Jon's guide to a good graphic

[Christopher Myers]

A guide to graphics.
This is a quick and comprehensive guide to making good graphics for your character!
I will be giving you some quick tutorials on some good looking features of three different programmes!

[/color][/font][/center]

What graphics can I have for my character?
More importantly why would I?!

Graphics for your character not only emphasize the look of your character, but gives your character the look and feel you want. You can make your character look happy (even if the picture is emo), you can make your character look sad (even if the picture is ecstatic). The possibilities are endless as to what you can achieve.

Regarding the graphics you can have for your character; you can have anything but the most popular ones (the ones this guide are designed for) are;
> Signatures
> Avatars
> Thread/Post headers

And how exactly would this guide help me?

This guide will give you some helpful hints and tips regarding each programme. It will teach you how to do various things with one or two images (hell, maybe even six or seven images). Each thing you learn can be used in a multitude of ways to make your graphics the very best they can be. The three tutorials per sé are;
> Gradiated fades for that special blending of images.
> 'mood' alteration. I named it myself, it's a simple method of changing a signatures mood from happy to sadistic, angry to apathetic, sad to surprised.
> Layering. This is basically getting two or more images and text and putting them on top of each other, for one brilliant image! A collage per sé.
Of course, if needed just post below with another suggestion for a new tutorial and I will update the thread accordingly!

Well what are the programmes and do they cost?

The great question! Which programmes will I be teaching you how to use? And more importantly, how much do they cost?
> The first guide is a photoshop (Creative Studio 4 edition) guide. This is the most advanced and (in my opinion) best graphic studio to use! But, it costs. Now, you can get cracked versions of this but I'm not going to tell you since it's illegal. Don't do it, BAD BAD PERSON! In the UK it costs £627.45 on average, if you buy from the website. In the USA it costs $699 on average, if you buy from the website. Of course, there will probably be cheaper prices somewhere!
> The second programme is 2PIC. It is a very easy to use, and very simple product. You can find it here. P.s. it's also free. This is recommended if you're new to graphics, not if you're more advanced at graphics.
> The final programme is G.I.M.P, the free (slightly less advanced) equivalent to Photoshop. This is the middle of the two, it has advanced features and simple features. It can be found here. This programme is also free.

Anything else?

Yup! When saving images, here are the best formats to save it in:
> Joint Photographic Experts Group (.jpg) provides, by far, the best quality image but the file sizes are huge and will probably destroy your designated bandwidth etc on your image host (I use photobucket) quickly... Use it rarely. Yes, JPEG is named after a company because they set up the standards
> Portable Network Graphics (.png) provides similiar quality to that of a JPEG, but take up much less space. This is because the image loads when you look it, it also allows for transparency! This is recommended.
> Graphics Interchange Format (.gif) is the bitmap image format introduced by CompuServe (You might know gif by that name). It provides minimal memory usage... minimial quality. It allows for transparency and animations. But, as said, the quality sucks arse. Use ONLY if needed (and when doing animations)

You should not rely on this guide to do all the graphic work for you. Use your imagination and experiment. These guides are solely guides, nothing more. They are expressing the utmost basic features of the said programmes and each programme's functionality is not limited to the guides and tutorials within this thread.

[Christopher Myers]

GUIDE FOR PHOTOSHOP

Gradiated Fade

For this fade I'm going to use two pictures of some famous guy (I can't remember his name). Here's how you do it:
> Open the two images you wish to edit. I've done it in tiled view so you can see both images as I do it!

Image for step one:

> Click the fourth icon down on the tool bar (it might be "magic wand tool" by default, then with the left mouse button held down hover the cursor over it. Two options should appear, move your mouse over the "Quick Selection Tool" and release the mouse!

Image for step two:

> Move the cursor (keep the left button held down) around what you want to delete (or keep). If needed, when you've selected it all, press Shift + CTRL + I to invert the selection. Then press CTRL + C (or CTRL + X)

Image for step three:

> Open up your second image and press CTRL + V.

Image for step four:

> Click "Add Vector Mask" on the new layer. It should be at the bottom of the layers box. It looks like a white circle in a grey box.

Image for step five:

> Select the gradient tool (refer to image if you want to find it) AND MAKE SURE THE GRADIENT IS ON A BLACK TO TRANSPARENT FILL OR YOU'LL END UP FILLING IN YOUR PICTURE!

Image for step six:

> Select the point of the image you want the fade to start and drag your mouse to where you want the fade to end. You may hold shift if you want a forced straight line!

Image for step seven:

> If you selected PNG as the format you will receive two options. Select "interlaced". I think this decides on transparency or something. But anyway, I always do interlaced.

Image for step eight:

Mood Alteration

Changing the mood of a picture is simple and can be done by many methods. Some of these methods are; cropping the image, changing the tone, changing the color and such. I'm going to focus on those three and push them into one giant mood alteration!

As you can see this picture is quite a 'confident' looking picture.

I'm going to change the mood to a sort of sad/depressed/evil(bitter) mood. Here's how:
> Once you've opened the picture you wish to change left click and hold your mouse over the fifth icon down on tool bar (whilst having mouse held down) and select "Crop Tool"

Image for step one:

> Crop the picture down to the desired size you want and click the cursor with the + next to it. A dialogue box will come up, click "Crop".

Image for step two:

> After that, click "Adjustments". This may not be on your toolbar selection yet. If it is, great. If it isn't click "window" and click "adjustments"

Image for step three:

> Select the "levels" tool. It's the second icon along on the top row.

Image for step four:

> Adjust the image until you're happy and select the "Background" layer.

Image for step five:

> Go back to the adjustments panel and select the Color Balance tool. This is the third icon along on the second row.

Image for step six:

> Adjust the midtones, shadows, and highlights until you're happy. You're then done!

Image for step seven:

> If you selected PNG as the format you will receive two options. Select "interlaced". I think this decides on transparency or something. But anyway, I always do interlaced.

Image for step eight:

> You are not limited to these adjustments ONLY. You can do much, much more with the other adjustments (such as "curves" etc)

Layering

Layering an image is vital in the creation of most signatures and graphics. It's easy to do, but to do it so it looks nice... that's the trick.
Here's how:
> Press CTRL + N to make a new document, and set the size. I chose 500px x 200px - a standard signature. Then click ok.

Image for step one:

> Open all the images you wish to impose onto your new canvas.

Image for step two:

> Use the techniques you've learnt in the last two tutorials to 'cut' the images out (if you want to, that is!) and impose them onto the 500 x 200 canvas.

No image is needed for this step.

> Adjust the layers as you wish (click the giant T in the toolbar to add a text layer). Fade each layer if you want and arrange it until you're happy. You could end up with something like this:

Image for step 4:

As stated previously, each guide is ONLY a guide. The tools and options shown in these guides are not necessarily the ONLY options and tools available to you; experiment and test. The tutorials should be treated as guides and guides only.

[Christopher Myers]

2PIC GUIDE.

Gradiated Fade

For this fade I'm going to use some famous chick and some famous dude. Here's how you do it:
> Open the two images you wish to edit.

Image for step one:

> In the toolbar at the bottom, click "fade" and choose the fade option you want.

Image for step two:

> Click start when you're done (repeat on as many fade options as you want)

Image for step three:

> On the newly edited image click the save icon (should look like a small floppy disk). If you chose a PNG format, you'll get the option to make it transparent, do what you want. I usually do "no".

Image for step four:

Other two guides being done as we speak

[Christopher Myers]

RESERVED FOR G.I.M.P GUIDE.

[Christopher Myers]

Frequently Asked Questions

Here are all the questions people have asked recently, each with an answer.

If you wish to ask a question use the below template

[center][size=5][color=00FF00]QUESTION[/color][color=A0FF00][i]![/i][/color][/size][/center]
[color=FFB000]My problem is...[/color][color=FFE000]write your problem/question here[/color]
[color=FFB000]The programme I use is...[/color] [color=FFE000]write the programme you use here[/color]