Graphic Design Editors

Step 3 - Pick a Graphics Design Editor

There are several Graphic Design Editors. Some better than others. And some that are FREE. Graphic Design editors allow you to scale, resize, compress, and create your own images, or graphics.

Our step by step graphics design tutorials use the GIMP, because it's free and easy to use. In fact can you start using it today. We'll show you how to download and install the GIMP a little later, for now we just wanted to know what your options are:

The Gimp is a FREE web graphics editor. It allows you to do most of the basics and is great for beginners.

FireWorks- Fireworks is designed to work with Dreamweaver. It is a very good graphics editing program. It's probably the one I use the most.

PhotoShop CS2 - PhotoShop is considered by many to be the standard in the graphics design world. A very powerful program, Photoshop allows you to do practically anything you can think of with graphics.

PaintShop Pro X - This is a great entry level web graphics editing program. For the money, it can't beat.

Click on any image above to purchase from Amazon.com

When designing a web page, it's important to understand that the computer treats graphics and text differently. All the text for the web page is saved in an HTML file (the file that your browser reads). All the images, or graphics, are saved as a graphic or image file. They can be saved several different formats. The most common ones on the internet are: .gif, .jpg, .png. These 3 are the ones that your browser can read and understand and display properly.

Using the web page editor, you can easily insert images into your web page. The resulting HTML source code tells the browser where on your web hosting server the image can be found and then displays the image in your browser. Using the HTML code generated by your web editor, the browser knows where and how to display the image.

So that's important to remember, because you have to upload both the .html file and the graphic images associated with the web page, otherwise the browser won't be able to display the web page correctly (because it can't find it). And I am sure you have seen these before. They're empty boxes with a little red 'x' in the upper corner.

Now, it would be practically impossible, and certainly not enjoyable to create an image by hand by coding it. So there are easy- to-use graphic design editors that allow you to draw, color, resize, reshape, and compress the images.

They are actually a lot of fun to use and really give you a chance to express your inner creativity.

*A word of caution about using images on the web. If an image is not considered in the public domain and free to use, then it is considered copy protected. Legally you aren't really allowed to use that image without the permission of the owner. Please keep that in mind.

That's the great thing about owning a graphics design editor, you can create your own images, which you own the rights to. Then you don't have to worry about it.

Ok, enough talk, let's begin unleashing the creative genius within you!!

Step 3 - Pick a Graphics Design Editor