After you’ve done all your prep work for images destined for Web display it’s time to optimize them so that they’ll look their best, download their fastest, or some combination of the two. Save for Web is one of three methods available to you in Photoshop to create those optimized images. You can manually tinker with your graphics and then save the images in a Web-friendly file format. Or you may elect to jump to ImageReady and use some of the tools built into that stand-alone program. In most cases, however, Save for Web provides the kind of automation and preview capabilities you need right inside Photoshop itself. This chapter introduces you to this multilayered tool and its multilayered capabilities.
Quality or Loading Time
One thing to keep in mind as you work with Save for Web is that optimization always involves trading off between two goals that conflict with each other to a certain extent:
- Image quality: With a few exceptions confined to the artistic realm, you’ll generally want your image to appear on a Web page as sharp as it possibly can be, with the full range of colors shown in the original. The best quality image should also be sized to fit in well with your Web page design, no matter what size browser window users are viewing a page through.
- Download speed: Short download times are desirable, with no exceptions. The ideal Web page image should appear on-screen as quickly as possible, regardless of the user’s connection speed. Although fast loading times are essential when users have pokey 14.4K to 33.3K connections, you’ll also want fast download speeds for those using 56K dial-up links, 128K ISDN connections, or 256K and faster cable modem/DSL broadband links.
Unfortunately, you can’t fully meet either of these two goals at all times. The best quality images and the largest and flashiest photos also take the longest to download. Conversely, the images that download the fastest can potentially look the worst. But don’t panic yet. You can make tradeoffs to ensure that your images have the quality you expect and the fast download times that users demand. By choosing the best file format for your image, making some choices about how much quality you’re willing to give up, and tweaking your image with Photoshop, you can frequently get the best of both worlds. Save for Web provides the automated half of that equation. In fact, Save for Web has the simplest automation tool of all: Optimize to File Size. This option is tucked away in the Save for Web dialog box’s palette menu (see the next section for more on this dialog box). Select the file size you want, click a few other settings, and Photoshop gives you a file that meets that file size requirement.
Quality or Loading Time
One thing to keep in mind as you work with Save for Web is that optimization always involves trading off between two goals that conflict with each other to a certain extent:
- Image quality: With a few exceptions confined to the artistic realm, you’ll generally want your image to appear on a Web page as sharp as it possibly can be, with the full range of colors shown in the original. The best quality image should also be sized to fit in well with your Web page design, no matter what size browser window users are viewing a page through.
- Download speed: Short download times are desirable, with no exceptions. The ideal Web page image should appear on-screen as quickly as possible, regardless of the user’s connection speed. Although fast loading times are essential when users have pokey 14.4K to 33.3K connections, you’ll also want fast download speeds for those using 56K dial-up links, 128K ISDN connections, or 256K and faster cable modem/DSL broadband links.
Unfortunately, you can’t fully meet either of these two goals at all times. The best quality images and the largest and flashiest photos also take the longest to download. Conversely, the images that download the fastest can potentially look the worst. But don’t panic yet. You can make tradeoffs to ensure that your images have the quality you expect and the fast download times that users demand. By choosing the best file format for your image, making some choices about how much quality you’re willing to give up, and tweaking your image with Photoshop, you can frequently get the best of both worlds. Save for Web provides the automated half of that equation. In fact, Save for Web has the simplest automation tool of all: Optimize to File Size. This option is tucked away in the Save for Web dialog box’s palette menu (see the next section for more on this dialog box). Select the file size you want, click a few other settings, and Photoshop gives you a file that meets that file size requirement.
Optimizing Images with Save for Web
![Optimizing Images with Save for Web]()
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