Choosing A File Format For Optimization - Adobe PHOTOSHOP ELEMENTS Manual

• Standard Windows Color to view the image
with color adjusted to simulate a standard
Windows monitor.
• Standard Macintosh Color to view the image
with color adjusted to simulate a standard
Macintosh monitor.
• Photoshop Compensation to view the image
with color adjusted as it appears in a Photoshop
Elements document window, which is different
from the Save For Web dialog box. No color profile
information is applied to the display in Save
For Web.
Note: These options adjust color display only.
No changes are made to pixels in the image.
Choosing a file format for
optimization
The file format you choose for an optimized image
is determined by the color, tonal, and graphic
characteristics of the original image. In general,
continuous-tone images, such as photographs,
should be compressed as JPEG files. Illustrations
with flat color or sharp edges and crisp detail,
such as type, should be compressed as GIF or
PNG-8 files.
PNG-24 file format is suitable for continuous-tone
images. However, PNG-24 files are often much
larger than JPEG files of the same image. PNG-24
format is recommended only when working with a
continuous-tone image that includes multilevel
transparency. (Multilevel transparency is
ADOBE PHOTOSHOP ELEMENTS
supported by the PNG-24 format but the JPEG
format does not support any transparency. See
"Making transparent and matted images" on
page 233.)
A photograph suitable for compression as a JPEG or PNG-24
image, and artwork suitable for compression as a GIF or
PNG-8 image
Choose a format that contains sufficient pixel
depth to display the color information in the
image. PNG-8 and GIF files support 8-bit color,
which means that they can display up to 256 color
values. JPEG and PNG-24 files support 24-bit
color, which means that they can display roughly
16 million color values. Depending on the format,
you can specify image quality, background trans-
parency or matting, color display, and
downloading method.
The appearance of an image on the Web also
depends on the computer platform, color display
system, operating system, and browser used to
display the image. Preview images in different
browsers on different platforms to see how the
images will appear on the Web.
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User Guide