Web desginer-y folk - help required

[Bozza]

Gifs support transparency too.

I'm quite happy to convert the images (like the scissors) to have transparent areas if you PM me.

Is it just a straight forward file convert? If so, I'll give it a go...

 

[clapham_gull]

Is it just a straight forward file convert? If so, I'll give it a go...

No - you need to set which colour is the transparent one (same with a PNG)

 

[TonyW]

To do that you need to get hold of a decent photo editing package.

You could lash out £400+ for Photoshop, or you could download The Gimp for free...

http://www.gimp.org/

Its an open source image editing package that is a genuine rival to photoshop.

It will allow you to create a new blank document then open each of your photos up individually and (using the magic wand thingy) you can select all the white areas (click each white part of the image whilst holding the shift key down, or whatever the bloody Mac equivalent is if you've got one of those ).

You then invert the selection and select cut.
All you need to do then, is paste them into your new document. You will be able to rotate each of them however you want.
I'd recommend creating a new layer for each image you paste to give you more flexibility.

When you've finished, you can save the whole thing out as a jpeg, with whatever compression setting gives you the best balance between file size an image quality.

If you do give it a try, let me know how you get on.

 

[gullshark]

GIMP on the mac sucks thou, it needs X11 and looks rubbish.

Download seashore which is cocoa and uses the GIMP libraries.

GIFs?! you are joking right? 256 colour palette and lovely dithered photos would look horrible!

Unless people look at the site on an amiga.

 

[clapham_gull]

I'd keep them as sep images personally

 

[clapham_gull]

GIMP on the mac sucks thou, it needs X11 and looks rubbish.

Download seashore which is cocoa and uses the GIMP libraries.

GIFs?! you are joking right? 256 colour palette and lovely dithered photos would look horrible!

Unless people look at the site on an amiga.

NO didn't say that - not GIFS for the photos, for the graphics which from my view aren't using a deeper a palette than gifs support.

Or PNG

 

[TonyW]

GIMP on the mac sucks thou, it needs X11 and looks rubbish.

Download seashore which is cocoa and uses the GIMP libraries.

GIFs?! you are joking right? 256 colour palette and lovely dithered photos would look horrible!

Unless people look at the site on an amiga.

Don't know anything about Macs.
Its very good on PC though.

 

[adrian29uk]

To do that you need to get hold of a decent photo editing package.

You could lash out £400+ for Photoshop, or you could download The Gimp for free...

http://www.gimp.org/

Its an open source image editing package that is a genuine rival to photoshop.

It will allow you to create a new blank document then open each of your photos up individually and (using the magic wand thingy) you can select all the white areas (click each white part of the image whilst holding the shift key down, or whatever the bloody Mac equivalent is if you've got one of those ).

You then invert the selection and select cut.
All you need to do then, is paste them into your new document. You will be able to rotate each of them however you want.
I'd recommend creating a new layer for each image you paste to give you more flexibility.

When you've finished, you can save the whole thing out as a jpeg, with whatever compression setting gives you the best balance between file size an image quality.

If you do give it a try, let me know how you get on.

Tried the GIMP cant get on with it.
For instance trying to place text on a layer is a nightmare.

When you have used photoshop for x amount of years nothing beats it.

 

[TonyW]

Tried the GIMP cant get on with it.
For instance trying to place text on a layer is a nightmare.

When you have used photoshop for x amount of years nothing beats it.

I agree, I use Photoshop everyday, but its VERY expensive, especially if you are only going to use it every so often.

The Gimp is the only free image editor out there that can live with Photoshop.

It is a little bit strange to get used to, but then so is Photoshop.

In fact I'd say Photoshop is one of the most user-unfriendly pieces of software on the market, until you know what you are doing with it.

 

[Bozza]

There seems to be slightly older versions of Photoshop and Photoshop Elements knocking about on eBay for not unreasonable amounts.

Presumably, they'd do the trick for me. As I'm not doing this for a job, I'd hope I wouldn't have much need for the very latest bells and whistles...

 

[TonyW]

There seems to be slightly older versions of Photoshop and Photoshop Elements knocking about on eBay for not unreasonable amounts.

Presumably, they'd do the trick for me. As I'm not doing this for a job, I'd hope I wouldn't have much need for the very latest bells and whistles...

Dead right, there's so many features in Photoshop, you'd never need them all.

Personally I'd go for the full version if you can get it for a good price. Version 7 onwards will do just about everything you want (version 6 at a pinch) but try to avoid anything ealier than that.

Elements is OK, but there are some useful features missing.

 

[logan89]

when designing a website what kind of package do you have to purchase, and what is the cost of this usually around?

 

[TonyW]

when designing a website what kind of package do you have to purchase, and what is the cost of this usually around?

There are so many ways to create a website these days.

You often get site creation software as a free option with whoever you use to host the site (for example, 1and1 offer a reasonable site creation tool).

If you want to build the site and upload it, the "standard" package for a few years has been Dreamweaver.

This used to be reasonably inexpensive for what it could do, but since the behemoth that is Adobe acquired it, it is now ridiculously bloody expensive.

Older versions (MX and MX2004) are floating around ebay for about 30 odd quid though.
You can use it to create some very sophisticated sites if you want it to.

Microsoft sell Frontpage which is another fairly easy to use package, but it isn't as good as Dreamweaver.

NetObjects Fusion is also very good. Its about £100 for a shiny new one, or often very cheap on ebay.

There's also some decent free or fairly cheap software packages out there that will help you set one up quite easily.
Have a look here...

http://www.freedownloadmanager.org/downloads/web_site_creation_software_software/