Photoshop for the Web

This clear, helpful guide to using Photoshop for producing Web images focuses on Photoshop 4, with reference to version 3, and targets users who already know Photoshop fairly well. There's lots of thorough discussion, large screen shots, and a full-color insert illustrating several examples in the book. You first learn how to set preferences that decrease file size and how to load a browser-safe palette. Next you clean up and resize photos destined for Web output, adjust contrast levels, and improve images that you've output from video files and digital cameras. In helping you turn your existing images into Web images, the author discusses GIF and JPEG file formats, indexing, dithering, and browser-safe colors. He teaches you how to create GIFs from scratch and work with transparencies to create special effects. He also teaches you how to create JPEG images, fine-tune compression settings, work with gray-scale images, and convert GIF images to JPEG. In subsequent chapters you learn how to create backgrounds; add interesting, readable type; design buttons and other navigational elements; convert raster images to vector images; and use Photoshop to perfect Web-page layouts. Appendices discuss the Portable Network Graphics (PNG) file format and present information on third-party software programs that complement Photoshop and aid Web-image production. --Kathleen Caster