PHP image manipulation

If you have ever wanted to dynamically create or edit images, GD is a great solution for PHP (and LAMP configurations). I am writing this blog entry mostly because I was amazed at how easy it was to install. I just picked it in easyApache (using WHM) and "tada!" – it works. I can't say that about imagemagick. I've tried and tried to get that bit of software to work (on multiple servers) and it is always a pain. I remember on my first server (hosted by another company) I had requested imagemagick and they even had trouble installing it—the help desk ticket was pretty long by the time it was closed.

Anyway, moral of the story: Go with GD for dynamic image manipulation in PHP.

Audio

I use a website called iStockphoto when I need to find some good images for a website I am designing. And I usually have good luck finding something that will work.

Yesterday, I received an email from iStock and I learned that they do audio, too. They call it iStockaudio and you can find all kinds of royalty free music at fairly inexpensive prices. It could be a great place to find audio for your next website's flash or even for YouTube videos. It has potential. It only seems that searching for the right audio clip would be the hard part.

CSS: background-position

Today I discovered a new trick I can use for background images in CSS. It is based on the background-position property. This allows the designer to offset a background image used in an object (like a span or div).

I was looking at the images that Google uses in Gmail and noticed that some of their icons come all together in one larger PNG file. They form an array of icons. After some searching the web I landed on this article that explained how to select a single image from an image array: http://www.guistuff.com/css/css_imagetech1.html

Pretty neat. It reduces page load-time (because you load one image instead of multiple ones, and each file comes with overhead transaction data) and removes the need to pre-cache images for DHTML. A little bit of JavaScript and CSS and you're all set. It is going to be a handy thing to have in my design toolbox.

Images

Images are very important to the construction of an appealing website. I wrote before about the use of great image software, like GIMP. But, we still need to get those great stock photos to round of a site.

There are some great sites for this, even for free pics. Flickr, for instance, is one of these free picture sites. But not all pictures are available for all purposes. Use Flickr's advanced search to find those that you can use. On the bottom of their search page, you'll see options for creative commons licensed images. You can search multpile sites at once using everystockphoto.com. Or, if you want the easy and high-quality route and are willing to pay a small fee, check out iStockphoto.

Image Editors

There are some good, free image editors out there. If you are on a short budget but want to produce some top quality images, check these out:

• Picasa2 - This is a really easy program to use and it is great for basic photograph edits. It handles some otherwise intensive tasks with easy (like shrinking and emailing images, exporting at reduced sizes, creating HTML photo albums). I also noticed that its file type compatibility is impressive (it was able to open a raw image file from my SLR).


• Paint.NET - This is a more advanced image editor that is really easy to learn. It has a lot of features, is constantly being updated by its creator, is pretty powerful, and anyone can learn to use it. There is also an online library with extensions if you want even more graphics tools. When I first got into web design, this is the program I used.


• GIMP - Now this is my favorite. It is even more powerful than Paint.NET and can create some amazing pictures. It rivals Photoshop in many ways. And, just like the others above, this one is free! There is a drawback, however. It is a hard to learn. It took me some real quality time before I felt comfortable with it. I suggest going to YouTube to watch some free tutorials on how to use it. This will give you a much needed head start on the learning curve and reduce some of the frustration that many experience. This is the only image editor I use now for web and graphic design.