[Guide] Graphical art

Hello and welcome to my very first guide about graphics!

Topics:
What is graphical art?
What programs can I use?
Sites
How to upload your graphics
Tutorials


What is graphical art?
Graphical art is art created on the computer. It allows you to easily adjust any mistakes you might have made.
This is a very good thing, it allows you to re-design your project all the time to get that perfect effect.
Graphical art allows you to create more realistic designs what you could never get by painting a surface.


What programs can I use?
A lot of people use different programs but here are the most common programs.

Photoshop/Illustrator
From adobe there are two programs that are useful, Photoshop and Illustrator.
Illustrator allows you to create logos since the program works with mathematical lines meaning you can size
it down and up as much as you want, the design will never lose its sharpness.
Photoshop is commonly used to add effects to your design. Photoshop allows you to put effects on your design
but can also be used to create logos, however if you size them up a lot the logos will lose its sharpness.

Cinema 4D
Cinema 4D is commonly used to create 3D art (3 dimensional). Cinema 4D is perfect to create cool letters but
can also be used to generate objects, which you can add light sources on to create really realistic shadows.

GIMP
GIMP is comparable with Photoshop. You can edit pictures in here, generate cool effects and freely design
logos. However the same problem as in Photoshop occurs here when you size it up or down the design will lose
its sharpness. Another great thing of GIMP is that is free software. You can download it without having to spend
anything.


Sites
Here are some sites that can help you out if you'd like to know where you can get some renders from or where
you can get some help on a problem you've hit.

www.deviantart.com
This site is full of great artists who have a ton of experience. This site allows you to post your design
so others can criticize it on a constructive way. You will have to make an account if you would like to post
your graphical art here. A tiny thing: Never steal someones art from the site they've put loads of work into
it if you are going to use it please tell them in the comments, unless they've already said it's okay to use
their art in the description.

www.planetrenders.org
This site contains a ton of renders which you can freely use. There are also forums bonded to this site for
which you'll need to make an account if you would like to post on the forums.

www.cgtextures.com
This site is very useful if you would like to get some textures. If you would like to download the textures
you will need to make an account. You will have a maximum of 15MB to download textures, if you would like to
have more MBs you will have to buy membership.

www.dafont.com
This site has a lot of fonts. You will download the fonts in Winrar. To install the fonts you'll have to unpack
winrar, I suggest you to make an extra map for the fonts so you won't lose track of which fonts you have and
it is more organised. If you have unpacked the winrar packs you can click on the file with the letter on it
and click on "install".

www.sneakybaron.com
When looking for some renders this site comes in handy! There also is a search option for those who wish to
get a specific render of some type. No account is needed to get the renders.

www.bgpatterns.com
When you are looking to get an pattern for the background or maybe even on the foreground you can download
a pattern from this site. The site contains loads of different styles and also allows you to control the color of the
pattern you're going to download.

www.psd-dreams.de/
This site contains loads of renders which can be used to be put in the foreground. Although you can get
quite a lot of renders from this site you will have to make an account.


How to upload your graphics
If you want to post your graphics on a forum you will need a image-code. This image-code will be gained if
you upload your designs to a certain site. Here are some sites that will give you an image-code:

www.tinypic.com
For this site you won't need to make an account. The only thing is that your designs will get removed. This
can be annoying if you want to keep an image on the forum for a long time. But if you will be using the
image for a short period there won't be any problems.

www.photobucket.com
For Photobucket you will need to create an account but once created your images won't be removed. This is
pretty useful and it only takes little time to upload the designs. Once you've uploaded your designs they
will go in a library which organizes your graphical art (which I prefer).


Tutorials
Here are some sites that contain useful tutorials. Your graphical software might not be used and might be
a bit different than the program used in the tutorials so if you don't find any tutorials on these sites with
your program be sure to check out www.youtube.com or www.google.nl they can help out a ton.
And don't forget trying is the key to experience.

www.planetphotoshop.com
If you would like to learn new things or just forgot a nice style you used to use this site comes in handy.
Some quite nice tutorials are to be found on this site, both for advanced and beginning graphic artists.
This site is based on Photoshop, but no worries the other programs can be customized to look like Photoshop.

www.photoshoptutorials.ws
This site has a lot of useful tutorials, of which some contain a useful video. Useful for both advanced
and beginning artists. This site is also based on Photoshop, but as said before other graphical programs
can be customized to look a like Photoshop.

www.greyscalegorilla.com/blog
A great site when you are looking to understand Cinema 4D. Nice, detailed and containing videos to make
it more easy to see what the mentor is doing.


Thanks for reading, any tips or extra information is always welcome.

Good job so far. Wish you luck finalising it.

http://ww1.planetrenders.com/ doesn't load. It's the website fault as far as I can tell.

PlanetRenders has been having website problems for years. Idk what they plan to do, but I hope they fix it soon. It used to have a lot of great renders.

Kelly wrote:

Stealth wrote:PlanetRenders has been having website problems for years. Idk what they plan to do, but I hope they fix it soon. It used to have a lot of great renders.

This. Good guidance though for newer artists ^^! Here's a few more sites for good renders that I've picked up over the years:

- Creativity Encouragement (can find tutorials, too): https://vimeo.com/home/
- Renders: http://sneakybaron.com/index.php?cat=2
- Patterns/textures: http://bgpatterns.com/
- Tutorials: http://planetphotoshop.com/
- Tutorials: http://www.photoshoptutorials.ws/
- Tutorials: http://greyscalegorilla.com/blog/

Dunno if you want to include anything there or not.

Thanks I'll put them in once my WiFi at home is fixed

http://psd-dreams.de/ has a motherload of great renders, you need an account, though.

Thanks for all the links!
Updated the guide, created a new side-subject: tutorials