Editing Images

Editing images is very easy using the free software we recommend including The Gimp and Irfanview  It is also a very important part of webmastery.  You need to strike a balance between using images to beautify your site and the size of the image files as that affects the load time for your page.

If you haven't used image editing software before, the main aspects of editing involve:

Header Image

In terms of the templates, to replace the header image with one of your own, you need to create an image the same size.  In the template we use a header image 600 x 150 pixels which is aligned to the right by the style sheet.  This leaves space on the lhs for the title and sub-title against a white background.

If you want to use a header image with a different plain background you can match the background colour of the header text in the css style sheet by using the colour picker tool.

Menu Bars

The grey menu bars are created by setting a thin image as the background using the style sheet and getting it to repeat along the horizontal axis.  You can change the colour of these by using the Hue filter in your image editing software. 

Patterns and Textures

If you did not want a header image, just a pattern or a texture to offset your title and subtitle, you could use a small image repeated along both axes by the style sheet.  A useful tool for creating patterns and textures which tile nicely is Pixel Toolbox from Axiom software who also have a useful Pic Sizer and some free graphics.

Software

Irfanview can change the file type, image size and quality using batch processing or on an individual basis.  It's image filters allow you to change the colour of the menu bar graphics very easily.  There are also Irfanview plugins available which allow you to use Photoshop filters with Irfanview.

The Gimp is a very complex piece of free image creation and editing software which can create great effects.  It is a bit of a learning curve but well worth it.  The on-line manual is very comprehensive and I have converted it to a PDF so you can read it off line.  Gimp Manual  Be warned though it weighs in at a hefty 19MB!