Joined on 02-09-2006
TechSoup Member
I searched to no avail.
I am not a graphic designer nor a website designer.
I want to turn a word only (certain font, specific colors) into a jpeg or gif, to use on a website. The graphic will be clickable to another "sub-site" (don't know if that's the term or not). SO I can't just type the words, format and then make clickable, because it then negates the formatting and just makes it look like a clickable link instead.
Evertime I turn it into a graphic file and import into the website, it gets all fuzzy,with little fuzzies hanging off the letters. I have been creating it in Word, exporting to PDF995, then using PDFEdit to turn that into a graphic, importing it into GIMP, and then cropping it, exporting as a JPEG. Whew. I think I got all the steps. I do not have Publisher, or any other for-a-fee graphic design softwares.
Any ideas?
Dear Kerryannmay,
I'm not a designer either, but I can at least recommend a great free graphics program:
paint.net. It's easy to use for simple things like changing file formats and resizing images (and can do a lot more for those with some know-how). See if it solves your problem, and let us know.
Robert
Joined on 02-09-2006
TechSoup Member
Robert, what a neat program. Kinda like Paint. More functions though with Paint.NET.
Didn't allow me to do what I wanted, though.
Any other ideas, folks?
Joined on 06-09-2003
Davenport, Iowa USA
You might want to try a different printer than the PDF995, I tried creating a graphic in word and printing through PDF Creator
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/
which gives you the ability print to a file and save in a jpg tif or bmp format directly eliminating a couple of conversions from your process. The resulting file should be editable in paint.net
Also make sure the document size in word is small enough that it is close to the end size you are looking for.
Also you can create your graphic directly in paint.net selecting your fonts and colors as desired.
One other program inkscape
http://www.inkscape.org/
allows you to create vector graphics that will allow you to scale to any size before you convert to a bitmap based image for the web.
Dave
Hi there,
I can't help you with a program that will do a good job on a non-graphical format such as a word doc, but I am a graphic artist and I use Adobe PhotoShop to make good, crisp small size web graphics. If it's "line art" the format should be a .gif or a png. and if it's photographic it should be in the .jpg format.
I would be happy to look at your logo and make it into a web graphic for you if you email it to me. Some files are just difficult to get crisp if you aren't a professional. If you decide to send on, just be sure to tell me what final size you want!
Joined on 07-09-2007
TechSoup Member
Hi Kerry,
The 'fuzziness' around the edges is likely to be caused by a lack of something called 'antialiasing'. This is a method which smooths out colours on a background, and is often used with text for web logos to produce a pleasing appearance.
You mentioned that you had the GIMP, and the GIMP text tool has anti-aliasing ability. You should be able to create the logo in GIMP instead of Word (same formatting, colour etc) and then export from GIMP with better quality.
To do this;
1. Create a new GIMP file (File -> New)
2. Add text and format using the text tool (double click the big 'T' icon in the toolbar and it will bring up a 'Tool Options' window where you can format the text)
3. Save as... (File -> Save as...) and choose GIF or JPEG. For word art I would recommend GIF.
More information on antialiasing can be found at:
http://www.widearea.co.uk/designer/anti.html
and the GIMP tutorials are here;
http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/
Joined on 03-29-2002
Milwaukee
TechSoup Member
I frequently use the built in Windows program Paint for both .jpg and .gif file formats. I frequently take clipart and wordart right out of Word and paste it into Paint to generate files for web pages.
I do use other paid for software for this too, but that software is only installed on one computer. We can't afford to put it everywhere. All of the computers I use have Windows XP and Paint. So I use Paint quite frequently.
Joined on 02-20-2004
TechSoup Member
Paint is good for creating the text you want and is on every PC (it should be in c:\WINDOWS\System32\mspaint.exe ) Then get Irfanview from http://www.irfanview.com/ which will let you crop the paint file (or do lots of other things with it) to the exact size you want. Save files as GIF, which is an exact save of what you see (vs jpg). These two free tools will let you make what you want.
Harv
Joined on 11-09-2005
TechSoup Member
Hi,
I'm not sure what your needs are for the logo, but to keep things simple you can try this online service:
Cool Text
It's a free service to design your text logo, adjusting some of the formats like background colour, etc. It then produces the jpeg for download or further editing.
Talk to you later,
James
Joined on 01-24-2008
TechSoup Member
Do you mind if I ask what the font is? When you are NOT making it a link does it show the correct formatting?
As some people have mentioned, you can go with an image, in which case, you should probably use a GIF since it doesn't have the dithering that is mentioned that makes it look "fuzzy". Another easy and cheap way to do it is when you have your word file up, just hit "print screen". Open up MS Paint (or GIMP) and just do a paste. It should drop a screen capture into your space. Then just crop it to size and save it out as a GIF. You're also better off if you use a "Web Safe" color since GIF has a limited pallet. PNG also works well for logos.
Alternative: You can also just add some code (CSS) to the website that will prevent the link from squashing the formatting of your link. What's happening is the
tag you're adding to make the link is overwriting the formating you're adding.