[silverbolt]

Hello all, so far this board has been very helpful. I am already to create and print my designs and I need your help. Below are some questions I have:

1) I have an older version of Photoshop but I don't really know how to use it. Any ideas on how to make the designs in my head come to life?

2) I am just starting out and I don't have much money to invest in a bunch of graphic programs, where can I get some cool/modern graphics for free?

3) When it comes to pictures off of the internet like from google can we use those? Not full pictures maybe but what about little portions or clip art looking pictures?

4) I found an old picture of James Dean in a magazine. Can I put that on a shirt like it is or do I have to actually change it?


Thanks to you all,
Silverbolt

 

[twistedlight]

My advice, learn photoshop, or a comparable photo/graphic design program. You can also get photoshop 7 for a pretty cheap price now that CS is out. Get that photoshop for dummies book, or a nice introductory book for learning the program. I bought a couple of those books that show you one step at a time, the cool things you can do with fonts and photos, with detailed steps, showing how to manipulate each layer, etc. They've got those books for photoshop/illustrator/image ready, etc. Go to the library or borders, or www.half.com, and get a couple cool books.

If you don't have a digital camera, you should get one. No need to use other peoples graphics, photos or art online. There are plenty of ideas that you can come up with yourself, and a digital camera, or scanner can get your cool ideas in motion.

A source of clip art/ and photos are from those clip art collections on CD & DVD.
They have photos/clip art/fonts/vector art/classic raster images etc, and with some if not most of these companies, you are allowed to use the designs for commercial use. I just bought image revolution 500,000 for like 20.00. These disks have hundreds of thousands of vector clip art ready for resizing and printing.

If you really see some cool photos or art on a sight online, email the author, and ask for permission to use their art for a limited # of shirts. Pay them a royalty if they'd like or credit them somehow.

Or draw some of your own stuff. Its not impossible.

As far as those old pictures, I think a lot are copyrighted, but Im not sure if changing into vector art is legal or not. I think if you did enough work on it, you could get away with it.

 

[DickTees.net]

I would recommend Adobe Photoshop Classroom in a Book over the "Dummies series". The Dummies books are more of a reference guide. Classroom in a Book is a series of tutorials designed to systematically introduce and walk you through Photoshop. There are 3 books in the collection... beginner, intermediate and advances or expert. This is what I learned Photoshop with over 10 years ago. This is what Adobe Certified instructors are required to learn from. If you want to really learn Photoshop, avoid the Photoshop for Dummies until you actually have a handle on the program... it's a serious crutch.

 

[Twinge]

3) When it comes to pictures off of the internet like from google can we use those? Not full pictures maybe but what about little portions or clip art looking pictures?

In general, even using part of someone else's work like that is not a good idea. Legally, you probably would not get 'cought', but I would still advise against it. One thing I've done a little bit of was using a graphic from Google Images and tracing the basic border around it (usualy changing it some) in Photoshop. This can be a fairly easy way to create new images especially when you haven't done so before. (Stictly, this might STILL be considered a derivitve work, but I doubt it'd really count in most cases.)

4) I found an old picture of James Dean in a magazine. Can I put that on a shirt like it is or do I have to actually change it?

Very doubtful. I would avoid trying to use celebrity likenesses entirely.