Art My Experimentation with Banners/Avatars

[Minako]

I hope you enjoy these. I was just playing with the different effects (like the gradient tool. tee-hee) on Photoshop Elements. (Photoshop Elements isn't nearly as good as Photoshop, but it has the basics..)

Please give me some feedback, good or bad. I'm still new at this and I want to improve.

My first set is of Terra from Teen Titans. I really enjoy this character because the creators of the show made her out to be a lost girl, who went to the "Dark side" but eventually realized her mistakes. (However in the comics, Terra was downright evil.)

Enjoy.

[EDIT] the banner's text turned fuzzy when I turned it into a .jpg. I'll try using .gif (the second banner is the .gif version. It turned out better!)

[Retribution]

[SIZE=1]Ahh yes, Photoshop Elements. From what I can gather, it's really not that far behind Photoshop CS. We have it at school, and it just takes a little longer for it to get it to work. Instead of all those nifty short cuts we CSers have, you have to go to great pains to get a simple effect.

The [b]Avatar[/b] was pretty plain/empty/lacking flavor. It's a gradient with a picture. I'd recommend either throwing in some background effects to jazz it up, or make the girl glow, or something to draw an observer in. You also need a border.

The [b]Banner[/b] (better quality one) was about the same as the avatar. Not to be blunt or mean or anything, but it doesn't have any kick to it. Partially due to the fact that the image you used to begin with wasn't very clear. The gradient is there once more, which isn't a bad thing, but it's not going to cut it. Throw in a filter! Distort the girl a bit! Randomly mess around with filters and see what happens. It'll help you learn, and eventually mix-and-match them. Finally, the typography. It was a good quote, and fit with the image, but I got the feeling it was there to take up room. The bottom right corner is my favorite place to but the text in. It gives my image (bigger=better, usually) more room, and therefore more to look at. Also, it would be alot more clear if there were some outline around it. But I know that Elements is severly lacking in this department. I'm not even sure if it can do it. But maybe you can rasterize the layer, and using the magic wand (does Elements have it?), go to stroke. It'll be sketchy, but it'll be an outline nonetheless.

Good luck on your future endeavors, and keep experimenting. You're off to a good start.[/SIZE]

[Stuart]

[FONT=Tahoma]Eh, Lacks a boarder first of all and some neat effects would be pretty cool. Also I can't read the text and I strain my eyes trying too. I understand your just starting out so I won't criticize much, I'll just say to keep expermenting. Everyone starts out poorly when they first start out but just keep doing it.[/FONT]