[Sticky] Forum banners

This may sound naive, but I'd love to have a go at making a banner but don't know how. Do I simply cut and paste a few piccies together and if so, what sort of prog would be best to use?

I use paintshop pro for tinkering with piccies (like Guy on a sheep, or the signature thingy ) I down loaded it Cough splutter using a torrent put in the size I wanted it to be (or was told it was to be in this case ) and found the images I already had my pc to paste layers ontop of a picture until I was kinda happy with the results

There are free image manipulation programs available without resorting to theft or dodgy web sites
Paint comes as standard with Windows but is quite useless for the task.

The Gimp, now in version 2.4, is an open source project that has created a program that in many ways can be considered as a 'free' photoshop. A competent and comprehensive product with a learning curve the equal of the big boy's toy! http://www.gimp.org/

Serif have a free download of older versions of their PhotoPlus product. This is a commercial product and they will try to purchase the latest version, though to be fair that isn't at all expensive. http://www.freeserifsoftware.com/ (currently web site server problem)

Adobe have a 'cut-down' version of Photoshop called Photoshop Elements. Well conceived and simplified, well suited to home and web use, with extras such as photo organisation and album management. Often bundled with scanners and digital cameras for free but can be purchased at reasonable cost http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshopelwin/

Paint Shop Pro started off as a cheap shareware software but has now mutated into a Corel-owned paid-for product. The 'Pro' in the title is quite funny as 'Pros' almost universally use Photoshop but nonetheless is a mature and capable package. As with much paid-for software you can try before you buy. http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite/ ... 4951547051

In the race of equalling or leapfrogging features of their competitors they can fairly be accused of selling bloated and over-complex software, and there is a learning curve. However, work on copies of original photos and have a play. Once you discover layers and masks there will be no stopping you creating banners of the equal of Chomley-Warner's forum banners!

Sound as a pound CW - I run a Mac, not a PC, and no Windows emulation but I have PS Elements on it, so I'll have a play and see what I can come up with -

No problem! The Gimp has versions for Windows, PC and Linux - and it's free!

Just a quick note about forum banners.

Could I ask forum users to be frugal with their use of signature banners please. There is a growing tendency for forum users to adorn their signatures with old game advertising banners. This isn't their purpose (which is to advertise upcoming events) and forum users are asked to use medal ribbons which are quicker to load and take up less real estate.

I personally have signature display turned off which speed up page views greatly - today I turned it back on to help a forum users with a signature and was horrified with all the junk people are dumping in their signatures. Hosting images on crappy photobucket seriously impairs the page load time for ALL other users - please use faster UK based hosts if you can.

FYI, forum users who want a signature-free, fast loading page follow this path: User Control Panel > Board Preferences > Edit display options > Display signatures > No

So, a weeks notice to clean up your sigs please.
Please to your bit to make this forum a place where relevant information and chat take precedent over space and bandwidth wasting baggage.