Posts Tagged ‘Graphics’

Posted on November 6, 2008 - by snipe

Photo Retouching - How to Salvage a Dark Digital Photo

I prefer not to shoot with flash when I can help it - I don’t like the way it washes colors out. Unfortunately, sometimes if you don’t leave the exposure open long enough, or don’t have time to adjust your exposure in the first place (candid shots are my favorite but can be a bitch if you only have a second to capture the moment), you end up with under-exposed photos that may be too dark to use. Dark photos are particularly challenging to retouch, because as you make the image lighter, it can end up looking very grainy. This tutorial will show you a few ways to salvage a dark photo and minimize some of the graininess.

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Posted on August 11, 2008 - by snipe

Turn any photo into a vintage photo

With the Bakamatsu Koshashin Generator, you can turn any photograph from new to old in seconds. This vintage-style effect is quite convincing - check out our example below, and there are more samples on the website.

While its certainly possible to do this on your own in Photoshop, this online conversion does such a nice job, I can’t imagine doing it manually. There’s nothing to download, and the conversion is free, so check it out!

Bakamatsu Koshashin Generator via [Lifehacker]

Posted on July 14, 2008 - by snipe

Vector Polishing Techniques in Photoshop and Illustrator

For those of you who are already rock stars at Illustrator, Nick La of Web Designer Wall has some quick - but impressive - techniques that show you how to really jazz up the finished design using Photoshop. These 9 simple techniques add amazing amounts of depth and richness to vector art, and really turn them into a finished product. And if you like these tips, be sure to check out Web Designer Wall’s other graphics and CSS tutorials. (more…)

Posted on June 22, 2008 - by snipe

Free Online Image Editors

Even if you’ve got a good graphics package (and more specifically if you don’t), there may be times when you just need something lightweight to resize or crop images. Fortunately, there are two great options available to you that make basic image editing a breeze.

Resize2Email:

This handy little app is lightweight and fast. The available options are pretty basic - you can upload an image to the server and crop, resize, and/or rotate the image. This website is so easy, I had recommended it to one of the editors at a newspaper I was working at, and he loved me for it. One nice option is that you can preset the size of the crop box - so if you know you need an image to be 300 pixels wide for a predefined image block, Resize2Email makes that a breeze. Although I have Photoshop (and several other graphic design packages) installed on all of my machines, I still use Resize2Email quite often because its fast and easy, and I can do what I needed to do using their website before Photoshop would even be done loading. (I have a lot of fonts. No, I mean a lot. Really.) Check it out at Resize2Email.Com!

Photoshop Express:

Before you get too excited, this is a pared down version of Photoshop - considerable pared down, but really, in a web app, that’s probably not a bad thing - and it still gives you 90% of the tools that anyone would need for mid-level photo corrections and manipulation. It allows cropping, lighting corrections, hue manipulation, and a ton more. Its definitely more feature-rich than Resize2Email, but it requires a sign-up, and its a flash application, so it can be a little slow on older machines. It also offers the ability to interface with your photos on Facebook, Flickr, and severak other online photo storage communities. Check it out at Photoshop.Com/express!

Posted on June 19, 2008 - by snipe

Easily turn raster images into vector images online

VectorMagic lets you upload logos and/or photos (any image, really) to their website and run through their handy Flash wizard that gives you multiple options in converting your un-scalable, raster-based jpegs into scalable vectory goodness. Choose from low, medium and high quality vectors. Don’t be fooled - low/medium/high doesn’t refer to the quality of the output file - just the level of detail the application will try to achieve. Simple logo images without many fine lines or details will do just fine with low quality.  The more complicated photo I used looked fantastic as medium and high quality. If you sign up, you get two free download credits.

Posted on June 19, 2008 - by snipe

Fun filters on your online images

Dumpr, despite having what could be a snicker-inducing name, is really a nifty tool. Just pick the filter you want to use and upload an image from your hard drive. Filters like rubik’s cubes, jigsaw puzzles, peeling paint, and a few less interesting options are just a click away.