I usually post about 4 times a week but I’ve had to take a break from it while I get into PhotoShop.
I’ve had PhotoShop for almost a whole year but never really bothered to learn how to do anything with it.But then it just got too frustrating trying to compete with those slick graphics I see all over the internet using my preferred (free) image software.I was using Photofiltre for dog’s years then switched to Gimp, made a couple things with that(mostly played with brushes,tracking them down and downloading them).To give Gimp credit you can create PS quality images with it, I just had a problem with the interface. But I always knew that in order to be competitive with other web designers I was going to have to get familiar with PhotoShop so I’ve been pulling all nighters ever since.
My first task was to design a new banner for Tickle Abuse (the tickling fetish website I’m paid to maintain and update and expand).This week Tickle Abuse’s owner,Tom and his wife Tasha were on the Tyra Banks Show and he anticipated that loads of folks were going to come to the website so he wanted to make sure that it all looked good.He was understandably nervous that I would do something wacky to the website during the rush.But I always hated the banner that the previous designer came up with and that I had to work into my new designs.Tom said he didn’t mind the banner but I hated the colors and the textures and I thought it looked really Porn-y not to mention tacky. I don’t want mccormicky.com to be associated with porn and Tickle Abuse isn’t porn so why have a porn type banner?
Another thing about that old banner:it was made up of ImageReady slices and divided into about 10 tds
so when I switched the pages from tables layout to xhtml I took a screenshot of the banner and had at least one solid image to work with.I compressed it as much as I could so that it wouldn’t take a long time to load.Can you imagine? There are still folks using dial up to this day!
I have to express my gratitude to the countless people who have created tutorials online in video or text for PhotoShop. I’m having a great time learning.
The next bit of news is that I got Macromedia Flash 8 but I have had less luck finding tutorials.It might be that I am simply too right brained for Flash,anyway.But in order to get work in this field you’ve got to have a working knowledge of Flash so once I get bored of PS that will be next new toy.