Graphic Resources
Fotolia offers fabulous royalty free stock photography.
They have some of the most beautiful images I have seen on
the stock sites. They also have very affordable credits.
It is said a picture is worth a thousand words. These images
can work wonders for your advertisements and they are worth
every penny!
If you wish to really
control your ads and develop successful ad campaigns you
will need an image editing program or the services of a good
graphic designer. Some of the popular image editing programs
are very expensive. While Adobe PhotoShop CS4 is a fabulous
program it also comes with a very substantial price tag (at
last check $699 - $999) and a steep learning curve. If you
choose a more affordable "lite" version of an image editing
package you will be deprived of some of the functions. To
overcome these limitations we suggest Open Source Software.
Open Source Software is
an attractive option because it is FREE. Supported and
developed by a community of dedicated programmers and users.
Usually these programs have forums and on line tutorials to
get you started. A quick Google search should have you
designing in no time. Many programs rival the more expensive
proprietary branded software packages. Check the list below
for some of the best options in Open Source Software.
Gimp is a highly recommended, full featured, image manipulation
program with a well documented help system. Some users feel
this program performs as well if not better than PhotoShop.
Full text on line version of the very
popular and informative book on GIMP. Explanations and
instruction on using the feature rich image manipulation
program. Make sure to read about Layers to fully utilize the
benefits of this program
An Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities
similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the W3C
standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.
Search the archives of
www.screencasters.heathenx.org for wonderful video tutorials
on Inkscape. |
