Photoshop Elements 6 for Mac: The Missing Manual

Chapter 17. Elements and the Web

Printing your photos is great, but it costs money, takes time, and doesn’t do much to instantly impress faraway friends with your newfound photo prowess. Fortunately, Elements comes packed with tools that make it easy to email your photos, prepare them for posting on the Web, and even create simple Web galleries. You can also upload your photos to popular Internet sites, either to share with your friends or to sell. This chapter gives you the scoop.

Image Formats and the Web

Back in the Web’s early days, making your graphic files small was important, because most Internet connections were as slow as snails. Nowadays, file size isn’t as crucial; your main obligation when creating graphics for the Web is ensuring they’re compatible with the Web browsers people use to view your Web pages. That means you’ll probably want to use either of the two most popular image formats, JPEG or GIF, but PNG is also an option:

• JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts’ Group) is the most popular choice for images with lots of detail and where you need smooth color transitions. Photos are almost always posted on the Web as JPEGs.

  Note

  JPEGs can’t have transparent areas, although there’s a workaround for that: Fill the background around your image with the same color as the Web page you want to post it on. The background blends into the Web page, giving the impression that your object is surrounded by transparency. See Figure 17-4 for details on how this trick works.

• GIF (Graphics ...