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Web graphics have a very crucial role to play in the success and promotion of a website.
In today’s technology dominated world, there is no dearth of websites on the web. In fact, there are millions of sites on the web. In such a competitive arena, it is the web graphics that lend uniqueness to the site and make it stand out from others. In fact, web graphics also play a crucial role when it comes to the search engine ranking of the site. Google has its own set of parameters on the basis of which it lets the websites to be ranked on its result page. Good web graphics are counted by Google while ranking the websites. In a nutshell, web graphics have a vital role to play in the performance and ranking of a website.
When it comes to developing wonderful and user friendly web graphics, Photoshop is the number one choice of majority of web developers. Photoshop is an amazing image editing software that lets you come up with amazing web graphics. It is known as a digital photo editing and graphic design powerhouse. It enables you to create professional quality logos and designs. This helps a website to compete with other web players.
Photoshop has really amazing features that help designers to add tricks to the design. Photoshop allows you to make pictures come to life as it offers vibrant features like amazing background manipulation, vivid graphics etc that catches anyone’s attention to your site. This software gives developers the ability to capture the imagination. One can have a layout what he/she may have ever imagined. It does not matter what products a website sells; be it cars, clothes, books etc. All that one could imagine can be converted into the design with the help of Photoshop.
A websites designed using Photoshop has an enhanced look and layout. This powerful software helps you to create breath-taking designs within no times. However, creating amazing web designs using Photoshop is not that much easy as it is perceived to be. It requires thorough knowledge of Photoshop and good skills to come up with an amazing web graphic. Discussed below are some great tips on using Photoshop that will help you to come up with amazing web graphics.
Decent Canvas
First and foremost, it is important to have a decent canvas to start with. The height of the canvas will vary according to the content you want to put in the page. Usually 900-1000 pixels are fine as it gives some extra room for content if needed. However, when it comes to width, most of people struggle with it. One should always go for a width of about 960 pixels. With this width, you will be safe even if some of your customer is using a resolution of less than 1024×768.
Right Font
Now you need to focus on the text to use on your mock-up. It is very important to use a font that is browser compatible for every part of the site where live text will be displayed. It is not always about using an impressive font to attract customers. If the text is not browser compatible, then it may defeat that purpose anyway. You should also keep in mind that search engines cannot read text off images. Hence, avoid using images for anything other than logo.
Naming
You should keep things uncluttered. It is always better to use folders and layers to separate various elements on the page. Do not forget to name all the layers. It may seem a bit boring task but possess great worth. If you did not name the layers, you may get confused about the different layers.
Crisp anti-aliasing
Always use crisp anti-aliasing on all your text. However, do not use too strong aliasing as it will make it too thick. And if you do not use any, that too will make it look awful.
Save
If you are a designer then you must not save the design at appalling quality as you will have to send it off to the client. Always save in .jpg format. Although it is a slightly bigger file but it makes it look better.
Dummy Text
Another important thing to be kept in mind is using the lorem ipsum passage to be filled in any paragraphs on your page. If your client has not given you any specific text he would like to see on the page. Using lorem ipsum will save you from wasting your time thinking up fake content to go in the gaps.
Blending options
You must use blending options to your advantage. Blending options are really helpful in producing great effects on the various elements of your page if you do not use the defaults. Avoid using too many drop shadows on a page that it becomes tiresome to look at. You can always play with them and can produce great effects on your site.
Effects
You should also add some good effects to your images. If you use just plain images, then it can give a boring look to your web page. Therefore, it is always good to add some effects like drop shadow, outer glow, inner glow, etc.
Save for Web
When you begin slicing up the images, you should always use the ‘Save for web’ feature. This feature ensures that the image is optimized for the internet. It reduces the loading time and keeps the image size to a minimum without losing the quality. One thing that you should keep in mind is that only pngs and gifs support transparency. In fact, pngs are the only that support partial transparency. Therefore, if you have an image that overlay the rest of the page, or needs to have content behind it, make sure you save it in a compatible format.
Know your limitations
Last but not the least, you should always plan ahead. You should always ensure that what you are designing in Photoshop is actually possible to code up later on. It would save you from facing an embarrassing situation where you will have to explain to a client why you are unable to produce what you previously showed them. Know your limitations. There is no point in making life harder for you.
These are some of the great and useful tips that can help you in effectively using Photoshop to your advantage and come up with superb web graphics. All you need to do is to make sure that you follow the above mentioned tips in a right manner; it ensures that you will get what you expected from Photoshop. Photoshop is great software that lets you do some amazing things like t-shirts to logos using Photoshop’s full featured array of tools. It is immensely powerful software and one just needs to be familiar with it. The most important thing is to possess the skills of getting the best out of it. Once you know the features provided by Photoshop and the technique used to implement them to your best advantage, then sky is the limit for you.
