Thread: ::Love's Graphics::

I have some friendly criticism for you. First off, the most noticeable thing about your banners is how blurry and stretched they look. I can't be too sure what the reason is, but it looks as though you tried to re-size a few images to fit a largerwider working space. PhotoshopGIMP is raster based, so images do not scale up very well at all. What this means is that any image you try to make larger becomes pixelated or blurry you lose quality easily in a raster based image manipulation program. Another issue with resizing is when you take it out of it's aspect ratio. When resizing you want to stay within the same aspect ratio, otherwise the image will become stretched or squished. This stretching is most noticeable in the first banner the woman's body looks very short and wide. So, when working in PS or GIMP, avoid making an image larger, and do not take it out of it's aspect ratio. Holding in the SHIFT key when resizing an image will allow you to keep the ratio the same. The next thing I noticed is your use of transparent images. This can be used to some effect, however you have far too much going on at once. Overlapping multiple transparent images can make it difficult to look at. You have a whole lot of information taking up the same space, and that's on top of the background it causes a bit of strain on the eye. You're forcing the eye to see two separate images at the same time, in the same area. Transparency can be great when used with other transparencies to make a single image. Any king of glass or glossy effect is done with various levels of transparencies and white. A transparency layer can even be used to add a bit of color to the work, or to quickly and easily blend colors. Changing the transparency of a layer with very garish colors, and usually only when you are using color, can really allow the layer to blend in better. What you have in your banners just looks messy and confusing. If you are looking to blend images into the background, I recommend instead playing with blend options. Instead try to change an images blend mode to overlay, screen, color dodge, color burn, or any of the other numerous options available to you. With you change the blend mode, and then modify the transparency a bit, you'll get a much better result. Next I want to talk about your text a bit. One of the trickier aspects of making these sorts of graphics is the text. You have to consider which font works best, what colors work the best, the greater placement of it, and then the configuration of the words and letters. This is all very tricky, and something I'm still trying to get right myself. If you look at my works, you'll notice how the text fits better in some than others. It can be very tricky. One of the things I keep in mind is the focal point. Placing the text near the focal point creates a more organic and less disjointed composition. You want the text to work in conjunction with the focal point, because you want people to notice it. Placing it off to the side only forces someone to divide their attention. Sure anyone will notice it, to look at it, but you want the text to be right where the viewers eyes will rest naturally on the piece. Personally, I've found any sort of cursive writing font to be a bit more awkward. It never seems to really blend in very well, and the fanciful look of it just turns it into an eyesore. My preference is to use a simpler font, or a stylized font that is very subdued and in a printed form rather than cursive. Again, that's just my preference. On a more technical note, it looks like you have the font on one layer. If so, I recommend putting the words on separate layers, and then moving them into place. Text tends to look a bit awkward if it's too sprawling, or there's too much vertical space between the words. Don't be afraid to experiment with signaling out certain words with a different color, integrating different fonts for separate words or phrases, and even playing with the size and position of individual letters and words. My philosophy is to keep text simple, and make it blend naturally with the focal point. The last thing is this focal point I kept going on about, and composition. You probably already know what it is, but I'm going to talk about it anyway. Basically, you want a strong point of interest in your work. You want the viewers eyes to naturally rest on one spot of the work. This is heavily related to the overall composition, and is usually tied strongly to two things the center of the image, or the rule of thirds. Okay, the center of the image is very easy to understand. If you center something, it's bound to look pretty decent. However, for a more interesting composition, you may want to consider the rule of thirds. If you divide your working space into thirds, the lines that make up those divides are a guide as to where to put your focal point. For some reason when your focal point is places on those lines, the composition seems more dynamic and interesting. It just generally looks good! However, you have to stick to that focal point! This was an issue I noticed with your work. Typically one wants to keep all of the separate images near your focal point, so one does not detract attention from it. When you place images on separate ends of the work, it looks scattered it makes for a poor composition. This is just a rule of thumb, so I'm sure there are some exceptions out there. Just really keep in mind what you want the viewer to really notice the most, and then work around that point of interest. Everything should work to make that point of interest look better. Lastly, I'm going to give you a few tips Do tutorials. Hit the Internet, find some tutorials, and do them. Anything you think would be a useful should be done and redone until you fully understand what went into it. Doing tutorials will allow you to build skills and learn techniques that you can use on your own projects. Once you start learning a few simple tricks, you'll find that your work looks leaps and bounds better than it was last time. Another thing I recommend is studying what other people do. If you aren't sure how to handle something, see how a better graphic design artists does it. Understand what they did, why the did it, and then take those ideas and concepts back to your own work. Finally, don't save your work as a JPEG! I highly recommend saving your work for web, when you are finally done with the .psd or whatever the GIMP equivalent is. When you open the file menu, don't save it normally. Go down to Save for Web Devices. This will bring up a big ol' menu and throw tons of options at you. The goal is to play with those options until you get the very best quality out of your image, and the lowest file size. I typically just save PNG-24. It gives you great image quality, and compresses it to an acceptable degree. Saving on JPEG only lowers the quality of your work, and nobody wants that. I hope you found this helpful I'll be sure to answer any questions you shoot my way.