{"id":235,"date":"2009-11-15T07:44:19","date_gmt":"2009-11-15T11:44:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/awgentry.com\/blog\/?p=235"},"modified":"2009-11-15T07:44:19","modified_gmt":"2009-11-15T11:44:19","slug":"graphics-programs-on-the-cheap-part-i-specialized-apps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/awgentry.com\/weblog\/graphics-programs-on-the-cheap-part-i-specialized-apps\/","title":{"rendered":"Graphics Programs on the Cheap, Part I: Specialized Apps"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: left;\">While you&#8217;re saving your nickels and dimes to get the latest version of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.adobe.com\/products\/creativesuite\/web\/\">Adobe graphics suite<\/a>, what do you do to keep from going through graphics-creation withdrawal? Here are some free or very common resources you can use to explore your artistic side.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/windowshelp.microsoft.com\/Windows\/en-US\/help\/f5feb1df-8dd7-4ab0-9f65-3c1c89a329ab1033.mspx\"><strong><\/strong><\/a><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.resizr.com\/\">Resizr<\/a><\/strong> &#8211; Do one thing, and do it well. I recently found this quick Web-based graphics resizer and have had some success with it. All you do is upload your file or tell it an online graphic&#8217;s Web address, and you can resize and save as any JPG, GIF, or PNG.<\/p>\n<ul style=\"text-align: left;\">\n<li><em>Pros:<\/em> It works well on GIFs and PNGs, especially for shrinking graphics or relatively small size increases. It has a crop feature, too. Proportions are automatically calculated, and there&#8217;s a live display of your resized graphic each time you edit it. Relatively intuitive.<\/li>\n<li><em>Cons:<\/em> JPGs tend to get blurry if you&#8217;re very particular about them. (It may not show in the final product, though, if you select GIF or PNG on the top right before you commit.) There&#8217;s some pixelization on large graphic expansions, but that&#8217;s pretty common. You can&#8217;t alter the aspect ratio (stretch height or width). You can only edit one file at a time.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.urbanfonts.com\/\"><strong><br \/>\nUrbanFonts<\/strong><\/a> &#8211; Free fonts are always fun, and besides having a good-sized archive, you can use this one for a tiny bit of graphic design.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>Pros:<\/em> There&#8217;s a very large archive of all different kinds of fonts here, from sans-serif to decorative. You can preview any font you want to download by typing in your sample text, and it&#8217;ll appear in a variety of font sizes. Check it out with the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.urbanfonts.com\/fonts\/Eight_Track.htm\">Eight Track font<\/a> for example. The quality is better than what you&#8217;ll get on MS Paint or other non-anti-aliasing programs.<br \/>\n<em>Cons:<\/em> One trick pony. You can&#8217;t do any other kinds of graphics-editing. Give it a break &#8212; it&#8217;s just a font archive!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/windowshelp.microsoft.com\/Windows\/en-US\/help\/f5feb1df-8dd7-4ab0-9f65-3c1c89a329ab1033.mspx\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>Have you found a nifty little Web-based or downloadable app for specialized graphics manipulation? Let everybody know in the Comments section!<\/em><\/p>\n<p>[This is the first in a three-part series. Come back in a couple days for the next installment.] <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While you&#8217;re saving your nickels and dimes to get the latest version of the Adobe graphics suite, what do you do to keep from going through graphics-creation withdrawal? Here are some free or very common resources you can use to explore your artistic side. Resizr &#8211; Do one thing, and do it well. I recently&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[99,108,100,109,110],"class_list":["post-235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-creative","tag-free-programs","tag-google-picasa","tag-graphics-programs","tag-open-source","tag-photo-editing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/awgentry.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/awgentry.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/awgentry.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/awgentry.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/awgentry.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/awgentry.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/awgentry.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/awgentry.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/awgentry.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}