Neon colors have become very popular with kids these days, especially for sports equipment and clothing.I have been working on different methods to match this bright trend on my scrapbook pages.
One of the best ways to match neon colors is with mists. Although most mists have subtle colors, some have very bright colors which are even brighter when applied heavily. I used Dylusions Ink Spray on this layout to produce a bright background complementing the neon colors in my son's athletic shoes.Another way to achieve neon colors is with neon inks. I used both neon ink pads and neon ink daubers to match my son's neon green shirt on this running layout. I found that both the ink pads and daubers need to be used heavily to produce a bright neon effect. For example, I double-stamped some of the green arrows across the bottom to get the bright effect that I was looking for. Another way to add neon to a layout is through the use of neon paper. In this layout, I added a small piece of a neon yellow patterned paper that matches the color in my son's shirt. This travel-themed layout also shows that neon can be used on layouts for topics other than sports and can be used in small pieces on layouts that do not specifically have a neon color scheme.
Choose File > New to create a new blank image. Specify image size based on the desired print size (such as 8 inches x 10 inches at 150 pixels per inch on a white background).
Choose File > Open, and open the first image (Image 1) to be added to the collage image. You now have the collage image and the first image (Image 1) open at the same time.Select the Move tool. Click anywhere within Image 1, drag from the Image 1 window to the collage image window, and release the mouse button. Image 1 displays in the collage image window. Image 1 is on a new layer, called Layer 1.4 Double-click the words Layer 1 in the Layers palette, and rename Layer 1 so that you can track your layers.
Close the Image 1 window so that only the collage image is open. Your Layers palette now contains a Background layer and the new layer that you renamed.
Import your sketch into a new Illustrator document, and set the opacity to 30%. Place a guideline in the middle of your artboard and align your image so that its centre is on the guideline. This guideline will be the pivotal element of your whole illustration. Use the Pen tool to trace the upper part of the banner on the right-hand side. 2 Hold down Shift + Alt/Opt and drag the line to copy it. This will be the bottom line of the banner. Select the endpoints and join them (Cmd/Ctrl + J). Close the two ‘open’ sides of the banner by drawing two shapes over it. Make sure nothing sticks out of the banner. Select all (Cmd/Ctrl + A) and go Window > Pathfinder > Divide, then ungroup. (3)The banner is now composed of three parts: top, middle and bottom. Select the pieces that belong to the bottom part and choose Add to Shape in Pathfinder. Click Expand. Repeat for the two other parts. Select all and click on the Reflect tool then, while holding Alt/Opt, click on the guide in the middle. Choose Vertical > Copy. to be continued
One large hurdle in particular faced by PNG's was Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE). Far and away the most popular browser, IE offered particularly poor support for the file format. However, with the release of IE 7 as well as several JavaScript hacks, this has all changed, and PNGs are more popular than ever.
But who cares!? And besides being one letter short of my favorite 1972 video game, what makes a PNG so great? Below, are three reasons why PNGs are the best image format since the Polaroid.
They’re See-Through! (Alpha Transparency):
As compared to the GIF, PNG offers a far less basic form of transparency. With GIFs, a particular color (or colors) is able to be saved as transparent, leaving colors either entirely opaque or transparent. There is no in-between. PNGs have a distinct advantage in this area. The PNG file format supports "semi-transparent pixels," meaning a PNG can be saved with a soft drop shadow and floated over any background. It can be used as a watermark on a textured or gradiented background. It can even be smoothly faded from fully opaque to transparent, revealing the web page contents beneath.
Summerour.net features a logo which demonstrates this function. The homepage layout called for a logo with a soft drop shadow over a textured background of architectural sketches that regularly change. Using a GIF or JPG would be highly impractical, because every time the image changed, the logo is background would need to be edited. A PNG, however, is floated over the image with a faded drop shadow, making the task quick, simple and dynamic. PNGs make the look and feel of your page flexible. PNG offers the best of both worlds. It displays full color photographic images, like the JPEG, but it also supports a managed color palette, like the GIF format. While the PNG will typically have a larger file size than the JPEG for photographic images, it does have a distinct advantage: its compression is lossless, meaning images never degrade in quality or suffer from "compression artifacting" which affects many JPEG images.
The results are crisper, brighter images that will on your pages unlike ever before.
They âre Self Optimizing! (Gamma Correction ):
Adjusting the brightness and contrast of images to look correct on a wide variety of monitors and operating systems is a common problem facing web designers. This problem is primarily related to different monitor Gamma settings.
Gamma is a method monitors use to distribute their luminance evenly across the display. Unfortunately, different operating systems (in particular the Mac and Windows) use different Gamma settings. So an image that is color-corrected for the Macintosh operating system may look too dark on the Windows operating system
on the Windows operating system
