Photoshop Elements 6: 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 and to post them on the Web.

With Elements it's a cinch to send photos to several different popular online sharing services, right from the Organizer. You can even send your photos to cellphones and electronic picture frames. If you want, you can place your photos on a Yahoo map and share the map—a very fun feature. In this chapter, you'll learn about all these sharing techniques. You can also create elaborate slideshows and mini Web sites featuring your pictures (see Chapter 18 for details).

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:

• 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 ...