Introduction | Creating and Opening an Image | Editing an Image | Understanding and Switching Between Layers
Cropping and Resizing Images | Moving and Selecting/Deleting Parts of Images | Adding Text
Altering Your Images | Rotating and Drawing Shapes | Eyedropper and Zoom Tools | History
Brightness & Contrast | Layer Styles | Filters | Saving

Saving Images - PSD Format:
If you are working with a very complex image (lots of layers, filters, etc.), you may want to think about saving it. Saving as a PSD file (Photoshop's native format) allows you to open it up again with all the layers and such intact. If you save it as another type of image, Photoshop will "flatten" the image. To save your image as a PSD, just select "Save" from the "File" menu, and select a place on your hard drive or disk to save it.

Saving Images - For the Web:
On the Internet, there are two file types for images on websites that are the most predominant: GIF (*.gif) and JPEG (*.jpg). The GIF format is geared towards images that do not need to be viewed with a large amount of colors. The standard GIF file will be of 256 colors or less. This is perfect for the Internet, and more specifically, images that will appear directly on a web page. The JPEG format is geared toward images of a "real world" or "natural" sense, such as photographs. JPEG images are generally of thousands of colors or grayscale. JPEG can hold up to 16 million colors. High quality, larger images stored in a website's "Image Gallery" may be saved as JPEGs. Photoshop comes with features specifically geared to optimize pictures for the web.

Select "Save for the Web" from the "File" menu.

Saving as a GIF File

Underneath "Settings," select "GIF" from the drop-down menu. One of the most important features in this menu is the "Colors" setting. The more colors your image has, the more colors you should allow your GIF to have. However, since you want to create optimized images for the web, it is best to use as little possible color as possible, while still saving a clear image. If your image has very few colors, you should change the color setting to reflect the small number of colors. The small the number of colors, the small the file size the GIF will have. If you want, your image can have a solid outline color. You can choose this by going to the "Matte" selection, and picking a color. Other options in this menu need not be changed. These are standard defaults for saving GIFs. When you are ready, click "Save" and save the image by giving it a file name.

Saving as a JPEG File

Underneath "Settings," select "JPEG" from the drop-down menu. Go to the drop-down menu with "JPEG High" displayed. There you can determine the quality of the image for the web. Naturally, higher quality images will have a larger file size. It is not necessary that images be extremely high quality. Usually, "Medium" is a good setting to choose. To refine the quality of the image, use the "Quality" setting. Here, you can save the JPEG as a percentage of the original image's quality. For example, 50% would be half the quality of the original image. When you are ready, click "Save" and save the image by giving it a file name.