I’m looking to create my own website and scan my illustrations onto my computer. Im going to clean the designs and alter them and then post them on my website. Should I get Photoshop, Illustrator, or Dreamweaver? Or a combination of two?
and the sound of crickets fills the dark night air in the land of answers….
To build a website you can use a combination of Dreamweaver and Photoshop.
First, website design and scanning images, you would use Photoshop. Once you design your site in Photoshop, you will slice the images and optimize them for the internet (agian using photoshop). Specifically, each slice can be optimized as either a jpeg or gif. You can also assign a level of quality of individual slices. For example, a slice with a photo could be optimized as a "high quality, jpeg". However, you might have a slice that is a logo. In this case it could be optimized as a "medium quality, gif".
Once you slice your design you would save the images in a folder. This is where Dreamweaver comes into play. Dreamweaver is an HTML editor–you might hear it referred to as a "what you see what you get" -(WYSWYG). Dreamweaver would be where you create the HTML for your website. Speicifically some of the things an HTML editor does are: creates tags and elements used for links, lists, tables, containers, text, headers …etc. You can also use Dreamweaver to create your CSS. CSS is used for your website attributes: size and color of text, position of images, boarders, margines, padding …etc.
Illustrator can also be used for web site design and optimization, but Photoshop would be a better choice in this case.
One note about photoshop -when you are saving your slices you have the option of saving the images with the html. This will work, but the code is not as good as using Dreamweaver.
Finally, learning to design a website using photoshop and dreamweaver can be challenging. Both programs are powerful, but with this power comes a learning curve. If you find yourself getting frustrated there are a lot of good forums and books to help get you over the hurdles.
To build a website you can use a combination of Dreamweaver and Photoshop.
First, website design and scanning images, you would use Photoshop. Once you design your site in Photoshop, you will slice the images and optimize them for the internet (agian using photoshop). Specifically, each slice can be optimized as either a jpeg or gif. You can also assign a level of quality of individual slices. For example, a slice with a photo could be optimized as a "high quality, jpeg". However, you might have a slice that is a logo. In this case it could be optimized as a "medium quality, gif".
Once you slice your design you would save the images in a folder. This is where Dreamweaver comes into play. Dreamweaver is an HTML editor–you might hear it referred to as a "what you see what you get" -(WYSWYG). Dreamweaver would be where you create the HTML for your website. Speicifically some of the things an HTML editor does are: creates tags and elements used for links, lists, tables, containers, text, headers …etc. You can also use Dreamweaver to create your CSS. CSS is used for your website attributes: size and color of text, position of images, boarders, margines, padding …etc.
Illustrator can also be used for web site design and optimization, but Photoshop would be a better choice in this case.
One note about photoshop -when you are saving your slices you have the option of saving the images with the html. This will work, but the code is not as good as using Dreamweaver.
Finally, learning to design a website using photoshop and dreamweaver can be challenging. Both programs are powerful, but with this power comes a learning curve. If you find yourself getting frustrated there are a lot of good forums and books to help get you over the hurdles.
References :
http://www.reichelgraphicdesign.com/custom_web_site_design.html
http://www.designblog.reichelgraphicdesign.com