Reciprocity

[saffronhare]

And I mean that in a good way. Really. But before I can begin posting icons for the friendly folks who made icons for me, I need a little help:

1. Please post useful sites for help with icon design (like adding text or animation, etc.)

2. Please let me know how to paste an image into an LJ post.

Thanks ever so much. Love and kisses,
Severity

Comments

[fionnabhar.livejournal.com]

I don't know any websites for photo manipulation, but I've used the program that came with our digital camera with great success.

To post an icon on LJ, you'll need to upload it to a site like PhotoBucket (free accounts). That site would then give you a tag that you cut and paste into the entry.

Sign me up, once you figure it out. Alternatively, you could stop by the house and use my stuff. We could have tea and scones.

[triadruid.livejournal.com]

There is a program out there that is free and does 90%+ of what Photoshop does, without the PS price tag. It's called The GIMP and can be found at http://www.thegimp.org/windows although I'm not entirely certain how well it will run on your machine. It's been ported from open-source systems to Windows so it occasionally throws errors in a DOS window in the background; from what my other thirds tell me, if you just ignore that window and don't click on it, the program won't crash.

For adding fonts and aminations, look into the Layers function of that program or whichever one you choose to use. They'll let you stack new text/image bits over the top of the existing stuff, and GIMP, at least, allows you to save a layered image as an animated GIF.

As for photo hosting, for ongoing images you want to keep and maybe update, look into Photobucket or http://pics.livejournal.com (if you're a Paid user). For one-offs like icons or goofy shots, try http://tinypic.com which allows you to host small pictures on their server with a short, randomized link.

Good luck!

[fionnabhar.livejournal.com]

I downloaded The GIMP successfully and was able to learn how to animate icons (with lots of help from triadruid) almost by myself. :-) It was a little daunting at first, but my familiarity with the less aggressive program was helpful. That smaller program would certainly allow you to make still icons with text very easily if you want to come over.

I used PhotoBucket because _francophile likes to snag the cool ones, and it's her account we use.