quick question

[lirazel]

I have decided that I need to waste yet more time on fandom instead of, you know, cleaning or writing my novel or having a life of some kind, and I want to make graphics. HA. Does anybody know of any good beginner-level tutorials on just basic stuff to make pretty, pretty pictures? I...don't even know where I would start because I am hopelessly incompetent about things like this.

Comments

[zombie_boogie.livejournal.com]

To start, a couple of communities I would recommend are good_tutorial and icon_tutorial. There is a series of tutorials starting here that is designed for PSP, but the basic principles (like image selection, font choice, blend modes, etc) can be used for pretty much any program. These two tutorials are really good at teaching you how to clean up screencaps for picspams and icons.

As for programs, I would recommend GIMP if you don't have one already, as it is free and I think it has the same capabilities as PSP or PS. You can also find free, older versions of those programs at Old Version.com.

[penny-lane-42.livejournal.com]

You are awesome. This is exactly what I was looking for. Thank you!

[zombie_boogie.livejournal.com]

You're very welcome! As a warning, once you start making graphics you will not be able to stop.

[penny-lane-42.livejournal.com]

I know. *sigh* I have been telling myself I shouldn't even start, but...I want to!

[penny-lane-42.livejournal.com]

So have I been playing around lots and lots with GIMP? Yes I have.

And I've managed to mess something up and drive myself crazy. I hope you don't mind if I pester you with a question? I'm trying to copy and paste one image into another. Or open it as a layer in another. But when I try to do that, it makes it smaller. The size is all wrong. And it won't let me resize the image in the new place. And I cannot figure out why and I just want the image to be the size it was originally, but it WILL NOT. Do you have any idea what I did wrong? And how to fix it?

[zombie_boogie.livejournal.com]

One thing I might mention is that if the new canvas is a radically different size from your original image (say, you're pasting a 300x300 screencap onto an 800x600 canvas for a wallpaper) that the pasting job might look smaller because the larger image isn't fully zoomed in, but I doubt that's your problem. Is the entire new canvas shrinking once you paste, or just the image you pasted? I'm not really all that familiar with GIMP as a program so I'm not sure how helpful I can be, and I've never heard of that particular issue. Meep. It might be a question for Google-fu or a friends list query.

[penny-lane-42.livejournal.com]

I figured that was too weirdly specific a question for you to know the answer, but it was worth a try. Thanks anyways! :D

[http://users.livejournal.com/_jems_/]

I think the first thing you need to decide is what program to use. I'd say 75-90% of fandom graphic artists use Photoshop, but it's expensive. Might be a free trial available on the web site, though (it's published by Adobe).

If you do go with Photoshop, I did a basics tutorial six years ago (SIX!!! Holy crap!), which you can find here. It's tagged so that you can find other tutorials I've done (the masks one should be useful if you become an intermediate user), though I haven't done tutorials in a loooong time and they're all hopelessly out of date (I don't even use PS 7.0 anymore. Luckily, palettes and layouts stay pretty much the same over the different versions of PS).

Once you know what the palettes and tools do, you can start playing around in the program.

[penny-lane-42.livejournal.com]

You are awesome. Right now I've got GIMP, but I may be coming into a copy of Photoshop soon, in which case I will most certainly check your tutorials out since you know I think your graphics are gorgeous. Thanks so much!

[crackers4jenn.livejournal.com]

I agree with this whole comment. Except I don't use Photoshop, I use a super old version of Paintshop Pro, which is... a graphics program that has delusions of being as hip as Photoshop.

But I think no matter what program you use, the functions are mostly the same. Curves are your friend. So are layers. AND EVEN THOUGH BRUSHES SEEM LIKE A GOOD IDEA: most time, they are not your friend! Remember that.

[penny-lane-42.livejournal.com]

I WILL REMEMBER THAT.

I have a feeling it's going to take me a good long while to master this. *sigh*