Maybe you could like to have a look at a new site that offers, among other things, free effects for photos and text: http://www.picturetopeople.org.

Inkscape was one of the inspirations to release all of this for free.

It has been made absolutely from scratch with new Computer Graphics libraries, even the low level ones.

The site still is a baby, since it's online since december 2008. It means a huge amount of tools and effect will be added yet.

Picture to People tools are more flexible than you can realize at a first moment. Maybe you could like to have a look at the "Tutorials" section in main left side menu.

**Edited like a hundred times, sorry**

Wow, this site is pretty awesome! Well done!

I have a few minor suggestions though,

1. I don't think you should use the abbreviation "P2P". I think a lot of people know it as an abbreviation for "Peer to Peer" software, and seeing it on your site might be a little awkward. Also, the term has a bit of a negative connotation in some circles.

2. Consider changing the heading image. I don't think it really goes with the orange color scheme, and it has lots of ugly artifacts (especially the top part). I think the concept of using different effects for the words is a good one, but the 'fire' effect is waaaay too cliché.

3. The resolution limit is a little constricting, but that's probably something to address in the future.

4. The design of the site is really well done and professional, but your English is a little poor. Not sure how easy it would be to fix that... I'm only pointing this out because I think the site has a lot of potential and that sort of thing can turn off potential users.

About the bad artefacts in the banner: I have a good old 21'' CRT monitor, where these artefacts doesn't appear. Nowadays LCD monitors tend to "overbright" dark (almost black) pixels and gamma correction can affect this too. I believe you and I will remove the flaws when I have time.

I have several volunteer testers around the world and nobody has complained about my English. There could be some typos, but it's important to follow the grammar. If you wanna help, you could appoint some places where there is wrong English (telling how it could be right), so I will have a check and maybe learn something more subtle. Please send this to my email: picturetopeople@gmail.com.

Thanks for your opinions.

Nice website with lots of useful stuff. I'll play with the effects when I catch some time.

There are artifacts in the header image because it lost in quality while saving in jpg format. Try saving it in png or gif, maybe even break the image into several smaller ones. You should have a separate file for logo, and use image replacement techniques to fix accessibility issue (when I visit your site with images turned off the top is just white because all of the information is in the image) but that's in the web coding domain...

prkos wrote:Nice website with lots of useful stuff. I'll play with the effects when I catch some time.

There are artifacts in the header image because it lost in quality while saving in jpg format. Try saving it in png or gif, maybe even break the image into several smaller ones. You should have a separate file for logo, and use image replacement techniques to fix accessibility issue (when I visit your site with images turned off the top is just white because all of the information is in the image) but that's in the web coding domain...

No, dude. It's not the reason. This jpg was saved with 1% compression loss. Be sure I understant about images and graphics math, or I wouldn't be able to make the effects from scratch.

I don't think "alt" texts of html solve this kind of problem (lack of images). The images are a must. It's a matter of opinion.

Thanks anyway.

I still see the artifacts, don't you? I've never seen those kind of artifacts on anything else than a jpg, and from my experience it doesn't matter if you saved it as 1% compression loss, quality loss can be greater and it happens when you want to use jpg for a picture with lots of areas of equal color, jpg does much better in photos with lots of details.

That's why I said you should try png or gif, they are more suitable for pictures like your logo.

I didn't have exactly alt text in mind, rather something like this http://www.mezzoblue.com/tests/revised- ... placement/
and it's a matter of accessibility of your site not a matter of opinion. You can't force your visitors to turn images on can you?

Your website is about image effects and you might think all of your visitors will have them turned on but not all of your visitors will land on your website knowing what they will find. Another situation is users with very low internet speed, they often browse with images turned off but it doesn't mean they aren't interested in photo effects.

prkos wrote:I still see the artifacts, don't you? I've never seen those kind of artifacts on anything else than a jpg, and from my experience it doesn't matter if you saved it as 1% compression loss, quality loss can be greater and it happens when you want to use jpg for a picture with lots of areas of equal color, jpg does much better in photos with lots of details.

That's why I said you should try png or gif, they are more suitable for pictures like your logo.

I didn't have exactly alt text in mind, rather something like this http://www.mezzoblue.com/tests/revised- ... placement/
and it's a matter of accessibility of your site not a matter of opinion. You can't force your visitors to turn images on can you?

Your website is about image effects and you might think all of your visitors will have them turned on but not all of your visitors will land on your website knowing what they will find. Another situation is users with very low internet speed, they often browse with images turned off but it doesn't mean they aren't interested in photo effects.

First of all, I would like make a suggestion to all people who surf without images: don't use my site. You can just have a good experience there if you have a full navigation (but you will not need plug-ins). It's not worthy just go there and not seeing the images as I planned. It's a site about GRAPHICS, so for the last time: images are a must, period.

About the other subject: no, I couldn't see the artifacts as I explained above in another post. If I couldn't, the artifacts wasn't there.

The artifacts of my banner image urged from a color reduction algorithm I applied before and not from the file format; an algorithm you, of course, have never heard about. The jpg format as I applied generates no artifacts and I can use a perfect jpg image in this case if I want.

I know very well bmp, gif, jpg, tif, tga, png and a more dozen graphic formats are good for. I know exactly how they work because I know all their math and, by the way, I have implemented all of them more than once. My knowledge about Computer Graphics is not based on using some software, reading some user books or tutorials, or day-by-day observation.

There are basically two kinds of people involved with Computer Graphics:
- the user (the guys we suppose they know how to use the softwares);
- the developers (the guys who make the softwares and really know how all of it work inside; if not, they couldn't make the programs).

As a Computer Graphics developer for more than 15 years, I'm used to users of all kinds. There always are a lot of users who think they know more than the people who make the software. These users always try to teach me how to make my job. In the beggining, it was really very disapointing, but as the time goes, I learned how to deal with that.

In these cases, all very experienced software developer uses one of the golden rules for developers:
"Never, ever discuss with users about technical subjects. Never give tech explanations to user, because they will simply ignore it. Always give the user the correct information, but make it just once. Tell the user the truth and let him believe what he wants."

I will not answer this kind of post any more.