Chapter 17. Email and the Web
Printing photos is great, but it costs money, takes time, and doesnât do much to instantly impress your faraway friends. And to many people, printing is just so 20th century. Fortunately, Elements comes packed with tools that make it easy to prep your photos for onscreen viewing and to email them in a variety of crowd-pleasing ways.
Image Formats and the Web
Back in the Webâs early days, making your graphic files small was important because most Internet connections were as slow as snails. Nowadays, file size isnât as crucial; your main obligation when creating graphics for the Web is ensuring theyâre compatible with the web browsers people use to view your web pages. That means youâll probably want to use either of the two most popular image formats, JPEG or GIF:
JPEG (Joint Photographic Expertsâ 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.
Tip
JPEGs canât have transparent areas, although thereâs a workaround for that: Fill the background around your image with the same color as the web page you want to post it on. That way, the background blends into the web page, giving the impression that your object is surrounded by transparency. See Figure 17-4 (page 530) for details on how this trick works.
GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) files are great for images with limited numbers of colors, like corporate logos and headlines. ...
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