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Welcome to Professor Max's Web Prep 101!
Follow these instructions and we'll have a web site up in no time! |
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1. First off, let's see if you have the tools necessary to deliver your art-
1A. Do you have Photoshop? If not, you'll need to get it or get someone to prep your art for you. 1B. Do you have a CD burner? Copy places like Kinkos can burn you a CD or you can skip this and email the files. 1C. Do you have a scanner to make files of your art? Again, copy stores may be the way to go. 2. Here are some terms and ideas you need to keep in mind when building a web site: 2A. Screen Resolution - If you are like most people, you see a block of white in the center of your screen and little gray dots and hearts on the edges. Your screen is probably set for a resolution of 1024x768. Some people, about 5 to 10%, still have screens that are set for 800x600. All you would see then is white, no border. Your site should therefore be no wider than 800 pixels for anything important if you want those people to see everything without scrolling to the side. BUT, you may want a color or a pattern out there wider than 800 pixels so the majority of people will see something in the margins. 2B. Type - There are two basic kinds of type. The kind you make into "art" and the kind you type in like what you are reading now. Art type can be any font and you make it in Photoshop and it's like a sign, it can't change and it won't be changed no matter what browser (like Explorer or Safari) that you are using. You may want to use art type for your name and maybe for navigation buttons. Type for your bio and that sort of thing should be made with html type like this. Here is "art" type-  , for this, you must make it however you want and then send it along with the other art.Here is html type- JON, for this, you tell me what you want. Here are your choices: Serif, the quick lazy fox tripped over the dog San Serif, the quick lazy fox tripped over the dog You can't use a fancy font of your own choosing, it may look good on your computer but you can't predict how it will look on other people's. You can also choose size and whether you want it to be bold or italic. We will do this fine-tuning over the phone in the last stages of your process. Don't worry, some things I'll just make look right or fix and then you will approve them or ask for a change. 2C. Color - You will be able to spec just about any color you want for your type and your backgrounds. Sending me a block of color as a piece of art is one way to do it. You can also go into the color picker of Photoshop and give me the number of the color you want. In PS (Photoshop) go to Window>Color>click on the box of color and you will see a dialog and at the bottom is a window with a # in front of it. 2D. Centered or flush left? - Do you want your site to look centered like this- http://heart2art2heart.com/pages/marileeharrald-pilz.html or flush left like this?- http://www.theresabrandon.com/ Because of the screen resolution issue, I do almost all of my sites centered but many many sites are done flush left. By the way, those are hot links, if you put a whole URL (Uniform Resource Link) in an email, most people will be able to click on that and go right to your site. Are you panicking yet? It will get easier soon, I promise! Now that we have some terms clear, it's time to prepare your images for use on the web. 3. Art Preparation Guide- 3A. Size/DPI- In order to decide how big you want your images to appear, you must compare apples to apples. All images on the web appear at 72 dpi, (That's Dots Per Inch. They are really pixels per inch but dots are a printing term that carried over.). Images that are printed on paper are mostly 300 dpi. If you put a 300 dpi image that is five inches long on a website it would be HUGE. Forget about inches and just think pixels. 3B. Converting for proper size- So, assuming your artwork is scanned and ready for printing at 300 dpi, it will need to be adjusted in size. It might be a good time to look at my visual reference page to consider sizes of your art- Go to PAGE 2 Okay, you're back, so this is how to scale your image in Photoshop- Image>Image Size>Resolution-72 then go above and, (for a normal horizontal image) put in 650 pixels for a width. Next- Filter>Sharpen>Sharpen More then Edit>Fade Sharpen More- adjust to 30% Next- File>Save For Web> you get a dialog box that looks like this-  Make sure your windows look like these and then click save. Name the file so you and I can identify it by its name, like redcurtains and, if you have a specific order of how your art will go down the page, it should have a name like- 04redcurtains or 14bearball |
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