Help me to embiggen my background images, please?

[marahmarie]

Title says it all - well, almost.

I'm using a narrow-width layout made waaaay back in 2009 and I still love it - but I don't much love its narrow width. I'm looking to pay somebody via Paypal or other similar method somewhere in the area of $10 to open up their copy of Photoshop and make me bigger versions of the background images I use on my layout right now. I've tried to do this myself with Paint.NET but I suck I just can't figure it out- the images come out grainy, fuzzy and weird looking. I've also tried most CSS tricks known to man but nothing has worked right or looked right, at least not so far.

Someone in my Circle has suggested I try running the images through GIMP, and I probably will if no one bites, but I'd just rather have someone who knows Photoshop help me get this done the right way.

Dimensions and other details...

Guess I should have mentioned all this to start with, but anyhow, this is based on what I wrote to someone on fiverr just now (with additional edits for DW based on my conversation with ninetydegrees below) along with my request:

I want the post entry space to be about 650px wide (measuring from end to end and including the margins and padding it is currently set at about 552px wide), 140px wide for each gutter if possible, and 250px wide across the sidebar (same as it is now). To edit or remake the background image for the post space probably means resizing the sidebar, header and footer images, too (because the top of the sidebar image currently attaches to the bottom right of the header and to the footer). I'm asking that all of the images stay the same colors and look as they are now and that the total page width does not exceed what it's at now (so in other words, I don't want a scroll bar on the bottom of the page because now the images make the page too wide to display full screen). But I want to keep at least one full inch of gutter on either side of the post entry space and sidebar.

Hope that's not all too much to ask...Thanks in advance!

Comments

[chomiji]

This is a basic truth of raster (bit-mapped) images, which are what most of us use on websites: you can only make them smaller, you can't make them larger without losing clarity.

The only information in these files, really, is along the lines of: there's a red dot here, there's a black dot there. If you enlarge these dots, all you get is larger dots of the same colors. Just as you can get more detail in a mosaic by using smaller pieces, your image now has the same amount of information but made up of larger pieces. The result is blocky and crude.

A drawing program such as CorelDraw or Adobe Ilustrator uses vector images. These have their curves, shapes, etc. expressed as mathematical formulas, so you can enlarge the images because the program recalculates all the math.

As far as I know, all you can do in this case is try to find a larger version of your original images.

Sorry! :-(

[foxfirefey]

Hmm, on one hand you are technically correct. On the other hand, I think somebody with good Photoshop skills would be able to...adjust those images so that the post column was wider, not by doing a simple resize, but by splitting the image in certain places and widening it out in the places where there is the least information or doing Photoshoppy tricks to repeat certain patterns. Alas, that person is not me, I am no good with image manipulations.

[marahmarie]

All the same, thanks for clarifying! I just learned something new from both your reply and the commenter's take on my issue here.

I'm thinking...

[marahmarie]

That if no one can or will bite on DW (I like to keep my outsourcing close to home) that I will eventually hit one of the Amazon or eLance type sites but word my request a little differently, based on both your responses: someone is probably just going to have to draw me up new graphics based on the layout's, so that's pretty much how I'll have to word that, I guess.

Re: I'm thinking...

[foxfirefey]

That makes sense, the graphics feel fairly simple and trivial to recreate by someone with skills (but with a wider width).

Re: I'm thinking...

[marahmarie]

Yeah *nods* I think so...and I totally grep what you're saying about expanding post entry space - it's a actually a very good idea, and probably the easiest way to go, and exactly what I've wanted to do all along, but alas I don't own (or even know how to use) any Photoshop products and my luck with Paint.NET so far has been just nil.


(But if I get no bites I might try Paint.NET one more time before I go and eLance it...I'm thinking now that if I split the image, then maybe use the clone stamp to fill in the whitespace as needed, then put it all back together...where I get caught up in my own ignorance every time is putting the pieces - or is that "layers" - back together simply because I don't know how.)