My header contains images of receipts of sports bets that have been placed and a bunch of hundred-dollar bills. I chose these images for my header since the focus of my blog is sportsbooks in New Jersey, which is related heavily to money and sports bet receipts. My target audience is looking to make money since they are interested in sports betting, which is why the header image contains hundred-dollar bills. I found the images on Google and on Flickr. I know that I am allowed to reuse these images since they both had licenses that enabled reuse. I made sure to filter search results that would only provide me with images that had licenses for reuse. These images were combined using Pixlr and free transform in order to create the header. I placed each image on separate layers in order to have the hundred-dollar bills image on top of the background image. I also adjusted the opacity of the images in order to create a more dramatic effect to the site overall. “A designer can control the transparency of each layer, group them together, change their order, etc.” (Manovich, 2011). It was very helpful to adjust the transparency of both layers since it made the image have more continuity. The top layer image of the hundred-dollar bills is blurred in order to make the image look somewhat transparent on top of the background image. I also rotated the top layer image of the hundred-dollar bills in order to provide the viewer with a more contrasting perception. My production process is definitely different than the production process of the single-layer bitmap image due to the use of multiple layers. The ability to adjust and add effects to individual layers makes a huge difference to any production process. Overall, I found it relatively simple to navigate and utilize Pixlr and I found it very similar to the interface of Adobe Photoshop.
Header image sources:
Background Image – “Governor Phil Murphy places his first two bets at the Borgata Casino during the first day of sports betting in New Jersey on Thursday, June 14, 2018. Edwin J. Torres/Governor’s Office” by Phil Murphy from bit.ly/2V1zP0e License: Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC 2.0).
Top Layer Image – “dollar-money-bucks-rupee-cash” by PublicDomainPNG from https://pixabay.com/photos/dollar-money-bucks-rupee-cash-3259363/ License: Pixabay License Free for commercial use No attribution required
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