Tuesday, January 10, 2006

Proud of Myself

I just posted my new web site. I’m not a graphic designer, so it took a long time to create. But I’m happy with the results and I sure learned a lot.

One phase of the design was to come up with a signature image for the site. I searched and I searched for a stock photo, but I couldn’t find one image I could just buy and use as is. So I ended up buying two – and then tried to figure out how to use Adobe Photoshop to combine the two images.

Here are the images I purchased – this one, a photo of blank rolled-up paper:

And this one, an illustration of two hands and a light bulb:

I liked both because they each tie into the creative process. But the question remained – how do I combine them?

Here’s what I came up with (reduced to fit this blog page):

First, I took the photo of the paper and reproportioned it to fit the available dimensions, while leaving room at the right for the illustration. Then I had to lighten up the rolled up part of the paper, rebalance the color at the left, and add some type.

Next, I worked with the illustration. I reproportioned it, strengthened the black outlines of the hands, and added a yellow glow to the light bulb. Then I sandwiched the two images together to make it seem as if the illustration was behind the roll of the paper.

All in all, it took about a day to figure out how to do all of this. But as I said, I learned a lot, so it was well worth it.

Posted by Richard Bloch

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