I am not a graphic maker and will most likely never become one, though I love to browse through others' work, and also give my un-professional, but immediate comments when requested. But I need some elemental knowledge about technical terms like a blend, brush, lighting umm.. etc... I can't thinkof more at the moment...
And perhaps if someone could briefly explain how to create those effects, so I would have an idea of what is difficult to make (and thus appreciate it more!), and what the different effects are supposed to look like...

Thank you

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When you say lighting do you mean how do you get to the soft light setting?
If so, here's an example. If you're using a texture and you go to Layer>Proporties, then there's a drop down box that has different options (screen is the one I use most for textures) but two other choices are soft/hard light. You click on the one you want to use and then below that there should be a place where you can change the Opacity. Just push the up and down buttons beside the number 100 and then click OK.
As for blending, I'm no expert yet, but I just found out that you click on the lasso tool on the left hand side (this is if you use PSP) and lasso around the section that you want to blend together.
Did that make any sense?

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"I am he [she =P] that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death."

What a blend is two or more different pictures put together to make it look as if there's one picture. The better the blend the more they look like one picture. Blends that aren't so good have odd bits of back ground of a different colour or else have a person who looks as if they've been cut out and stuck on (though the artist can be aiming for this effect occasionally) Blending well is pretty hard and the easiest way to tell how experienced someone is.

Brushes are pictures that some one else has made that people can kind of stamp on their graphics to decorate them. These are always one colour unless they've added extra effects. They are quite often flowers, butterflies, sparkles or any kind of decorative type bits. With this wallpaper: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v51/f ... 800_wl.jpg the butterfly is a brush and so are the photoframe type things. As brushes are generally made by other people what you're looking for is how well they're used and how well they add to the graphic.

Hope this is helpfull

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Thank you for replying.
I'm not sure how well I expressed myself. I have no intentions of start making graphics (unfortunately I lack time and patience), but I need vocabulary and basic knowledge to talk about others' work.

Elwing, with lighting... I'm not even sure what I mean.. err... Lighting has to do with how to put shadows and light in a picture, right? But for example in most of your Gilmore Girls banners the colors are more pale than the real picture would have been, would that be called lighting effect too?

Elanor thank you for explaining brushes.
So if a brush would be a little stamp thing to apply on top of the graphic, I believe you would also have pre-made backgrounds, right? I think I'm asking if there can be different layers on a graphic. Like you would have a pre-made background and apply your picture on that and then add some brushes and some other effects, so you would sort of work your way through different steps until you are content. (arrgh, I need vocabulary to explain myself... I mean like when you make a collage and paste on top of the paper)
I noticed some people here use "faded" text as a background on their banners. I quite like that effect. How would you make it?

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^ That's right, basically a graphic is made out of lots of different layers. The way you've described it is exactly how you'd go about it. This means that you can go back to each seperate layer and play around with it again until you're happy. You can move layers infront or behind each other. You can also fade layers by changing the opacity of the layer. That's how you'd do faded text.

If you've got Photoshop or Paintshop Pro you should try graphic making. It's really fun and it doesn't take long till you start getting pretty good results.

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Thank you. It would love to make graphics. I'm very picky with what I like and don't like (i'm a very visual oriented person....), so it could be fun to make my own graphics, however, as I said time and patience is my main problem. for instance PowerPoint is one of the most user-friendly programs, but I didn't figure out yet how to make anything but the absolute starndard presentations, because I didn't have the patience to learn by playing around with it!

New question: Texture, what would that be?
I have an idea that it would be the general background which could be more grainy or fine.


... err.. by the way, didn't I see some easy tutorials on graphic making somewhere on the forum or the main site? I mean just for future reference!!

[Elanor, I had a quick look around on the Fantasy World. The banners are stunning, I assume it's your work...? ]

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I use textures for both backgrounds as yeh said and for adding effects. A texture looks like this:
http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a380/ ... acbg13.jpg
(one of my favs, property of Thia)

A-U is more than full of random tutorials, for PSP (Paint Shop Pro), PS (Photoshop) and Gimp (gimpeh is a free thing you can get at www.gimp.org) and some other proggies as well.

Try making stuff, it´s fun!

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Thanks very much Yup they're all mine

As Antigone said you can use textures either by putting them on the bottom layer of your blend and then adding pics on top or by putting them on the top layer and setting it to different modes. For example if you set this mode to "colour" then the blend will take on the colours of the texture. Other modes will make your blend look as if it's textured.

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Thank you both. What you say makes good sense. I might venture into graphic making some day, I've gotta admit it sounds fun once you get started!

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