Build Your Own Web Site: Digital Images and Graphics

Don't forget about graphics. Because specific graphics are something you're going to need regardless of the type of program you use to set up your site, I'll go into a little bit more detail here than in the rest of the site design sections.

There is a lot of canned clip art out there, but many times it looks the part -- like canned clip art. Visitors that see the same graphic on several sites don't go away with the best of impressions about any of the sites! If you can, create some of your own graphic icons and images using a good illustration program like Adobe Illustrator or Corel Draw. (Go to ZDNet or computer-oriented Web site for current reviews and prices of web-graphics software packages.) With an illustration program you can create vector images. These, as opposed to bitmap images are editable, scalable and usually small in file size.

A raster or bitmap image, like those you would get when you scan art or a photo, can be edited, but you need an image editing program like Adobe Photoshop. With this type of program you can change individual pixels or add filters or special effects to layers of the image to get the effect you want. The size, however, cannot be increased very much without loss of image quality and a big increase in file size.

Another option is to purchase some higher quality clip art. Sites like PhotoDisc and Artville have high quality photo images and artwork that aren't always that expensive, particularly for the low resolution (72 dpi) images you would need for your Web site. There are also several sites on the Web that offer free art and images. Our Links page can take you to some of those sites.