Usage of fonts... something my friend asked me in class a few days ago.

Fonts are pretty stuff you want to add on your skins. You know, all the cool stuff you can find on dafont.com. Personally I feel that if you are creating a dramatic skin, dont ever go for fancy fonts because it's too much. Fonts like Times New Roman, Courier New, Tahoma among others are very... how you say... versatile, and it sorts of fits into everything. I am not saying fonts from dafonts are not good, there are pretty fonts I download too, but I like fonts like Cooper Black (as used on this skin for the word Riotgirl) because it's simple, cute and fits everything (well almost). Simple fonts, like script ones are nice too. Examples of fancy fonts are Cocaine Sans, Nasty, grunge fonts, and fonts you see on misprintedtype.com. They are pretty, but they go best if you have a skin that goes really really well with the font, if not I find it really ugly. Fancy fonts with fancy brushes and pictures... I think it's too much, unless you really can carry off that really well.

How to create a blogskin, as requested from somebody from my tagboard.

Well, this is too general a question, I dont think I can help much, but I can give you tips.

1. You don't need photoshop to create masterpieces and it's not true that all nice skins are created by photoshop. I've seen stuff that sucked real bad.. even if created by photoshop. So don't be too discouraged if you dont have photoshop, I think you can do fine even with Paint, it's all about exploring and using creativity.

2. When creating a skin, it's best to use a canvas the size of your computer resolution (800x600, 1024x768 etc...) so you can get a better view of how your skin will look like on your browser, which really helps a lot because you might not know, your image might be out of place or something and it's really helpful if you are creating a skin with uses of tiled background (See previous tutorial).

3. After you're done with your skin, duplicate it 3 times. Which means that when you finish it, make three copies Image>Duplicate while still in layers mode. For the first copy, you save it as it is, in .psd format. Because you can always go back and edit it properly, like removing or editing a particular layer. For the second copy, save it in the usual way, flatten and all the jpg gif stuff. For the third copy, crop out your background (this applies to columned backgrounds or backgrounds with patterns, see previous tutorial). Best to save all these in a folder. One folder for each skin. That's what I do always. Also save your codes too, in the same folder with your skin images.

4. If you're doing a huge blogskin, say, big blends... Do not save it in jpeg (be kind to dialup users) or smth... Go for slicing, something really cool that you can do in ImageReady. (I'll do tutorial on that... too long to explain here)

5. In photoshop, where you have all the windows (like layers window, navigator windows..etc)... you dont need everything there, or only the layers window. I have a window with four tabs, the Layers window, Navigator window, History window and the Character window. Four most important things when creating a skin. Layers, for, you know, the usual thing, Navigator, for zooming in to do precise features, History window for deleting actions, because you can only do Ctrl+Z once, Character window, for editing my text. So the four most basic things you need when creating a skin (and of course the tools), the others, like colour palette etc, cross them off.

Okay.... That's all I can think of right now. And yes I do live by these rules, though not really the first and the fourth one.

Requested by adeline on my tagboard.

Many ways to do tiled backgrounds... Some common ways people (or maybe just me :P) use them are:

1. Patterns.
Lots of nicey ones on squidfinger.com etc... When you pick one you like save the image to your computer, open the file, and go to Edit>Define Pattern, so you get your pattern in your presets. Fill your canvas or complete your skin with the pattern and to get it working on browsers, you have to upload the image as well as your pattern to your photobucket etc. And then in the codes you have to add a line of CSS as shown below:

<style>body{background:url(IMAGE URL) fixed}</style>

So you get your tiled background!

2. Columns.
In a lot of blogskins these days you see skins with columns (though personally I do not like that, I find it a hassle to code and crop etc... heh). These are actually tiled background. You create them with (commonly) the use of shapes along with your graphic. To get it working you have to get the column background thingy by itself. Two ways to do it.

If you have the column, and the background is a pattern:
FInd out the height of your pattern (for example 15px), then the width of your computer resolution (for me I used 1024px and here's a handy hint, always do your skin on a canvas with your computer resolution, like for me I always do my skins on 1024x768 canvas, makes cropping all these patterns stuff easier and gives you a visual overview of how your skin will look like on your browser. Too big/small/left/right/top/down?).

When your get all your info (15x1024) select the Rectangular marquee tool and under the menu choose Fixed Size and enter in the details respectively. Select the area at the top most part of your skin. This is very important because you can't select anyway you want it or else your pattern will screw up bad. After selecting crop it out and then save it.

If you have the column, and the background is a solid colour:
Easy peasy. Steps exactly like above one, but replace height with 1px.

Hope this helps you, Adeline!

This is requested by somebody on my tagboard.

Where did I get my coding from?

I've used them for a long time before I came to blogskins.com.

Do you know you can make your own codes? Go to this website. Open up notepad and copy and paste the codes you want to use.

I also want to answer Dorothea's question on how I did my profile. I used codes from that website too and change the colours. But you can have them anyway for your own convenience.

<br /><style>td,p,body{color:#A9194F;font:7pt tahoma}</style><br /><style>a{color:#686868;font:7pt tahoma;text-decoration:none;cursor:default}</style><br /><style>a:hover{color:#686868;background:#E7E2C3}</style><br />

This tutorial is requested by - on my tagboard. Hope this helps you!

Actually I get most of my pictures from photobucket or yahoo images. Say, on my skin [kick] I search for converse shoes and then I vectored one of them.

The best place to get pictures is definitely stock.xchng, but DEFINITELY NOT threadless.com and deviantART, unless you have permission from the artist. Please understand this is image theft. There's a difference between images from stock.xchng and threadless/deviantart. Stock.xchng carries stock images which means they're free for commercial use (but do provide a link back) and the people who submit their photos gave permission for you to use pictures. Threadless and deviantART pictures are NOT for commercial use and by using an image you are stealing it and violating the copyrights.

It's not about leaving a link back to the artist, but what's important is that the artist give you permission to use the image.

Stock.xchng pictures are equally nice too. Please do not use Threadless and DeviantART (especially pincel3d's artworks) stuff anymore. I've got my stuff distributed by this girl on her site, it makes me angry to have my things taken without my permission and this is how the other artists will feel too. And you can put yourself in their shoes: how would you feel if someone took your skin but never left a credit back?

I hope this helps you and please prevent image theft in Blogskins.com.

This is requested by Aspire from my tagboard. Hope this helps you and other people!

Where to download photoshop and edit the pictures?

Okay firstly, you can download a trial of Photoshop CS2 at www.adobe.com/photoshop. It lasts for 30 days. I don't know where I got my Photoshop from, actually. It was there for a long time before I went into graphic design and stuff like that.

To edit the pictures, you can play with the filters. Under the Filter menu there are lots of interesting stuff for you to explore. I started out with all those Filters. I wish I can show you one of my earlier graphics but I've reformatted my computer last year and I think all the stuff are gone, unless I can find my ancient Zip disk!

So anyway, soon you will realise that the filters get boring after a while. The only filter I use now is the Sharpen filter. It depends on what style you want on your skin. Sometimes you don't need to add filters to your image. There's an interesting trick I use on some of my skins. It's the Hue/Saturation feature. It's really cool and when people say 'blend your image more' you don't need masses of brushes to do that. A really simple way is the Hue/Sat.

1. Open your file.
2. Click on the target layer. For example, Background layer, then your image (layer 1). Select layer 1.
3. Go to Image>Adjustments>Hue and Saturation (Ctrl+U will do)
4. Then check on Colorize and play with the settings till you get what you want.

This trick is especially useful when you have a pattern you really really like and want to use on your skin, only the problem is that the colour of the pattern clashes with your skin. That's when you use Hue/Sat to adjust the lightness and colour tone of the pattern.

Another way of editing your pictures is to add textures on them. I used to use them on my earlier stuff. The best texture site I've seen is Textura. It has a variety of textures.

Oh! I just found something hidden away. For you guys to use:











Hopes this helps!

Patterns! Ok personally I don't really like fancy patterns, unless there's really a nice one that appeal to me. I like to use polka dots, stripes, and checkered stuff, and they are really easy to do, you can draw them pixel by pixel.

I've got all these checkered stuff I did a while back, so I'm going to upload them for your use. :)


And if you want to create stripes it's easy too.

You can use any image program to do this, but I'm using Photoshop.

1. Create a new file, your width doesn't matter, but if you want broad stripes you choose a bigger value for height. For example I want a narrow stripe, so I use 10x30 (WxH).

2. I zoom in to 1000%.

3. Then I use the selection tool (M). Under the Style menu (refer to picture below) I pick fixed size and enter the values 10px and 15px respectively.




4. I click on the top part of the canvas.



5. Fill in selected area with desired colour, and repeat this for the lower part of the canvas and you've got your striped pattern!

6. To get it working, go to Edit>Define Pattern.

So making patterns are really easy, and if you have time you can draw stuff pixel by pixel and see what you get in the end!

I hope this helped you!

Ok jaslyns gave me a really great suggestion, to put up tutorials on a blog - so here it is! I hope my tips helped you in some way or another. :)

If there's a particular thing you want me to help you with please leave a message on the tagboard, and I will try to help you as much as possible.

Have fun!

Hmm. Test post.