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Although I offer many great starter banners and images to make your own, there's always the possibility that some people would like to give it their own shot. Ok, it's actually very likely. So where do you begin? That's what this Tutorial is all about. If you've constantly had the problem of figuring out how to make a banner or image,upload it, etc., then this primer should help you out. Hopefully. Before you can even consider making a banner, you'll need a few things. One being an image editor, another being images. For the image editor, it can be very simple with a bit of searching...for the beginner, there's no need to use such programs as Photoshop. If you're just starting out and just want to start small, it's absolutely unnecessary. All you need is the freeware image editing program, Irfanview(http://stud1.tuwien.ac.at/~e9227474/english.htm), and your painting program that came with your computer (most likely MS Paint). Irfanview's completely free to use, and works great. MS Paint works wonders for those who can use it properly. Combined with Irfanview, it's perfect for beginners, and even the veteran webmaster like myself(if you prefer it). Anyway, once you've got your editor(s), you'll need some images that will make up your banner. Now some will say "stealing" images from other sites is wrong, but in my opinion it doesn't when it's being put to good use. Heck, you'll be doing all the hard work! But in any case, if you're still kind of apprehensive about that sort of thing, just use some of the 100+ images of mine in the Screen Captures section. They aren't exactly the highest quality(they are screen captures from movie clips,after all), but if you're worried about getting yelled at by some cranky DB webmaster (we all hate that), then the screenies are your ticket. Now that we've got our images and our editor, we can finally get to work. For this example, I'm going to use two images and make a banner. You should use these images as well and follow along, for your first try. Your results should be inleast pretty close to my own. Alright, here's the images.   Ah yes, Vegita. Although he's not my favorite character, he'll serve his purpose for this tutorial. Save these images, then we move on to the creation process... 1.Create a new MS Paint bitmap, or whatever paint program your computer uses. 2.Pull up Irfanview and open one of the two images. "Copy" one of them (hit "copy" under the edit option, or just hit CTRL+C together while the image is open). 3.Open up your new bitmap image, and use the "attributes" option under "Image" to alter the size of the image. Set the width to 450, and the height to 100(450x100). Hit the "paste" option, or just hit CTRL+V. Move the image around, and put it on the left-hand side. Make sure it looks ok, then click outside of the picture of Vegita to stop manuevering him (if you mess up, just hit "Undo" or CTRL+Z). 4.Open up the second image of Vegita with Irfanview. Copy it, just like you did the other one. 5.Paste the second image in, moving it over to the far right. Once again, you'll have to click inside of the bitmap outside of the area of the Vegita image to stop manuevering him. Once you've got it done, hit save. 6.Open up the saved bitmap with Irfanview, then head to the option "save as". Alternatively, you could head to "batch conversion/rename", but this is alot easier for just one or two images. Anyway, select the "Gif-Compuserve Gif" option, then hit "options" right below save and cancel. Make sure that the "interlaced" option is turned off. Odds are if you're making a banner, you'll never need this on. It just causes problems (makes backgrounds blend in with the image's colors). And once it's been turned off, you won't have to worry about it anymore ^_^. After you've got everything ready, select where you want it saved and hit "save". Done. That's it! You just made your first banner. Such an accomplishment...now you can tell all your friends of your greatness! Ok, that's a bit of a stretch. Uhh...anyway, here's what your's should look like, bearing in mind that the images could be flip-flopped.  Of course, this is just a crappy example...there's HUNDREDS of things you could do with Irfanview and your paint program to spice it up, or to make it just look better. For instance, you could add a nifty border, or with Irfanview make the image negative (colors are opposite,causing a gnarly effect). It's all your choice, and depends on your imagination.
Now we move on to the sometimes most-confusing step...uploading. I add this simply because I've had alot of questions regarding it, so I figured I'd clear it up. No, you can't link to that banner from your computer. You may see it, but no one else will. You must upload it to where your page is hosted. If you have no clue about uploading, consult your server's help section. |