create polished looking ad's

gazjm

Could anyone point me in the right direction as to how to create the polished sharp look which alot of peoples ad's on the saladgamer website have, do you create a larger ad and scale down or create one the size you need? Is it all down to lighting etc?

cheers

gazjm

Anybody have any tutorials or links to helpful sites? I've just spent 3 hours having a go but still cant seem to get it right.

Thanks

Rob2

which particular ads are you talking about?

gazjm

The ones on the right hand side for links to games. I have one on there at the moment but to be blunt, it looks naff next to the other ad's. I can't seem to create crisp clear images for some reason, i'm using a mix of gimp and pixen but they always seem a bit edgy, if I blur them its too much.

Rob2

Forget pixen....download Drawberry it will do a beautiful job. Choose better fonts...the green one is too small. The basic idea is fine, line things up a bit better..google 'rule of thirds'..Work at a decent size and then output a small bitmap.

http://raphaelbost.free.fr/DrawBerry.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_thirds

gazjm

Thanks, Im downloading it now, and I'll give the rule of thirds technique a go!

Cheers

Rob2

it seems the adds are 310x100 so maybe start at 1240x400 or 930x300 if you have a big enough planet (that might be your deciding factor) just get the starting proportions correct!! good luck..

gazjm

Thanks for the advice, now I just need to suss out drawberry, I haven't used vector graphics before. Should be interesting.

mrfunkleberry

Hiya. The adverts are 310x102. A template is available in the developers section. There shouldn't be any need to start off with such a large image, as long as the res is 72dpi, and you don't go below 90% jpg compression.

Rob2

I just thought he might find it easier working at a bigger size, great to have a template tho, but the dpi shouldn't make any difference.

mrfunkleberry

No, you're right. Good tip Rob2.