graphics

25 Places to Find Awesome Stock Photos — Free and Cheap!

Whether you’re designing an artistic website or searching for images to post on your blog, sites that carry not only free but awesome stock photos may very well come in handy. Utilizing the correct set of photos for any project is key, especially if you’re designing an ad for a client, you should always put in your best effort as well as the best images you can find fit for the job.

Many of the designers I’ve come across like to download most of their images from 2-3 of the largest sites containing stock photos, however as creative artists I believe we should play the mix and match game that allows us to choose from wide variety of stock images instead of the same “old” set of photos we may be fond of.

Giving a project that requires stock images your best should include photos that are not only sharp, but clear as well. Here we’ll have the pleasure to visit a few awesome (25 to be exact) sites that’ll provide all the needed images to fuel any project, job, or site requiring stock photos. Read more

graphics

10 Places to Find Absolutely Free Vector Graphics

Vector graphics allow the preservation of quality within an image. These graphics at times offer superior quality over the traditional (raster) image formats, such as Bitmap. This means that if you were to view a vector and bitmap image next to each other, as you zoomed in you’ll be able to see that the bitmap image will suffer from pixelation while the vector graphic’s quality will remain intact.

Here are 10 of the top sites where you’ll be able to grab absolutely free vector graphics that allow editing in Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. Most of these sites offer free vectors in several formats for quick and easy customization. Sites that showcase high-quality vectors can be a bit hard to find now-a-days, this is why we’ve done the job for you and assembled this collection for your enjoyment. Read more

graphics

Working with Background Graphics in PowerPoint

Why does one PowerPoint presentation grab attention while another one puts viewers to sleep? Content counts, of course—but really, the whole reason for developing a Powerpoint presentation rather than writing a plain Word document is (usually) to incorporate visual interest. If there’s nothing interesting to look at, the audience is likely to wonder why they should bother watching!

Fortunately, there are several easy ways to create visual variety in PowerPoint. One way is to tweak the theme so that it is more effective and doesn’t look like “just another” PPT. How to Customize a PowerPoint Template provided some basic information and easy techniques for altering background styles and color schemes. Now let’s go a step further, and see how to change the graphic elements that are part of the theme. Read more