Photo Inspiration

I really enjoy taking photos, but I've never been much for changing them.  I can re-size them, or crop them, maybe change from color to black & white, but overall - what I take it what I have.  For photo work and custom graphics on our websites, we have someone more proficient in this than me, but I wanted to share a process anyone can go through (or have done for them) to personalize their site.

There are numerous photo treatment software out there -from the Moped version Paint to the Cadillac and industry standard (with equivalent price tag) Adobe Photoshop.  I myself have Paint, Picasa, Gimp, and Windows Live Photo Gallery.  You can create a great web design frame without the higher end software, but photos are often the inspiration for the design (or the design is a frame for them), so I've been playing around with a photo I just love, and thought I'd share the steps I took.

I started with this photo of my
German Shepherd/Husky mix, Keifer.  He was
sitting in the back of my daughter's car, watching squirrels. 
I started the process by opening the photo in Picasa.  Its an
open source free download software with a lot of fun tools.

First, I cropped the photo to
move his eyes and ears more
into focus.

Next, I used auto focus and sharpen
 tools to move the focus on his face
and expression

All the work up to this point was done in
Picasa.  I then moved the file to Paint,
and used an eraser to remove the background.
Finally, to fill in the background,I chose the
fill for large areas, and a paintbrush and
calligraphy brush to color all the background.

This picture was taken at the same time, but the difference in his
expression, as well shadows across his face, led me to chose the
other photo for my first project.

Often we take a picture of something because it speaks to us about what matters.  But what we see may not be as obvious to someone else.  That's where editing and enhancing that photo can help make the message clearer. 

When thinking about what you might want people to know about your business or organization, collecting a few photos that are examples of what matters most - a visual "elevator speech" - to help your future clients know why they should choose you!

Vera

I really enjoy quilts

I really enjoy quilts.  I stand in awe of the amazing range of finished designs created by simply changing color, order, shapes, and texture.  They are like free form jigsaw puzzles, where the only limit is your imagination.

I bring that same love of quilts to web design. 

Over the next few weeks I will be blogging about the steps to creating a simple website, using those same steps a quilt artist uses.  The first piece to any design is choosing the basic blocks needed.  Next comes arranging them in the page, deciding what to highlight.  Finally comes color & texture.  As we choose these, I will be using various inspirations to create my backgrounds, such as a photograph, flower in my garden, or the patterns and shadows on my favorite shirt.

Then, piecing them all together, we have our final product!