Forum Moderators: not2easy
Welcome to Webmasterworld :)
You are in the right place. Photoshop, Fireworks, GIMP, Coreldraw, etc will allow you create graphics.
Here's a good thread [webmasterworld.com] for new members.
Cheers, Limbo.
With graphics there are two basic types of graphics, Vector and bitmap.
Check out the wiki pages for both...
[en.wikipedia.org...]
[en.wikipedia.org...]
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Vector based graphics are points with lines in between. While they start as basic graphics they can be made in to complex images. One of their main points is that the can resized as needed to any scale without loosing quality. The points are relative and are flexable but they have little DIRECT use or ability to be implemented for example on the web. They are largely used for corporate things such as logos.
Bitmap based graphics are made out of pixels. Your computer screen is made out of pixels. Each dot contains color specific information. If you resize a bitmap to be larger the quality will decrease unlike a vector graphic.
Computer graphics are RGB based while printing (typically you think of printing as on paper) people will use CMYK.
RGB = Red, Green, Blue.
CMKY = cyan, magenta, yellow, key
K = key or black in order not to create confusion with b for blue from RGB.
A very common and high end vector graphics editor is Adobe Illustrator. A high end bitmap editor is Adobe Photoshop. You can interchange bitmaps and Vector graphics for various techniques in both. For example if you wish to make a vector graphic of a bitmap image you have then you can import a bitmap in to Illustrator to trace over.
If you're looking to work on graphics for the web you'll be using bitmap based graphics.
With There are different types of images, such as bmps, jpegs, gifs, and so forth.
Since bitmap based graphics are often compressed it's a VERY Good idea to have uncompressed original copies of any images you will use. If you don't have several hundred dollars for Photoshop and can't find it by less legitimate means your only option via Windows is to save a file as a 24-bit BMP file. In Paint you'd click file, save as, and then choose the second drop down menu and choose 24-bit Bitmap.
Paint may be free but you get what you pay for. It is absolutely terriable for anything other then BMP files and is very limited in it's usage. You may find some other image editors out there but Photoshop and Illustrator are basically the industry standard.
Usually you can bum a copy off a friend but something you should keep in mind. If you are going to use software to learn and not pay for it thats one thing. If you're going to use it for paying clients thats very much something else! Be sure you pay for any software you eventually use for work you get paid for. Programmers work their butts off to make software and piracy of software is something that any good sensed profesional frowns upon. Learning can put one in a tough position but there are ways to get around this, you just have to explore your options. If you're in college then even an amatuer school will have Photoshop installed so you should be able to stop by and if you have access mess around on it. If you don't have access but you have a friend who attends the school then they may be able to let you on.
With Photoshop (currently the latest version is 8 or for some dumb reason they are calling it "Photoshop CS" which I have a distaste for calling a program a version that is not it's version number) you can change the type of graphic reliably to many file types.
Photoshop has it's own file type with a PSD file extension. File extensions are typically three letters and/or numbers at the end of a file name after a dot. "myfile.psd" is an example. Windows by default has file extensions turned off which is another example of how dumb Windows is by default. To turn ON extensions go to any folder. In windows XP click the "Tools" menu. In Windows in general find the "Folder Options" and dig around. Most stuff you find means EXACTLY what it says and you won't mess windows up by changing options in that particular window.
Graphics that make it to live sites (sites that you can visit online right now) typically get saved as three types of files.
GIF - Only can be saved with a maximum of 8-bit color (256 colors max). No compression but the low color depth (typically) keeps low resolution (around 200x200 pixels in area) file size small. They can be made in to animated images and may also use transparency. If you animate a GIF or not transparncy is VERY useful for making sure you can change the background color of a page without having to worry about your images having the old colors around them if you say use rounded corners. If you save an image with a really high resolution Photoshop out of all the programs will do an AWSOME job at not only reducing the colors to 8bit but also making sure colors it drops are changed to the closest possible color. Other programs will not do the same thing typically. In Photoshop to achieve this you'd export a file by clicking "File, save for web". I'd suggest turning off dithering and reducing the colors in an image until you feel you've reduced the colors as much as possible without destroying the quality of the image. A logo such as for a popular soda would be a good example of low number of colors that you could drastically reduce the number of colors without destroying the image too much. With red, blue, white, and maybe some colors in between you could get a Pepsi logo down to perhaps 8-16 colors in Photoshop. Cocacola perhaps merely 8 or less.
JPEG (file extension typically .jpg is a 24-bit color (32 bit is 16.8 million colors and 24 and 32 bit are true color, 16 bit is 65 thousand colors) and a jpeg is typically 24 bit. It has a compression rate between 1 and 100. Greater compression equals smaller file but less quality. More quality means a larger file. IF you save a jpeg with too much compression it won't look good.
PNG files use small amounts of compression and support transparncy. They can have various color depths including 24 bit. The only problem is that Internet Explorer does NOT support PNG transparency. GIFs from Photoshop though will do the job just fine.
Anyway my time is short so I will leave it there and hopefully someone else will try to help you out as well. I know what I've explained is a bit complex but once you get the feel of things it should make more sense. Use Wiki to explore the terminology and get a visual. Use google to look up the term "wiki" and you can use that to make many references as terms are linked beautifully. You can get a full fledged college course by reading that site if you really spend your time there IoI.
College will only teach you so much, practice (on your free time) is how you can truely improve. My college like most is not a school, it's a finiancial institution that will onlu help you if you have no clue what you're doing. But to get to a professional level you truely need to set personal goals and work hard and discipline yourself. My website in my profile is a demonstration of this and it's starting to pay off.
I encourage you not to loose your curiousity and to ask questions at great sites like webmasterworld. All the answers exist though they are at many times not what you expect them or would hope them to be. Ultimately you can achieve your goals. Yes frustration is part of learning all of this but accomplishment of your goals will hopefully give you a fulfilling sense. Best of luck and hope to see you around here. :-)
JAB
A quick tip for website graphics:
For complex images such as photos, use jpeg compression. For simpler images with less colors, go for gif. Never do vice-versa. Get used to this to reach the optimum file size and image quality.
One other thing you can do when you save a jpg in photoshop is change the format options from baseline to progressive. A progressive setting of 5 will load a very blury version of the jpeg image quickly, and then add blury layers that eventually load the entire image in a snap with 3-5 layers total. It's a preference as far as I am concerned and I think it's easier for a user to see that an image is loading if you see the full resolution but that it is blurred then an image that is slowly creaping down from it's top side. Usuaully the user understands that it is coming in to focus and is more inclined to wait. Again it's preference and if you refine your skills you'll find your preferences with time.
Once you get used to editing graphics you should get in to the habbit of using layers. You can place different items on various layers and hide a layer to edit as you need.
