Black and Charcoal. (Can you tell?) See how I m using a very different color to draw the eye to the strip ad for my upcoming event in Toronto? I ve actually changed the color of this strip ad and will again. I ve had it bright yellow, next I ll probably use a brilliant pink. Whatever it takes to make sure visitors are looking at it and being reminded of its message. Converting colors from RGB to Hex code and vice versa. Sometimes we run across colors that we want to use for a project but it s in one color format. Here are a couple of tools that will give you the ability to get the proper exchanges. For changing from Hex to RGB: http://www.javascripter.net/faq/hextorgb.htm And from RGB to Hex: http://www.javascripter.net/faq/rgbtohex.htm Free Image Sources: These are some of our favorite free image sites that offer quality images free for personal and commercial use. Pickup Image Pixabay Splitshire Unsplash Foodies Feed

In Closing We want to share quality information to help you get to the level of design that you want to achieve. Use these tips to create graphics that will get noticed! Ready To Discover The Secret To High Profit Publishing With Little Or NO Content Needed? Reach Eager Buyers In Multiple Niches, Fast... In Card Deck Publishing Profits, you ll discover How to instantly get ideas for card decks that sell. How to create awesome designs using free drag and drop software and royalty-free images! How to easily create print-quality designs without spending money on expensive graphic designers! How to effortlessly repurpose content that you already have! How to connect with eager buyers in your niche. How and where to promote your card decks for FREE! How to find card deck ideas that are already popular and in-demand. How to easily create card decks that are ready to print! The best marketplaces to sell and produce print-on-demand decks... Where to easily sell your decks for fast profits. How to add your deck to marketplaces that already have thousands of card deck buyers browsing every day! And Much More! CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE