When you first start to use a new software product the hardest part is knowing where to start. You get someone to show you and they go Click, click, click, and you are no wiser than before. If anything you feel more frustrated and stupid. The fact is that once you understand something it is easy, but it takes real effort to get to that stage. That’s the purpose of this article. To give you a kick-start in 4 easy steps.

Step 1

Go to “File” and click “New”. You now need to specify the size of your graphic. Normally you would have determined this in advance as you must first have a purpose for the graphic. Ours is a header graphic. Headers on a sales page are usually around 700 pixels by 120 pixels. So we can choose that as our size for the graphic.

Step 2: Choose A Background.

There are 3 options. The background can be a solid color, a gradient, or a picture.

To insert a solid color, these are the steps we must follow. On the left of the work area is a floating toolbox. Towards the bottom of this box are two small squares, one over the other. Click the top one and a color picker comes up. Click the mouse on the color required for the background and click OK. The color of the top square is now your chosen color. From this floating tool box choose the bucket tool. If you don’t see it, move the mouse over each tool until you find the gradient tool. Right click it and choose bucket.

Having chosen the color, move your mouse over the new graphic. Your mouse pointer turns into a bucket and click. The color you chose in the tool box is now your background color.

If you want to use a gradient as your background, you will need to turn the bucket tool into the gradient tool. From the floating toolbox on the left choose the color. This time you will need to choose a color for both the top and bottom color boxes. The top color is what your gradient will start with and the bottom is the finish color.

Having chosen the gradient tool you will notice on the top of the work area new choices have appeared. This will allow you to choose the style of the gradient.

Importing a picture into your graphic as a background is easy. All you need to do is open a file with the picture you want to use. Make sure that the picture is larger or equal in size to the graphic you are creating. With your mouse just drag and drop the picture into your new graphic. Now just move it around to where you want it. That’s it.

Please note: this does not work with Gif Files.

Step 3: Import more images.

Photoshop works with layers. Each time you import something or introduce more text you create a new layer. To the right of your work area you should see “Layers”. Click on it and now it will display all the layers in the graphic. Clicking on a layer in this box will make it the active layer, and you will be able to work on this layer.

An image can be imported in the same way the background was imported. Just drag and drop it into the new graphic. When you do this you will notice that there is also some unwanted background with the image. This can be removed with the eraser tool.

If your background is all one color, let’s say white, you can use the magic eraser. Right click on the eraser. Three options will appear. Choose “Magic Eraser”. Move your mouse to the part of the picture you want to get rid of and click. In one click it will remove the unwanted background of the picture you dragged in. While you are in that layer you can move this picture to where you want it by picking it up with your mouse.

Fourth Step: Text

Each time you start new text you create a new layer. This means that the text can be moved into any position just as any layer. Photoshop does not always space the lines of text as I like. I overcome this by making each line a new layer and them I can move them where I want them.

To ad text just click on the text tool. “T”. You can choose your font and the size of the text as you would in any word processor.

Now that your text is in place it can be enhanced and made to stand out. Make sure the text you want to work with is the active layer. On the top bar of the work area is “Layer”. Click it and choose “Layer Style”. This will open up numerous options. To get an idea of what each of these does just play and experiment with it. As you choose an option it will instantly be seen before you commit it.

You have now created a simple but professional looking graphic you can use on a web page.

There is only one thing left to do. Save it. First save it in Photoshop PSD as this will allow you to come back and edit it. Next if you wish to use it as a web graphic you can “Save it for Web and Devices”. This will create a smaller faster loading file for web pages.

Your new business will benefit a lot from various Internet marketing methods. But you don’t have to spend millions of dollars just to get some decent exposure for your company. There are ways to make your business be seen and felt without doing overkill with your advertisement expenses. Make use of your online power - through Internet marketing. Here are simple methods that you may employ to boost the visibility of your business without shelling out more than what you can afford.

Affiliate Marketing is the process of recruiting a network of smaller websites known as affiliates to drive targeted traffic to a website. Ad copy and links will be provided by the advertisers. You will have to pay a certain percentage of the sales profit to your affiliates. This is a good method to partner up with related sites to share the sales and advertising revenue.

Link building is a good strategy to increase your Search Engine Ranking. One of your goals should be to attain a high ranking with the search engines. One method to do it is through link building. This could be done through trading links to additional businesses that are connected with yours.

Newsletters represent a simple way to obtain leads, and generate sales. Sending out newsletters to your subscribers (those who signed up for your newsletters) will assist greatly in making a good working relationship with your customers or prospective customers. It should be short, consistent and written for a general audience related to your product.

E-mail Marketing is one of the best cost-effective Internet marketing tools, it stays as a very important method of keeping your customers aware of your products and services. Just make sure to avoid spamming or soon enough you will have to close down you business due to complaints. Make sure your Emails are sent only to your Opt in customers and prospects.

Articles represent a great method to incur interest in your products and links to your website. If you put quality content in the form of articles in your website along with your products and services, search engines will have to index your website. Getting your website indexed by common search engines means more traffic for you.

One of the better ways to expand your Internet network is through joining forums that mainly discusses topics regarding or related to your products and services. Actively posting reactions or answers and asking relevant information will build your reputation as that forum’s member and further your company’s visibility through your signature files. These signature files are those that go with your every post. Links to your website could be included in this signature.

The history of we hosting started in 1990 when the first web program was written by Tim Berners Lee. A great number of programs followed with companies creating their own form of services to offer web hosting which has resulted in the modern scenario. Today there is a huge increase in the web hosting industry. Although the term web hosting is very common today, it meant nothing before 1991 and similarly, there no ideas of the internet at that time either. However, to get the best from modern web hosting it can be worthwhile to research the development of the internet and it has developed a lot. Aside from television and radio, the internet is probably the largest technological development and there are over 50 million websites, making up the platform of the modern internet. If you did not have websites to visit, what would you do online?

A look back at earlier days

It was in 1962 and through the eyes of J.C.R. Licklider that the genesis of the internet began at MIT. A whole host of articles were created by Licklider which shared his ideas about the Galactic Network which described computers being linked to each other, providing information resources that everyone could share. The Computer Science program at MIT was also known as the Advanced Research Project Agency [ARPA] and this was where Licklider was scheduled to visit. Whilst there, he would tell of his ideas and try to convince people there was a demand for this form of networking computers.

It is always interesting to be aware of the political background at the time and ARPA was developed at the same time as NASA. After the Russians launched Sputnik, their artificial satellite, there was a huge need for the Americans to keep pace with their Soviet counterparts. The first form of computer networking came through packet switching, which enabled data to be transferred as tiny packages through telephone lines which was a huge improvement over the previous form of utilizing circuit lines that were solid. A great benefit was that this connection was busy only when information was passing through and this helped to free up room to allow the computer to undertake additional tasks. Paul Baran invented the Hot Potato network design when he was trying to create a package that would ensure telecommunication data to be passed in the event of a nuclear war. This design was to play a major role in the development of the internet.

Following on from this, was the process that allowed computers to talk back and forth to each other and there is no doubt that 1991 was a pivotal year for the development of the internet. It was already around before then but this year was the base for the internet to grow into much bigger things. A major step came when the National Science Foundation] NSF] made a judgment that the web restrictions that prohibited commercial activity should be lifted. This changed everything and resulted in much more scope and possibilities for the internet. What is now known as e-commerce was born and a whole host of companies who foresaw the benefits the internet would bring came rushing in behind. It was at the tail-end of 1991 that WWW or the World Wide Web started to be used by CERN and it incorporated Hyper Text Markup Language [HTML.] HTML was developed by Tim Berner Lee and it was linked to the website address or it’s Uniform Resource Locator [URL.] That’s a whole of abbreviations to learn but it is now synonymous with the location of addresses for websites and the World Wide Web.

Although its early use may have been mainly benefited by computer and technologically minded people, the internet was soon to spread to the general public, greatly assisted by its simplistic methods. Of course, as the internet grew, complexities followed but it was offering many new benefits and the business world was not slow in predicting a positive future nor was it slow in cashing in on it.

Web hosting was pretty expensive in the earlier days, but now it is quite reasonable, though a bit complex for a common man to decipher. The beginning saw big companies renting space on their server, and this has become a business now. The number of companies offering web hosting services is equal to the number of companies providing access to the internet. The internet has evolved with the evolution in computers. The way business is conducted has seen a drastic change with the introduction of computers and web hosting facilities.

There are statistics available to state that more than 35,000 businesses host over 100 websites on the server they own. It is easy to see that there is huge growth with this level of competition, and in the time this article has been read, there have been probably hundreds more companies who have joined up also. The NeXt machine had the glory of having the first WWW program written for it and it was a hypertext editor that provided it. A student by the name of Nicola Pellow created a line mode browser and this was to help others researching a specific topic to have somewhere to discuss. Listings of UDI, HTML and HTTP were provided by the server to enable this discussion. For machines that were not NeXt, browsers such as Cello or Mosaic were created to enable other users to access the internet. The World Wide Consortium came into being in 1994 when a number of companies joined to create a system of shared protocols that could be used on the Web and this moment can be seen as the true birth of the web.

Before this development, networking had been undertaken through a number of TCP/IP features but the people at the time had no concept of the future of the internet. Recent years much debate and praise to issues stemming from TCP/ICP protocols and its development, with much of the praise coming from the IETF meeting. More tools were required to continue the progress and further debate and conjecture about how best to facilitate expansion was discussed. An internet connection was vital and a number of easy to use products were created with this aim in mind. At times it seemed as though there were restrictions on how far the commercial activity would go but as numbers of people using the internet grew, the importance of the service developed. The more the internet became integral to everyday life, the more developments and technological change had to develop to make it all possible.

Some of the Information Technology major companies like IBM, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, etc. are getting into the market of the internet, and many tools, products, etc. have been developed to improve web applications. Web servers are made available in such a way that they offer the people access to the webpage that they require, and many other features which may help them as well.

In addition to tools and services, there has been a requirement for the makers of hardware to improve the size of their power servers to ensure the growth of the web hosting industry continues. There is no doubt that the way the internet is used today is drastically different from its origins. It may have started off with Personal Computers onto the client server and then to the Peer to Peer [P2P] type network. There have been abundance of different features that came to life thanks to the internet and these include passing of information and data, communicating via email, being able to log on remotely and many other useful functions. It seems that if you want it you can have it but also bear in mind that the internet is still rapidly developing. With television and videos on the internet being the latest features, it may be hard to predict what is coming next on the internet but whatever it is, it should be interesting.