Optimization

Photoshop today is the only known effective tool in the fight against being overweight and baldness. Sad thought .

Well, we drew it - no doubt about that , but it's a bit early to hear applause and champagne corks popping.

Since "weight" (size) of an image for the Web is imortant - the less is the better, first of all let's see what we can do to help our creature loose some bytes . Optimization palette serves us well for this purpuse.

What a choice do we have here ... Of course, our smiley is not that fat in the first place, but just in cases - here are the options:

1. File Format menu - Gif the only option we've got. That's why they call it a GIF- animation, da-ah!

2. Color Reduction menu: Creates color tables. Lets not to disscuss all the menu options here , if you are intrigued by it then refer to the Photoshop help files. Selective - our case. This color table produces images with the greatest color integrity. Selective is the default option. So leave it be.

3. Dither menu: Some images viewed on the Web are created using 24-bit color displays (millions of colors mode), but many Web browsers are used on computers using only 8-bit color displays (256-color mode), so that Web images often contain colors not available to many Web browsers. Computers use a technique called dithering to simulate colors not available in the color display system bla-bla-bla... Interesting so far? Those four colors we used on our smiley it's not reason enough to play smart - No Dither.

4. Transparency: Preserves fully transparent pixels as transparent which makes our smiley looks good on any background color on the Webpage we post it to. Checked by default - we should be alright here.

5. Interlaced: I do not even know what it is, better not touch it.

6. Compression: Lossy compression reduces file size by selectively discarding data. Don't ask me what data. All I know is that it can dramatically drop down the image weight if it is a critical issue. In that case the balance between picture quality and it's weight is a matter of trial and error.

7. Colors: whilst we've been previewing our highly artistic work within Internet Explorer throughout the previous chapter, ImageReady has generated us the image color table and such colors turned to be four. Amen!

Interesting fact - the more colors it has, the heavier our gif becomes, if you know what I mean.

Fig. 2

8. Маttе - Boring! Not for us.

9. Web Snap - same as matte.

All that is left is to save our masterpiece. From menu File select Save Optimized, in the opened dialog window indicate where (filename could be changed or remain intact - it's up to you) and click OK.

Copyright: Fool
Article source: http://www.foolstown.com/lesson_en01.htm

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