Logo?

[lunitari_8100]

I've been dabbling a bit in the html world as of late and trying to get familiar with programs like Dreamweaver. One thing though I'm confused about is how people make logos and put pictures in them that seem to blend in with the background it's hard to explain what I mean but I saw a pretty good example of one at this site....any idea how one begins to create one of these?

http://www.allrpg.com/simg/logo.jpg

[Jona]

Are you talking about how they made the graphics or how they put the images together to make them look nice? For the graphics, they just made the large logo and split it into multiple images. They used tables for layout on their site, but that's total junk--you should use CSS for layout, not tables.

[J]ona

[lunitari_8100]

Basically I mean how in that logo the pictures seem to be all one with the logo like they are sorta merged into the background.

[zaefod]

Ah the magic of Photoshop! Now you are asking how to design graphics. The banner you linked was made by composting layers in Photoshop. You will need a similar program if you wish to create graphic images.

[lunitari_8100]

I've been messing with PhotoImpact 8 as of late...is this program really good for anything or should I just toss it and focus on Photoshop?

[zaefod]

I'm not familiar with that program. As far as Photoshop goes, It depends on how serious you are. Photoshop is the industry standard application for bitmap graphics but it's expensive and you may not need something that powerful.

[zbgump]

That image just has several layers composited with transparency. You can do that with the Gimp.... and its free :)

[Paul Jr]

This image that lunitari_8100 linked to, that can be created using photoshop? I have Photoshop 7, but very limited experience with it; and I am continually amazed by it's capabilities.

[zbgump]

Well, the layering, text effects, and coloring can be achieved in photosho relatively easily.

But remember photoshop is a tool... its not going to help you draw those characters if you can't draw ;)

[rhyeguy]

lunitari,

great question!

Actually, the way that they blended the faces into the 'background' of the image was through the use of 'layers'. In other words, the text is sitting in a layer that is on top of the faces.

They made the faces look integral by changing the 'blending' options for the layer with the faces on it. Basically, it looks like they simply took a picture, put it in one layer, then put a blue layer above it and changed it's blending properties from normal to 'color' (replacing the original color values from the faces layer with those from the blue spectrum of the current layer). The TV scanlines are achieved by putting another layer on top of the blue layer, adding alternating white and black horizontal lines and then changing the layer blending mode to 'overlay'.

Heh. Sound confusing?

I'm a great fan of Photoshop and use it daily, but you can achieve this effect with just about any type of image editing software out there now, including the free proggies like GIMP (excellent). Photoimpact 8 can do it too. The trick is to learn how layers work. Everything starts with understanding layers.

Hope this helps. Sorry for the long-winded explo.;)

best,

rhyeguy