Fun With Photoshop

I've been working on updating some of the graphics I use on my blog.  Some of the files were borrowed from assorted places and while I generally link back to the website I got it from, unless it was stock art to begin with, I prefer to make sure it's something unique to my site when I can.

The first file I played with was the WTF graphic.  There were several graphics I came up with and my initial thought was to simply rotate using them.  Then I learned that Photoshop can make simple animated .GIF files.  That wasn't something I've done before, so I figured I'd give it a go.  It was far simpler than I expected it to be.

The next file was a simple meter.  I remember during my Air Force days one of the NCO's used to draw on the Hummer's windshield.  A lot of us did it in pinch, since it was a convenient surface to write down frequencies and brief notes.  When the TDY started to get to be too much "fun", this one NCO would draw a little gauge that he called the "Fun Meter".  In reality the Fun Meter was really a crap meter, and by the time it went up on the windshield it was fully pegged.

I think I need to make this an animated .GIF also.

Late Night Edit:

Next Morning Edit:

I couldn't leave well enough alone.  The WTF graphic wasn't what I wanted and the Crap-O-Meter had a couple small issues that bugged me.  For the WTF I totally redid the background and had to play with the layers some.  For some reason there was some ghosting in the animation I couldn't figure out, so I kept playing with settings until it stopped.  Sometimes that is the best way to learn a program.  The Crap-O-Meter had a color issue with one of the faces, solved by saving with 256 colors, and there was some bleeding color from when I extracted the original needle.