>> BTW: if you want a >really< interesting background, then use an 
animated gif 
> 
>  Uh, what?
> 

You know that gifs can be animated. This, aside from being reliably 
transparent in any browser, is the main attraction of this format. And 
any image, even an animated one, can be displayed as background.

I once designed a backgound for a bathroom shop which would display 
ascending bubbles on a blue background by first creating a seamlessly 
tileable background and then animating the bubbles into a gif. Seven 
years ago this was a nice way to animate an intro-screen... but since I 
got paid for it I cannot post it. 

So I quickly cooked up a small ani: after 4s it will chage colours, do 
this 4 times, then stop changing for the rest of the session.

Try making a webpage with the attached image as background.

Maybe your newsreader will show it, too, though I would not rely on 
this.

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Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> I just got home, clicked it to remind myself what it looks like, and
> GAH! >_< Did I really waste 2 hours making this? It's awful! :-S

Doesn't matter. You know more than when you started, and you've got a template
to play with. The first time you do something like this always takes 10x longer
than any subsequent work. Doesn't matter if you don't like it!

(and I've seen worse ;-)

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Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Now I'm sure I've heard people complain that "the GIMP is an image
> processor, not a paint program".

It's a very good image processor, but it does so much more than that. It but
lacks full HDR support (coming soon, I understand).

> Well, there is that too, yes. ;-) From what little research I've done,
> the way the GIMP works makes sense to the people who designed it, but
> fails to follow any normal kind of intuition, making it maddeningly hard
> to learn.

It's nowhere near as hard as Blender, but not completely trivial either. It
works more similarly to Paintshop than Photoshop (as far as I can tell, not
having used Photoshop o_O). But, naturally, there are oodles of really good
tutorials out there for it.

> I've seen it, I've used it, it's nice that it exists, but it's really
> not very easy to do anything remotely useful with it.

Hmm, I thought it was extremely intuitive for open-source. I've used it quite a
lot for making POV-Ray splines. It's also pretty handy for designing simple
icons etc due to its bitmap export options. Great for line diagrams too.

:)

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Invisible escreveu:(Although
> since povray.off-topic is the only 
> "colleagues" I have, asking here is only going to give me "dude, GIYF!" 
> Books are similarly hit-and-miss, but I'm sure there's some good ones 
> out there. The tricky part is finding them. ;-)

you register to a photoshop-based web forum and ask your questions there 
as a novice.

But, come on!  The "stripy" background is just a gradient effect, the 
drop shadows and glow just plugins... just by messing around with the 
software and seeing what each tool in the toolbox does suffices for such 
basic stuff...

-- 
a game sig: http://tinyurl.com/d3rxz9

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Invisible escreveu:
>>> In my experience, most Internet tutorials aren't very useful.
>>
>>   That's because you don't try them. When you read a tutorial you have to
>> actually *do* what the tutorial is saying, step by step. Just reading it
>> is not enough. You learn by doing.
> 
> If the tutorial doesn't make sense, it's not a good tutorial.

It makes a lot more sense if you actually try to follow it rather than 
just read.

> If the tutorial doesn't explain the part I'm trying to learn, it's not a 
> good tutorial.

That's what's good about there being so many tutorials:  you may choose 
one from multiple about a given subject.

In any case, more practice and less whinning is key.

-- 
a game sig: http://tinyurl.com/d3rxz9

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Orchid XP v8 escreveu:
> I've seen it, I've used it, it's nice that it exists, but it's really 
> not very easy to do anything remotely useful with it.

you whine too much.  Go look for galleries of incredible images done 
with Gimp, Inkscape and Blender by people who took their time to learn 
rather than cry like babies...

-- 
a game sig: http://tinyurl.com/d3rxz9

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TC <do-not-reply@i-do get-enough-spam-already-2498.com> wrote:
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> >> BTW: if you want a >really< interesting background, then use an animated gif 
> > 
> >  Uh, what?
> > 

> You know that gifs can be animated.

  My question was meant as: "Why would anyone want to do that? That's
horrible design! Even one small gif animation in the webpage can be
really annoying, not to talk if the *background* image is one."

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>>>> If you don't use any paint program yet, try the GIMP.
>>> Now I'm sure I've heard people complain that "the GIMP is an image
>>> processor, not a paint program".
>> 
>> Then get tuxpaint :P
> 
> ...oh dear god, it actually exists! o_O

Of course it does.

Does it look easy-to-use enough for you? :D

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nemesis <nam### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> Orchid XP v8 escreveu:
> > I've seen it, I've used it, it's nice that it exists, but it's really 
> > not very easy to do anything remotely useful with it.

> you whine too much.  Go look for galleries of incredible images done 
> with Gimp, Inkscape and Blender by people who took their time to learn 
> rather than cry like babies...

  Yeah, it's incredible what you can do when you take the time to learn it.
For example:

http://blog.fluidcreativity.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/screenshot-inkscape.png
http://fc01.deviantart.net/fs41/f/2009/015/4/e/Isabella___B_and_W_by_Filsd_by_the_gimp.jpg

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Jim Henderson wrote:
> Most people also learn by failing at things

Too bad schools often discourage failure...

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