Web Site Support - Graphics

Color Conversion - The most popular methods for specifying Web colors are hexadecimal (#F3CC9A), decimal (Red, Green, Blue) and CMY (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow). Unfortunately, some software uses one method, while other software uses another method, making it nearly impossible to specify the exact same color when using different software. From now on, all you have to do is enter your existing color code into this Web site, and it will instantly convert it from one color-specifying method to another.

Color Harmonies - This site lets you "Search for colors complements to your RGB values. Create color harmonies, combinations and themes. From your main (or background) color select trim and accents tones."

CoolText - A free, online, real-time graphics generator that lets you create and save text logos using your choice of fonts, colors, textures, and effects. Also see FlamingText and WebShop.

GifWorks - Free, online GIF e-tools. "Create your own special effects with any GIF -- even animated ones! Resize it, colorize it, optimize it, and jazzercise it -- then save it and take it with you. You name it and you can do it!" Your browser must have JavaScript enabled in order to use the GifWorks site.

GRAPHICS, PHOTOS AND ANIMATED GRAPHICS (free and for sale) - NYPL Digital Gallery and StockVault and GOgraph and Foto Search Graphics and ClipArt.com and AAAClipArt and FlamingText and FreeGraphics and CoolArchive and GraphicsFreebies and CoolGraphics and A-1 Clipart Archive and FreeWebTemplates and 321Clipart and GifArt.com and GraphX Kingdom have thousands and thousands of pieces of clip art, photographs, animated graphics, backgrounds, banners, buttons, and other images, plus graphics tips, plus links to hundreds of other graphic image sites - some of them are for sale, but many of them are free for you to use on your Web site. In addition, Free-Backgrounds has additional free backgrounds and desktop wallpaper.

GRAPHICS OPTIMIZATION - GIFTools provides links to tools that will optimize your site's images. ZDNet says, "Large images are the leading cause of slow loading Web pages." By eliminated a couple of images and optimizing the other images on the ComputerBob Home Page, I was able to reduce that page's total loading time from 62 seconds down to 20 seconds. Guide To Optimizing Graphics answers important graphics questions, like "When should you use a .gif instead of a .jpg file?" and "How can you reduce the size of your graphics files?"

I Like Your Colors - If you see a color scheme that you like on any Web page, I Like Your Colors will tell you what colors it uses.

How To Read Hex Codes - Explains how 6-character hexadecimal color codes work. You'll finally understand the difference between #FF0000 and #0000FF.

IMAGE BRANDING - CopyRightLeft (769 KB - Freeware) lets you easily add visible copyright information to each of your Web site's images, making it harder for others to steal and use them.

IMAGE VIEWING AND MANIPULATION- IrfanView (812 KB - Freeware) A highly rated viewer that supports over 75 static and animated graphics formats, including BMP, GIF, JPEG, PCX, PNG, multipage TIFF and multiple ICO. Resize, tweak colors, optimize, crop, convert to other formats, and much more.(Thanks, Alois Posch!)

Make Your Gifs Dance - ZDNet's step-by-step guide to creating animated Gifs, using simple and free tools.

Museum of Counter Art - Over 500 different counter images that you can quickly copy to your hard drive and use within FrontPage. They're all better than the few lame counter images that came with FrontPage.

Web-Safe Colors - Here's a chart that shows all of the Web Safe Colors, with their hexadecimal codes. It explains that, "The safe palette is a group of screen display colors that maintains its quality across Windows and Macintosh operating systems when running Web browsers. The safe palette is important because without it, Web pages designed on Windows look bad on the Machintosh and vice versa. The Mac and Windows operating systems each have a 'system palette' of 256 colors, but the two system palettes are not the same. The safe palette is the intersection of the Macintosh and Windows system palettes." Here is a page and Lynda.com has a larger version of the Web-safe color chart. Big Ben's has an image of the Web-safe palette that you can use to set your paint program's palette correctly. Unfortunately, Microsoft FrontPage 2000's "Web-safe palette" displays only 144 of the 216 actual Web-safe colors, and you cannot change that palette to display all 216 Web-safe colors, so if you're using FP 2000, you may have to keep referring to one of the palettes above in order to choose Web-safe colors for your Web pages.

Web Templates - FreeWebTemplates and GUIStuff and Open Source Web Design have many free Web templates, including templates for business, fan clubs, gaming sites, and much more, along with links to other free template sites.