When I first got involved in my first sites before Y2K, I knew rudimentary HTML…enough to get me in trouble and constantly delve into online tutorials every time I tweaked a setting.
While there’s a lot of expensive toys and whistles, there’s two that I stick with for site work: Ultimate Paint for normal use and Gimp for layering needs.
Ultimate Paint’s (UP) great for resizing, cropping, and standard playing around with photos or web images and allows for png, jpg, and a handful of other formats I never use. Jpg saving by default is at around 70%, decreasing the file size which can save on bandwidth for some sites…not to mention pageload for visitors. Visually on the web, I haven’t seen a difference in clarity yet on monitors.
Gimp on the other hand is for those times I want to work on site themes and need some special effects like translucent layering. I’ve had great results with it and learned on my own through Googling for online tutorials.
Graphic tools like anything else require investment, but for serious bloggers looking to play with things and get under the hood of their blog’s graphic needs, these two fit the ticket…without having to shell out one cent!
Face it…you’re not in to the whole blogging gig to make someone else rich…are ya?
