Step 4: Graphics Editors

Before you know what a graphics editor is, you need to know what a graphic is. A graphic is an image on a web page. Graphics allow you to jazz up your web page. Some are animated and some are static. There are many formats for graphics such as gif. jpg and bmp to name a few. When selecting graphics for your web pages you need to select ones that are small and fast loading. Visitors hate to wait on big graphics to load on web pages. Always use graphics in moderation.

Free web site graphics can be found by doing an internet search for "free graphics". There are many sites that offer free web graphics for personal use. To copy a graphic off of a web page, use your mouse to right click on the graphic and save it to your hard drive. Some sites that don't want you to copy their graphics and will disable your ability right click. If you right click were disabled you could always go to your Internet Explorer menu and view source, find the graphic you wanted to take and type in the complete url to the graphic. Voila you've got it! You could even do a Alt-Print Screen to copy the window and use your graphics editor to crop the graphic. Keep in mind that just because you can do this doesn't mean you should. If webmasters don't want you to take their graphics, you should honor this.

Now, lets discuss graphics editors A graphics editor is a computer program that allows users to compose and edit pictures interactively on the computer screen and save them in one of many popular "bitmap" or "raster" formats such as TIFF, JPEG, PNG and GIF. Yes, you can create your own graphics or edit graphics with a graphics editor.

The two main graphics editors that are used by Web Site Design Professionals are Adobe Photoshop and Macromedia Fireworks.

Webmajestic's picks for the best Graphics Editors are Adobe Photoshop and Macromedia Fireworks. Either of these graphics editors are perfect for creating professional web graphics. When shopping for either of these web design products ensure you check out the auctions on eBay!. As I said previously, a software store may have gotten surplus copies or wish to reduce their software inventory due to an updated version of the software. This will force the vendor to sell new copies of the software at a reduced cost. There are also educational versions available for students and schools. Remember that product upgrades are also available for purchase. Before you bid on an auction, make sure that the software description says the product is "new and in a retail box".