Photoshop Elements 4: The Missing Manual

Chapter 15. 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 and post them on the Web.

Once you get the hang of sharing your photos online, Elements even lets you send your photos to cellphones and Palm-based handhelds. In this chapter, you'll learn about all these sharing techniques. You can also create elaborate slideshows and mini Web sites featuring your pictures, which Chapter 16 covers in detail.

Image Formats and the Web

Back in the Web's early days, making your graphic files small was important, because most Internet connections were about as quick as camels. Nowadays, file size isn't as important; 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:

• Use the JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts' Group) format for images with lots of detail and where you need smooth color transitions. For example, 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 ...