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January 29, 2001

The Fundamentals of Professional Web Sites for Business Professionals

This Week’s:

Features

Step-by-Step: We Don't Want Your Kind Around Here - Alienating Visitors

On Focus: Writers — Part 4
— Promoting a Writer's Work to Publishers & Agents

Banner Sizes By the Numbers

Reviews

A Home for Writers - WriterSpace.com

Call Me an Idiot! - The Complete Idiot's Guide to Online Marketing

Techniques

Instant Art - Instant Illustrations from Stock Photos

Technique

Instant Art - Instant Illustrations from Stock Photos

by Carolyn Cooper

If you want the look-and-feel of illustrations, but only have stock photos in your toolbox, use your graphics program to quickly create your own.

You can quickly create the effect of a flat-colored poster by using the "posterizing" feature of your graphics program or saving the image as a limited-palette gif file.


Example 1 The original photo image of tulips saved as a medium resolution jpeg file.	Example 2 Here the tulips were "posterized" to 4 levels in Photoshop and then saved as a 8 color gif which can load in less than a second.
	Example 3 Here the tulips have a crosshatch filter applied creating an effect of a pen and ink drawing.

Many quality graphics packages offer a number of filters to modify photos with art techniques.


Example 4 This is the basic image from the PhotoDisc collection "Emotions and Expressions". It's good, but something you've probably seen before.	Example 5 Here's the same photo with a watercolor filter applied in Photoshop.
	Example 6 The original photo with a conté crayon filter applied in Photoshop. It's also possible to add other textures and techniques.

The original image with multiple filters applied

Be certain to make a copy of your original image and save it somewhere safe, before you begin experimenting. If you like an effect, save the image with a different name and then push the experiment farther. If you find you've gone too far, you can always retrieve the earlier version.

Most of all, have fun. There's no right or wrong as long as the result matches your web site style.

Interested in more Photoshop or graphics techniques, let us know. Send us a message.

Find out how to arrange an independent consultation or a workshop for your conference or organization on this or any other Internet-related topic.