As bloggers, we are constantly trying to improve our title designs and place nice images in our blogs. Nice title designs and banners attract readers and make our blogs appear livelier. However, it can be pretty frustrating when we find readily available pictures or banners incompatible with our blog templates or designs. In any case, whenever we use images downloaded via the internet, other bloggers are also using those images and the images are no longer unique to our blogs.
How can we continue to place pretty images in our blogs without having to scour through the web? The best option is to hands on and design our own images and banners to suit our blogs’ themes. Well, never ventured into graphics design? Fear not, that’s the sole purpose of my step-by-step photobie lessons for beginners – to get people started in designing simple customized banners/ images to suit their blog themes. All in all, I have planned 10 simple lessons, including simple text and image animation as well as graphics overlay.
Why Photobie?
Unlike GIMP or Photoshop, Photobie offers fewer functions, and this turns out to be a blessing in disguise for design beginners. Often, people get overwhelmed by the numerous functions available in GIMP or Photoshop even before they get started. Hence, I have opted to start with Photobie in the hope that it will help introduce you to graphics design and act as a bridge to using the “big boys” (i.e. GIMP and Photoshop) in future.
Photobie has a free version and is available for download here. My experiences using Photobie has been largely pleasant thus far. It has a user-friendly interface and is a great tool for banner design beginners. If you intend to make static or simple animated images, Photobie is a near perfect tool to being with. Photobie also allows you to save your output in a variety of formats as well, including .ico format (Windows icon).
Important Note on Photobie
Having sung the praises of this free tool, free tools have their downsides afterall. I noticed that Photobie shuts itself down occasionally. A simple way to overcome this is to adopt the good practice of saving your work regularly, like you would for any other write-ups.
Last Note
It is my intention to share with you what I know about Photobie, and I hope to explore and learn more about Photobie and graphic design together with you. I hope you have fun exploring Photobie and coming up with simple unique designs for your blog. Stay tuned to my first lesson!
*Updates*
As we go along with our Photobie Lessons, I will provide the link to the posts below to allow readers to navigate easily.
Photobie Lesson 1 - Text Fly In Effect
Photobie Lesson 2 - The Glowing Bulb
Photobie Lesson 3 - Creating a Blinking Button
More coming soon…
If you would like to make a comment, please fill out the form below.
Thanks for sharing.
No prob Ms SSH. Hope you enjoy the lessons. =)
Of course, I do. Thanks, Mr. TKH. I am looking forward your BCube Series, too. =)