Links of Interest

[Harlequin of Chaos]

Ok, so as people have requested that I place these up, here are a few links that may be of interest to guild members. I will place each link in its own post along with an explanation explaining the basics of what the sites are for. Also, if anyone has any issues or if you're confused about any of it, please feel free to PM me and I will help you as best as I can. If you need aid in going through the site I'd be more than happy to walk you through it. Again, just PM me and we'll set up a date and time when we can both be online so I can dedicate some time to helping you through this. I'm here to lend a hand! ^_^

So, on to a little description about this thread. Basically the links here will be those that pertain mostly to actual posting for IC, though it can obviously be used elsewhere as well. There will be sites for finding pictures, sites for editing pictures, and sites for colour coding. If anyone has any sites they think should also be mentioned here please PM them to me with a description of them, as I will have below, and I will be sure to add them (so long as they stick with the basic theme here). Your name, should you choose, will be mentioned at the bottom of the post if you are the one who brought it to my attention. You'll get your credit for being a part of this hopefully helpful process. Well, enough chatting, on to the links!!

 

[Harlequin of Chaos]

Photobucket

This one is pretty commonly known to anyone on Gaia, though I will still explain it along with some feature you may not have known about.

Photobucket is a site dedicated to photos. It is where people can create accounts (for free) and add photos straight from their computer to be used on sites such as Gaia. It is also where the vast majority of Gaia finds pictures for their characters when role playing. Personally I love this site. It has, with each picture, the url link, an image code, and a few other codes. The main ones of interest are the direct url link to the picture (without the annoyance of all the photobucket background, just the picture on a blank white screen) as well as the img code (which saves time if the picture isn't of page stretching size and you want to post the actual image).

Another neat thing about Photobucket is that you can actually edit pictures, if you have an account. You simply have to add the picture to your own cache of photos, click on the photo so it is alone on the screen and then hover your cursor over it. When you do this, at the top of the photo, a bar will appear with tabs such as 'Edit', 'Resize', etc. If you click hover over 'Edit' it will drop down with many options such as 'Crop', 'Resize', and many other options. Click on any of these and you are taken to a new screen where you can add borders, change the size, crop the image to show only a specific portion of the photo and even add text. There is a whole world of editing you can do just on Photobucket, though as previously mentioned you must have an account to do this. Sign up, though, it's free and easy to use. Not to mention all of your photos are kept on one site that is Gaia friendly (meaning the photos are easy to use on Gaia).

It's a good idea to play around with this site for a little while, as it is with most sites, so that you can get a better feel for it. Take some time and go through it, see what neat things you can do. There is more on that site that I haven't mentioned, but if you're curious I'd be more than happy to go through it further.

Note: You only need to sign up for an account to do the editing. Photo searching is free to people who don't have accounts as well as those who do, the difference is that if you have an account you can save any pictures you find straight to your account.

 

[Harlequin of Chaos]

Deviant Art

This site is also pretty well known over Gaia. It is usually more for artist (and I know we have a few on here) but it's a good place to find pictures as well. I find this one is great for anime as well as real life pictures, as a lot of photographers will place up their photos on that site. This one, as far as I know, does not have an editing option. It's more of a site to post up your artwork. Also, there are no handy url codes to use to get just the picture one a white screen (as there is with Photobucket). However, it's certainly a great place to search for art that you may not be able to find on Photobucket.

Again you can register for this site for free however, as far as I've seen, you can't really save the images like you can on Photobucket. Still, if you're an artist it might be worth looking at. Also you don't need to register to search for photos.

 

[Harlequin of Chaos]

Picnik

This is a site that I'm not sure if many people on Gaia know about, but they should! I will tell you right now I absolutely LOVE this site. It is strictly for photo editing, at least as far as I've bothered to look thus far. The great part is that you don't need to register to the site (which I believe is free in case you wanted to) in order to upload and edit a photo. The only little snag is that the image you want to edit MUST be saved to your computer (though that's as easy as moving your cursor over the image, right clicking and selecting 'Save Image As'). It's a pretty easy site to navigate and it's fun to play around with.

You are given a rather large variety of options, though of course there are options that they have only for people who pay (I believe it's called 'Premium' options for those who pay) but trust me, you won't need those options. You can resize the image, crop it, add a cool border, change the colour of the picture in many different ways. If anyone has seen the picture of me on the Member Forms that was done through Picnik (the picture that looks like a Polaroid and has my name on it). Honestly, I HIGHLY suggest that everyone take a look at this site. When it's all finished editing and you want to save the picture, Picnik will save it directly to your computer (where the original image was saved to). Again I recommend that, if you decide to use this, you take a few minutes to play around with a photo so you can get familiar with the site. If you want a character's name done on a post without any pictures with it you simply need to go to paint, save a blank canvas (which paint automatically gives you when you open it) then upload that as the image you want to edit on Picnik.

Here is an example of some photos edited through Picnik.
Picture with name of character
Name of character without image

 

[Harlequin of Chaos]

Text Colours

Alright, so this isn't so much a site as a thread someone created on Gaia. This person was kind enough to give us Gaians a little extra in terms of colours we use for posting while keeping it as simple as the colour names. I happen to love this and use it for pretty much all of my colouring, since the list is quite large. I hope that you will all have a look and enjoy it as much as I have. That thread also has some links further on down the page, which I will be using as well, and some that I have not mentioned that you might want to check out. As I said, it was a wonderful thing done to ease the already apparently difficult lives of us Gaians.

 

[Harlequin of Chaos]

Hex Colour Codes

This I'm not AS familiar with, since using all those codes gets annoying for me, but it's still handy as it gives you a larger option for colours. You just have to pick from the list of colours given (each one has a sample of the colour beside the code) and then use the regular colour coding for gaia (Text[/ color] Minus the space) and place the code where you would normally have a colour name. I'll admit I don't like using codes because they get confusing to me, but some people prefer it and it is certainly a good way to get a larger variety, should you desire it.

Thanks to Jade Ralden for bringing this to my attention. ^_^

 

[Harlequin of Chaos]

Tek-Ni-Color Gradient/Rainbow Text Creator

This is part of TekTek, that wonderful site that goes practically hand-in-hand with Gaia. They offer us so many wonderful options from creating Dream Avatars to neat bars you can post in your signature indicating an item you are questing. Well, they didn't stop there. No, they went further and offered these amazing colour coding, or Gradient, options that will turn any text into a wonderful and beautiful masterpiece of changing colours. Instead of one colour the whole way through you can choose several options, as I will demonstrate below.

You can have it under the 'Normal' tab on the site so that you pick a starting and ending colour and it will shift through the text from the starting to ending colour.

Example
The dust rolls beneath my feet
Time passes without a glance
Worlds could crash but still I stand
A life I live for only this dance

If that is still too plain for you, then you can choose the 'Centered' tab. Again, you'll choose a starting and ending colour but this time it will start and finish with the first colour but will shift into and out of the second colour in the center of the text.

Example
The dust rolls beneath my feet
Time passes without a glance
Worlds could crash but still I stand
A life I live for only this dance

Again, if this is perhaps not what you're looking for they have yet another option. Just click on the 'Rainbow' tab and your text becomes a dance of colours picked by the site.

Example
The dust rolls beneath my feet
Time passes without a glance
Worlds could crash but still I stand
A life I live for only this dance

And finally there is the 'Random' tab, in case you just don't know what you want.

Example
The dust rolls beneath my feet
Time passes without a glance
Worlds could crash but still I stand
A life I live for only this dance

Note: In order to change the starting and finishing colours for the first two tabs, 'Normal' and 'Centered', just click on the bar in which the colour code sits and a colour circle will appear with a shading square in the center. You need only pic a colour from the circle and then choose how dark or light you want it to be using the shading square.