Today’s tip is about free graphic resources. There are plenty of these online, but I’ve just picked out a handful of the ones I find useful to talk about in the video.
Underneath the videos is a list of further resources that you can look at. I will add more here as I find and use them. Once again I hope there is something here for everyone.
Free Images
I sometimes use free images, and the sites I use to source free photos and images are here
- FindIcons
- Icon Archive (this was offline for months but is now back)
- Morgue File
- Wikimedia
Low Cost Photos – When You Need A Decent Image
When I can’t find anything I need there in the above list, I buy Low Cost Photos at around 2-3 dollars each, and rarely now have to resort to using the excellent but pricey, iStockPhoto.
Using these resources I just make simple logos for sites. For example this took me 10 minutes to the following logo for an imaginary site called Kick The Smoking Habit (having made this logo before checking if there was a site with the same domain, I just checked and there is – and it has malware on it, so please don’t go visiting it.)
I am not a graphic designer and I never will be. But I can knock out a reasonable header when I want, just using the resources listed above and some text in Photoshop. If you have to go to a graphic designer every time you have a new idea for a website nothing would ever get done. Until you can afford an army to support your every move, you need to be quite self-sufficient. Fixing up fast graphics is one area where you really do need to get some skills especially if you work alone. I use Photoshop. I don’t muck about with GIMP or any of the other tools.
Do You Know The Practical Difference Between GIFs, JPGs and PNGs?
Hopefully that explained the differences between the three image file formats, jpg vs png, vs gif. Here are the links referred to in the video.
- Three Images On A White (Solid Color) Background
- Three Images On A Complex (variable colour) Background
Six Free Graphics Resources You Can Use
Six Free Graphics Resources – Links Referred To In The Video
The example of the Mindmap embedded on a page can be seen here : Mindmap Example
