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Please do not copy, take, "borrow", steal,
or otherwise use this material without permission. This is all original,
and it's all protected
by international copyright law. Feel free to link to this page,
rewrite the information in your own words all you want
(hey, nothing on this page is a secret!), and use the information for
whatever purpose you wish, but don't just take the content, okay?
If someone puts graphics on a website, it
means they're Public Domain and I can use them if I want to.
Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. This is equivalent to
saying that since books in a library are on the shelves where anyone
can take them, they must be free for the taking. Or because a grocery
store has products on the shelves where anyone can remove them, it must
be okay to carry them off. Sound absurd? Sure it is, and so is the idea
that if you can access it (i.e., someone put it on the web), it must
be okay to take it, use it, alter it, or otherwise do what you want
with it.
I've also heard people say, "If you don't want people to take your
stuff, don't put it online." Right. And if K-Mart didn't want me to
steal their scarves, they shouldn't put them on the sales floor where
I can get my hands on them. Right?
In fact, graphic images, just like any other created work, are legally
copyrighted the moment they're created. They do not need to be "registered"
anywhere. In fact, many countries don't have any means of registering
copyrights, and rely solely on international
copyright law. Taking graphics that don't belong to you or for
which you don't have permission (and that includes using them in violation
of the copyright owner's allowable terms of use) is against the law.
It can also lead to loss of your internet account (when/if the copyright
holder complains to your ISP) and other unfortunate legal entanglements.
Basically, don't take graphics from a website unless you know absolutely
and for sure that the creator of the graphics allows their use, and
then, please abide by their terms of use and save yourself and them
and your ISP a big hassle. And beware of websites which offer "free
graphics" by anyone other than the original artist! There are unscrupulous
people out there who "harvest" graphics and put them online as "free",
when they're actually just plain stolen. If you use these images, you
are just as guilty of copyright violation as the thieves, so just be
careful, and where possible, use graphics from a reputable source or
by the artist who created the images.
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If I can't take other images, can I link
to them directly and use them on my page that way?
NO. No, no, no. This doesn't get around the copyright issue,
and totally aside from that, this kind of direct linking is known as
"bandwidth theft". This can get you into trouble in lots of ways, including
loss of your account or ending up with extremely undesirable images
on your site. (See this entry on
the Web Design DOs and DONTs page for more information, or the
Technical Tips page for ways you can prevent others from stealing
bandwidth from you).
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I want to make my own graphics, but I don't know
how.
All of us were newbies once and we all had to learn pixel by pixel.
There are a ton of great websites out there with tutorials and other
helpful information to help you learn, as well as many excellent online
groups and communities for people who want to learn or want to expand
their skills.
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A .jpg is always better than a .gif image.
The .gif format saves images with 256 (or fewer) colors, and
.jpg saves them with millions of colors. So millions are better
than hundreds, right? Nope. Not always. Not even usually. In fact, sometimes
saving as a .jpg makes for a very ugly and fuzzy graphic. Read on.
Very generally speaking, .jpg is best for photographic images
with many subtle colors or gradations, and .gif is best for images
with blocks of solid color. Additionally, .jpg uses a technique
known as "lossy compression" to make the file smaller, and it deliberately
loses fine detail in the process. In a complex and subtly shaded photograph
(or similarly shaded graphic), this is usually invisible to the naked
eye (unless the image is over-compressed). However, if you save an image
with large fields of solid color and sharp changes in color as a .jpg,
you will often get unsightly blurring, fuzziness, and "waves" or "ripples"
of lost color that is quite ugly and looks extremely bad (and marks
you as clueless, as well).
The key here is usually to simply use a good compression engine that
offers a visual of the compressed image before you choose to save, and
you can (hopefully) spot any problems and decide from there which format
to use for the best results (Ulead's
SmartSaver Pro is just one example of a great plugin to do this,
and you can download a trial version of it).
Other things to note are that you can't make a transparent .jpg, but
you can make a transparent .gif and while you can make animated .gifs,
there's no such thing as an animated .jpg.
It's also possible to use .png format, which is supported by any version
4+ browser. The .png format is not lossy, it can be saved in layers
for animation (although browsers don't support animated .pngs yet),
and it can be made transparent. At this time, .png is not that widely
used in most circles, but it almost certainly will be in the future,
providing another very good option for saving web graphics.
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Software for graphic creation is very expensive.
Yes and no. Some programs, such as Adobe
Photoshop, are certainly quite expensive if you buy the full version
(it is possible to get a legitimate copy of Photoshop for other
than a small fortune, though). Some other programs, such as Jasc's
Paint Shop Pro and Ulead's
Photo Impact, are very reasonably priced and still very full-featured.
In addition, there are many excellent graphic filters you can get for
free or for a very low price. Making great web graphics doesn't rely
on having expensive software, but more on knowing how to use the software
you do have.
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Making great graphics must be so difficult!
It looks so hard to do!
Many people think that making high-quality, stylish graphics involves
some sort of magic or other mystical procedure. While I admit it does
take a good eye and some talent to make really artful graphics, mostly
what it takes is patience, practice, time, a willingness to experiment,
and a genuine desire to keep learning. The best tools in the world won't
help if you don't know how to use them, and the simplest tools, in the
hands of a skilled artist, can yield remarkable and beautiful results.
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If you'd like to learn more, there are many great sites out there
that can help. Visit the Resources
index for lots of resources in this area.
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