Two stories of a free bio from beginning to end.

Some of you already know the talented Jennifer, webmaster and owner of www.bfwdesigns.com.

Back in March I hooked up with her through Digital Women when I answered a query on the listserve about her client's logo. That mission accomplished, I asked her if she had a bio pic of herself that she would like any work done to. She sent me the pic below left, with a note that it was taken at Christmas time. It was a beautifully clear, but rather dark and huge huge HUGE jpg. Took up more than my 21" monitor could show, and was 585k – over half a meg!

Well obviously Jennifer would never intend it for her bio pic, but she let me go ahead and play with it to my heart's content. I ended up with this beauty, fit for a webmaster extraordinaire:

So now she reaps the benefit of establishing that extra bit of trust from people who can put a face with her company, plus she brands into people's minds her website url and look. Subtlty at its finest!

What's that? Did I hear you say corny? Okay then, how about one of these renditions:

    Oops, facing the wrong way!

  Voila! Oh, site colors clash?

  Okay, that better? What, too big?

Whew, is that about right, now? Oh, this brings up a great point. Lots of times people try to fit a large picture into a small area. They upload it, select it, grab those sizing handles and tweak away. Problem is, you still have the same amount of pixels, but now they're being squished and squashed into an area that cannot accomodate them comfortably. The result? Distortion, fuzziness, jaggies, just out of whack. And containing more filesize than is needed. The proper thing to do is to resample the pic, not just resize it. It's those fine points I delight in, really. Makes me all warm and fuzzy inside.

Here's a cool thing. I made the background transparent, so she can be popped onto any color or pattern and won't have a halo of color or that white square around it. Of course, if she wants a halo, that can be arranged!

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Let's do one more example. These are so fun, don't you think?   Okay, Donna's photo was old, torn, dark and miscolored --and very large, though I scaled it down to show here.

And below you will see a closeup view of what I was really working with. Note the torn paper of the photo, below the eye. Now on the second closeup, I used a feature called 'auto color' which sometimes helps to restore some equilibrium to a photo -- but in this case, it only brought out more imperfections. The third one is the goal I was after: smoother, truer, prettier!

 

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And the finals: Two looks for two different purposes. The first one, a neutral bio for use on other's websites, and the purple one I created to match her own website.

    

I think you get the idea by now. There isn't much that cannot be done! All you and I have to do is communicate about what you want, and it's a done deal  :)

You can X out of this window and be back to where you started. Thanks for coming. Oh, wait, before you go, if you have a sec, would you hop on over to desktops and fill out a quickie survey to let me know if another of my ideas has any merit? No name or email info is required, just four quick questions. I would appreciate it, and I thank you.

Cheers,