Sandy’s Great Graphic Find: PictureTrail

Filed Under Design, Great Finds, Successful Blog, Tips, Tools | 11 Comments

Create Photo Flicks with PictureTrail

Permalink: http://www.picturetrail.com/

Target Audience: Anyone with photos!

Content: This growing public photo community boasts a number of features that you are sure to enjoy, including image hosting, photo sharing, print ordering, and Flash slideshows called Photo Flicks, available in more than 30 formats. Most allow you to add descriptions and control the speed and color.

Here’s a couple Photo Flicks that I made. Click on the pictures to view.

Cool Slideshows

Try it today and let me know what you think. These were easy to create and post to this site. What a wonderful way to share your favorite pictures.

This community is a great place to connect with others, and the services I tried out were free. When you upgrade to a premium membership, you have access to time saving functionality - like a utility called ‘Batch Move’ that enables you to move more than one image at a time.

Have fun with this great find . . . and send me links to your creations.

See you next time!

–Sandy, Purple Wren

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Sandy’s Great Graphic Find: typoGenerator

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Create typoPoster with typoGenerator

Great Find: typoGenerator

Permalink: http://www.typogenerator.net/

Target Audience: Anyone - just for fun!

Content: Here’s a generator that creates random graphics just for fun. It searches images.google for backgrounds and images according to the text you enter. And you can manipulate the results and change up the text, images or colors.

This generator was a student project. I’m curious what Katharina is doing now.

Here’s a sample that I made.

Let me know what you create and how you use it.

See you next time!

–Sandy, Purple Wren

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Sandy’s Great Graphic Find: CoolText

Filed Under Design, Great Finds, Successful Blog, Tips | 21 Comments

Create Logos and Buttons with CoolText Graphics Generator

Great Find: CoolText

Permalink: http://cooltext.com/

Target Audience: Computer users who want to create buttons

Content: Every now and then I need a button. Sure, I have all the programs to create my own, but why spend the time when there are tools out there that can finish the job quickly.

There are a lot of button generators, but this one caught my attention because it worked so well. Recently a few people told me the ‘hire me’ on my site doesn’t look like a link, so it seemed like a good time to try out CoolText. Here’s what I created.

Then check out the logo designs. I’m not crazy about the terminology and would prefer banner, or something more descriptive. But it doesn’t really matter what they call them, there’s a great selection. Remember to save the image files on your computer because they don’t store them.

It took longer to write this post than to create the buttons/banners.

Here are six things I like about CoolText:

You can create an account to save your designs
There’s more than 1200 fonts available
It’s easy to use
You can edit your button until it’s just right
There are several file types to choose from
It’s free!

Click the screenshot to go there.

Let me know how you use CoolText!

See you next time!

–Sandy, Purple Wren

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Above the Fold: SmartWealthyRich.com

Filed Under Design, Successful Blog | 37 Comments

Couldn’t Resist SmartWealthyRich

I met Jonathan Phillips when he left a message with me at MyBlogLog. I took a side trip to his blog, before I replied. When I got there I saw something I couldn’t resist — the title of his blog.

Smart, Wealthy, Rich [dot] com

But that engaging title was in tiny typography . . .

So I invited Jonathan Phillips to get tweaked Above the Fold. Here’s how the Above the Fold Tweak Process works

I make a “before” screenshot.
We talk through some changes for readability.
The blogger makes the changes.
We talk while the tweaks are in process.
I take an “after” screenshot and share the results in a post.

Tweaking Smart, Wealthy, Rich

The blog: SmartWealthyRich.com
- How to create wealth, keep it, and make it grow!
URL: : http://www.smartwealthyrich.com
Blogger:: Jonathan-C. Philllips

Before

This is SmartWealthyRich.com before we started. Click to enlarge.

Three Tweaks that We Agreed Upon

In this series, we’ll concentrate only three important tweaks for each blog that is featured. On Jonathan’s blog, those three tweaks were these.

His feed button was overpowering.
The title is too small.
The main body text block is too wide. A reader needs transportation to return to the next line.

Jonathan and I discussed how in a blink test, the feed button wins. We decided that it would be a much stronger presentation if the title got that first attention. Folks would remember where they were and where they wanted to return.

When choosing text the type size needs to match the line length. If they don’t match, the eye has trouble doing the “return sweep” to the next line correctly. Jonathan’s line was too long for the size of the type in the body text. We shortened the main body copy block and increased the type size.

We made other changes. Can you see them?

For the results, turn the page now. Read more

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Sandy’s Great Graphic Tip: Re-sizing Graphics in an Editor

Filed Under Design, Successful Blog, Tips | 1 Comment

What Happened to that Picture?

Sometimes you see photos on websites that look funny - too wide or narrow, tall or short. In other words, out of proportion. Some other terms used are scale, perspective and aspect ratio. One common way to re-size a graphic is using a WYSIWYG editor. WYSIWYG is pronounced wiz-e-wig and is short for what you see is what you get.

Hover over the corner of a graphic, click and drag. Depending on the program, it’s possible to lose perspective, so keep this little tip in mind.

Hold down the shift key while clicking and dragging. It will keep the picture looking square.

Another Option to Re-Size a Graphic

Another option is to right-click the graphic and choose format. In the window, you usually have a choice to re-size the graphic by pixel size or percentage of original. You will probably see a check box for preserve aspect ratio or uniform scale. Selecting the box means when you enter the horizontal or vertical size, the other dimension is automatically selected to keep the graphic in perspective.

Here’s a visual example of what I mean:

It’s also a good idea to re-size and edit graphics before uploading them. When you upload a large graphic and only want to display a small graphic, it can increase the file size and make the page load slowly. Let’s talk more about that another time.

Remember, a good-looking graphic makes your webpage look interesting and professional.

See you next time!

–Sandy, Purple Wren

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« go back — keep looking »

Sandy’s Great Graphic Find: PictureTrail

Create Photo Flicks with PictureTrail

Sandy’s Great Graphic Find: typoGenerator

Create typoPoster with typoGenerator

Sandy’s Great Graphic Find: CoolText

Create Logos and Buttons with CoolText Graphics Generator

Above the Fold: SmartWealthyRich.com

Couldn’t Resist SmartWealthyRich