Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Thing 6

After a trip to New York City over an extended Fourth-of-July weekend, I've been getting back into work mode with Thing 6, and experimenting with some of the image editing that's available "out there".

I tried the trading card generator on Big Huge Labs, thinking that it might be a fun way for a library to introduce staff members to patrons, but I wasn't all that happy with my product's readability, and I couldn't figure out a way to make the font size larger.



I played with some of the other widgets on Big Huge Labs, creating a postage stamp (yup, that is the living room of my newly-remodeled home -- finally on the market) and trying out their Writer--an Internet typewriter. There doesn't seem to be much in the way of formatting offered, but if no word processor were available, it does offer some bare-bones functionality, and allows you to store and e-mail the documents you create with it.

I also tested a couple of the options on ImageChef. There are so many options available -- no excuses for a lifeless blog. Wonderful While It Lasted is one; Kid Stuff images are others. My repeated problem is layout; I've discovered how to paste code into an element, but not how to tweak the code to make the layout look the way I'd like it to look. Images are too big or too small or would look better if they were laid out differently; margins are off.

On the bright side, when I couldn't find a bumper sticker mix that allowed me to use my own image and text, I found a commercial site that offered design features, copied the image I created into Paint, played with the background, saved the whole thing to my computer, and uploaded the picture into Blogger. I would really rather be gardening, but this is the next best thing.