There are many free header graphics available on the Internet that you can use to create your own unique header graphic for your site. You can grab some of them for free here: http://www.freenichegraphics.com/ or just do a search for free header graphics on any search engine and you will see plenty of places where you can find free header graphics. Once you have downloaded and saved them to your computer, now is the time to customise them for your own use.
Use an easy graphics editor program like GFX writer to create amazing new graphics for your site. Here follows some tips on how to customise your header graphic with the GFX writer
Open up the program, and select: New Project. Click on “Header Graphic”, then select: Insert Picture, Header Graphic. Then select the header graphic that you want to customise.
For my own purposes, I have selected a header graphic for an organic gardening site. I am now going to add text and other effects to this graphic.
On the right hand side of the software where it says “Enter Your Text Here” I input the text “Organic Vegetable Gardening as the main header text. By clicking on Insert Text, the software will now place the text I just entered onto my header graphic.
I then select the text that I just entered by clicking on it. You will see it has a little box drawn around it when it is selected. You will also see some boxes with new features appearing on the righthand side.
These new features will allow you to change the way your text looks. More about that later. For now, we want to select the font that we are going to use, the size and the color of the main header text.
I want to use a font called Apple Butter for my main text. I want the size to be 34 and the colour to be Green. So, in the font section I make the selections by changing “Font Family”to Apple Butter, “Font Size” to 34, and “Font Style” I choose green by clicking on the little color palette and selecting the color Green. Make sure that your text is selected (the the little selection box is showing around it) otherwise your changes won’t show up.
Ok, my header text is now the size and font that I want it, it is also green. To add some texture to it, I want to give it a border around the text, as well as give it a bit of a shadow. So, I select the text again, I select “Styles” and “Border Text”. You can now see that there is a border around the outside of the text.
I now want to select the color that I want the border around my text to be. So, I select the text again, Select “Styles”, and select “Border Effect”, “Border Color”, and then select Yellow. This now adds a yellow border around my text.
I also want to add a shadow to it so I select “Styles”, “Text Shadow”. This then adds a shadow to my text to give it an interesting effect. You can drag to text to anywhere you want it to be on the header graphic by selecting it with a left click and holding it until it is in the position that you want.
Now I want to add some more smaller text to my graphic. The text I want to use is: Grow your own organic vegetables which I enter into the text tool. I click on “Insert Text” and it now adds it to my header graphic. Because of the fact that the changes I did to my main text is still in effect, I have to change it to the way I want to look for the second heading which I need to be a bit smaller, different font etc.
o, I select the text that I just added, and then select “Font Family”: All hooked up, font size 18. I want it in the center of the graphic so I drag it to position it where I want it. I also want to change the way it looks by making use of the tools on the right hand side of the screen. So, I select the text to get the screen, then select: Negative. This tool creates a new image with the changes that you wanted applied to it. It keeps your original so that you don’t lose your settings in case you do not like the changes that you made to it. You will see the new image with your changes appear at the top of your graphic.
If you like the changes, delete the original and drag your changed text to where you want itf. Otherwise just delete the changes and try something else. In this case, this is the change that I wanted so I am going to delete the original, and use the new one. I drag to text to where I want it to be in the center. This is all I want done to this header so I am now going to save my finished product. I created a folder for it where I wanted it saved, so I click on “Project”, Save Project, then browse to the folder where I want it saved, and it gets saved as a gfx file. If I later decide that I want to make more changes to it, I can just open that file and make whatever changes I want.
I also now need to export my image as a jpg graphic so that I can use it in a web page. So, I select: “Export Image”, Export Image as, JpegImage*jpg, then browse to the folder where I want it saved, and save it as header.jpg.
The header graphic is now ready for me to incorporate as a header graphic in my web page.
This is just a simple example of what can be achieved by using a graphics writer or editor such as GFX Writer. It is simple and easy to make plain graphics into stunning header graphics that will capture your visitor’s attention. This whole process takes only a few minutes and it helps your graphics stand out from the crowd. The GFX Writer is a simple but potent software program that does not have a steep learning curve in order for you to turn out amazing graphics.
It can also be used to make stunning ebook covers, box covers, and software covers which I will cover in a next tutorial.
