First post! Welcome to TDA! I'm Annaliese.

I like your graphics so far, especially your "Anything's Possible" blend. I have a few things to recommend.

One, try not to make the focal point (ie: the people) in your graphics have too much opacity. My example of this is your "Forbidden" banner. Bella's face is being messed up due to the opacity. This gives the graphic a bit of a messy look. To fix this, put the people (or focal point) on top of the background and soften the edges with your eraser.

Also, try to find some new, fun, and dramatic fonts. I found most of mine on dafont.com. It's free and safe to download new fonts and it really makes your graphics even more unique. This may just be me, but the text can either make or break a graphic for me.

Lastly, invest some time in looking for some higher quality images. It can be hard, but once you find them, the result is stunning. Try sweetandtalented.com, weheartit.com, and even just google HQ photos. Once you find them, you will be rewarded.

Other than that, you are doing well! Try looking at some tutorials here at TDA, and have fun with it.

EDIT: One last thing: In your icons, I've noticed that they're very exposed and bright. You may want to darken them up because it can make the picture itself hard to make out. It doesn't look as clear.

:::Annaliese:::

yay a first response! lol, thanks so much for the crit, i know i can def. use it. i will definetly keep that in mind, especially the opacity mention--it looks good in the .xcf that gimp has, but then it transfers over...weird.
thanks so much!

SECOND POOOST!!!
Uhm, sorry

Hey, I'm Marit, here to pimpp!

icons; Your icons are really nice, tough I think some of them have been over-contrasted and some onder-contrasted or something, so you should fix that. The cuts are good though

banners; I like them, they are quite creative, but you should almost never put texuters over faces, it makes them look kinda weird.
I think over hair is okay if it's like sparkly or something.
Also try to keep text off of the faces, because then you can't see the face or something.

sigs; they look nice, though I'm not sure if the first is siggy size

colos'; It's really pretty, but it looks kinda gray-ish.
Maybe try amore colorful lip color or something, to bring it to life more.

blends; I really really really like this The coloring is great, as is the consept.

overall; I think you should experiment more with coloring(like channel mixer and such), try not to leave textures over faces, experiment more with text and get image packs and try to do tutorials or something.


I hope I wasn't too harsh
P.S. Yay, another GIMP user!

- Marit

thanks soooo much!
in reply: yeah, i am def. working on the whole texture thing--i thought it looked kinda neat, but i look at it now like whytheface? lol thanks so much for the crit, it will def. help me out!

Thrid???!!!!???
okies editing...

Okies +this is really pretty,
The images are HQ and not blurry! – good!
- Although I would up the saturation on it slightly.

+This, is also good, but try to remove the texture over her face

Other than that you have good image composition, and nice blending.

Sam!

thanks!! yeah im working on the whole no texture over face thing thanks so much for the crit!

thanks so much!!! it's one thing to think you've improved, its a whole other ballgame to have someone else say you have. i loooove color.s, so yeah...i only put up the best ones though

Hi, I'm here with some gallery critique.

Yay, hooray for GIMP! :hifive:

Okay, my areas for you to work on would be:

- Image quality

- Composition/cuts

- Text

1. Image quality. When I first look at your gallery, particularly the icons, as they're the first thing that come up, I notice that a lot of the images are blurry. Not fuzzy, like all they need is a sharpen, but more like there's a very strong soft light filter on them, or they have been overblurred or smoothed. I'm not sure if you're doing this, or if it's the images you're starting with. Either way, your graphics will be more attractive if the images are crisp and clear, not smoothed to the point where faces lose their contours and look flat and bloated.

2. Composition/cuts. This has to do with what the focus of your graphic is. You should aim to have one single focal point on your graphic, the place where the eye is first drawn to. For icons, it's most aesthetically pleasing if that focus is not always smack in the middle, but rather a third of the way in from one of the edges. For banners, the focus is best somewhere in the middle third, but again not smack in the center. So, that means not way off on the edge, either. So in your first banner, the big face is great, that's a perfect position. But that smaller face on the left edge distracts from the main face and dilutes the focus. Or your third banner, it's hard to know which face you meant to be the focus, because basically the whole banner is filled with faces. Do you see what I mean? Your kitten sig has a great composition, on the other hand, that brown kitten is in just the right position, and the black-and-white one is not too far away, and is obviously more of a background image.

3. Text. Some rules of thumb:

- Text should be legible. Light text on a dark background, and vice versa. You've got this pretty well, but like on the kitten sig, the text is light on a light background, and it's hard to see in some places. On the other hand, avoid stark black or white text. Also, make sure you put your text in a place where there's not so much background interference. On your first banner, I can barely read the text because it blends in so much with the background.

- Fonts. Don't use more than about 2 fonts per graphic. You've got this, so that's fine. But the font choices you've got, I don't think most of them are right for the graphics they're on. Or the two fonts you've chosen don't really go well together. You just have to kind of get a feel for this, you can also look at Staff galleries to see what font combinations they use. Also, don't overdo a fancy font. If you have a long title, all in a really curly font, it looks overdone. Use 'special' fonts judiciously, maybe just a single letter in the special font and the rest in a simple all-caps font.

- Placement. This goes along with the focus discussion above. Keep the text generally close to the focus, don't spread it around the entire graphic. Like your Dream sig, the text is too spread out. Or the Forbidden sig, the text would go way better down near her shoulder, I think.

- Text layers. Text should usually comprise several layers, just like the images. If you have all your text just laid on top in a single layer, then chances are it will look 'stuck on'. Use subtle shadows, gradients, outlines, etc. to enhance your text and make it more legible and 'blended in'.

Okay, I hope this gives you some ideas of what you can look for. If you have any questions about how to do any of these things in GIMP just PM me, I'll be happy to help if I can. Good luck!

thank you so much! that will definetly be used--i never thought about half the stuff you just mentioned, but now that you say it, it definetly seems like a glaring "hello, pay attention over here". lol, that probably didn't make any sense. anyway, thanks so much for the crit, i will definetly work on it.

Wow, your Never Enough banner is so pretty =)

Erm... In *This* sig, you got the lyrics wrong... it should have been 'Find your Jesus, find your kubrick'. I don't want to be a pain, but I noticed and wanted to help...

xE

ahhhhhh oops? haha i thought it was find your cupid...and i noticed that i missed the 'your' right after i put it up and i was just being lazy. i didn't really want to go back and fix it but thanks for pointing it out...and for the compliment

Haha! I do that all the time. Sometimes I just delete the file... it's so annoying when you forget/mess up words ¬¬

xE

I LOVE YOUR GALLERY TITLE.
Ahem.
Sorry about that
So hey there
I like the cuts on your icons...maybe try experimenting with cuts which aren't only of the face? (not that I can really talk)
I like the composition of your banners Be careful with cutting the chin off or leaving it close to the edge of the banner as it can make the person's face seem wider than usual. Your text colour seems to work well though with your banners It's a little hard to read in some banners such as the 'time' banner.
I love your 'find your freedom' sig, aka your current sig, especially the text and colouring work well. Careful about her shoulder though, since it's a little transparent
Your blends are really nice, especially the love one,
and Your colourisations are jaw-dropping. Seriously.
Keep up the awesome work, and GIMP is fun of course I'm not biased at all
xxx

hello, my name is dala and I'm here for give you a little comment about your gallery.

So you're already good so far, but you still need much improvement, lets move from section to section.
Icons : Your cuts are good, but some of them just have really low quality, so you should find another HQ images, there are tons of them. You can download it from Image Packs.

Banners : I love your concept, though the blending could be better. Like in +this one, the flowers didn't blend well with the background. And also I found a big trouble in text. You should download many fonts, you can find them on dafont. Look at +this banner, the text was hard to read because of the colour which was almost similar to the background.

Signatures : I think it's your second best part of all. I love your signatures, even though on the last one, the girl colouring could be better.

Colourizations : I LOVE YOUR COLOURIZATIONS!! I have never done it, but you are AWESOME on this part. I think it's your strongest section. Well, the first colourizations looks a little bit weird for me, the woman's dress which are red and black could be improved, but it's already good

Blends : I love your first and third blends. The blending on the second one looks a little bit strange for me, but the concept is good. Your first blend is my favourite, and your third blends is awesome even though the text didn't get well along with the background.

So overall, I think you need much improvement on:
1. Text : Yeah, I see you used Photoshop CS 4 , it's great. There's many effect on that program which would make your text better and better
2. Images quality : Find another HQ picture on weheart it or sweet&talented. There are tons of them.


I think that's enough for me. Sorry if I was too harsh, and sorry if my English was bad.
-Dala.

thank you, dearie! yeah, that one banner keeps getting the critique but i dont want to take it down until i have something better to put up there ya know? i'm thinking i might, though. thanks again!

Hi! You've reviewed my gallery so I thought I'd pop by for a visit! OMG you are amazing as colorizations! W-O-W. I also really love your "never enough" banner. Simple but dark... beautiful.

I guess one thing you could work on is your font placement and coloring. A lot of your font choices are really beautiful, like in this banner. I love that! But the H at the beginning is kind of hard to see because it is...well, hidden. It blends in with the flowers in the background. I love the signature, I can just barely see that H.

But yay to awesomeness! I'm stealing your colorizing skill.

P.S. I also love your "make me believe in love" blend. BEAUTIFUL.

hahaha thanks, jess!!!