Photoshop Tutorial, Save for Web 3, Sizing, Sharpening, Saving, f8 Pro Photo Photography

So, the Lady has changed her clothes and in the Photoshop workspace the image is resized to 356x249 Pixels as we did in part 1, Sharpened with the the Unsharp Mask at Amount 50, Radius 1, Threshold 3 as we did in part 2 and now stands at a file size of 259.7 kilobytes. Time to 'Save for Web'.
A quick word about File options. I keep all my original work saved as TIFF (Tagged Image File Format) files either on the Hard Drive then onto Disc. These files are not compressed in any way so retain all the original information and as such are too large for Internet transmission.
Two other file formats are available for web use these are GIF (Graphic Interchange Format) files, ideally suited to graphic work like charts and graphs and text, or JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) files that were created specifically for Photographic image compression so is obviously the best choice for email attachments or web site insertion. The point is we must select the file format while we are saving to web.
From the top menu bar > File > Save for Web and get this:-

This is a not very good screen grab of the 'Save for Web' dialogue box in the CS2 version of Photoshop. Other versions may appear slightly different and Elements has fewer options but we'll try and explain them all.
There's lots of interesting stuff here so let's first have a wander round. In the top left corner are four options of image viewing. 'Original' just shows the single original image. 'Optimised' will show a single image but optimised (compressed) to the designated values (by default, a very high quality JPEG). '2-Up' will display both the above images for comparison and '4-Up' shows, as the screen grab, the original on the left, the very high quality optimised version next, followed by a medium quality version then a low quality version. Even on this screen one can just discern the difference between the three images to the right, notice the anomalies around the Lady's leg
Below each image we see the image values. The original being a 260 kb. file, the optimised version is only 30.79 kb. so we've shed a lot of kilobytes already and the image still looks quite good. At lower quality levels we see 11.86 kb. and 8.84 kb. respectively.
Now it gets interesting because below that it gives us an indication of the approximate internet download time for each version. !2 or 5 or 4 Seconds at 28 kilobytes per second. Most of you will be familiar with a Modem, it's what you are using now to view this website, it's the device through which the internet signal is processed and most modern Modems are rated 56 kbps.

Click on it and a drop down box will appear where you can select an alternate kbps rate. Click on 56 kbps then you'll see the download time cut in half. Other options are for ISDN or ADSL supply lines.
Not all countries in the World have state of the art Internet Service Providers what's more, the stated kbps rate is a nominal figure that can fluctuate depending on many circumstances. I think Photoshop shows a 28 kbps default setting as an average rate of transmission.
Now you may think that 12 seconds is quick but, for an Internet Shopper or someone waiting to download those stupid FWD photos that e mail in-boxes get bombarded with, it can be an eternity.
You yourself may have waited quite a while for this very web page to download. That's because the images I'm presenting are all Very High Quality JPEG's so that you can see the detail that I'm talking about.

Going back to main screen, on the far left are the 'Hand Tool' with which you can move the image around, a 'Magnifier Tool' that you can enlarge the image with, the percentage enlargement is shown in the bottom left hand corner, two tools referred to as 'Splice' tools that you would use when wanting to add Link Areas to an image that we'll talk about some other time, and a neat little tool called the 'Eyedropper'
Click this then engage any image. Wherever that little tool points it describes the colour value of a small group of Pixels in that area.

Click this then engage any image. Wherever that little tool points it describes the colour value of a small group of Pixels in that area.
The artificially inserted background to my picture has a colour value of 92 Red, 83 Green 83 Blue on the Alpha 255 colour gamut scale or on the Hexadecimal scale it is 5C5353.
The more you get into image manipulation the more you will find this information really useful.

Moving on, to the far right of the colour display box is a small button that, by clicking, one can view the resulting image in a 'Browser' that is as if on the web, before actually saving it.

You can select the quality level by using the slider control when, if set to 100, shows Maximum which for my image increases the kb to 58.62 and a download time of 22 seconds. The image is still compressed.
Enabling 'Progressive' mode means the image will download in horizontal strips slowly but surely. Now this is a good idea as the Online Shopper's boredom is at least alleviated somewhat by seeing the image appear bit by bit rather than waiting interminably for the whole image all at once.
'ICC Profile' is an attempt to standardise colour values between peripheral hardware, Scanners, Printers etc. and internal Software for example moving an image from Corel Draw to Photoshop or Photoshop to the web so on and so forth.

One can increase 'Blur' with a slider control. This means adding a touch of Blur to the image to eliminate 'Unwanted Artifacts' such as extremely fine detail in order to dispose of even more Pixels.
The 'Matte' option is for work with Layered Images.
When you've finally decided upon the all the settings you can click the tiny arrow top right of this screen grab to Save your settings.
The important thing now is to choose a File format and quality level that the image will be saved in.
Clicking the down arrow alongside JPEG opens a box of alternate File Saving options as you see left but clicking the down arrow of the 'Preset' box offers many more finely tuned Files to save your image.
Here are some samples.

Choosing GIF format opens a whole pile of further options that we are not going to go into right now, unless you want to play around with them yourself, (some of the options can be quite creative) except to say that reducing the quality level from, say, 128 to 64 means reducing the amount of colours on the 256 colour scale that make up the image by the said amount.
Finally, I can hear you ask, what is Dither? Well, it's something to do with how Ink Droplets are arranged on a printed page, it only applies to graphic images and GIFs but just for the hell of it the picture on the right is a GIF 32 colour Dithered image, next is the same Undithered!