🚀 go-pugleaf

Before you EXCITEDLY send out those pictures to the email boxes of all
your contacts, PLEASE do them the favour of REDUCING the image file
sizes via web optimisation using your graphics software.
Sending digital camera (or scanned) images via email without first
"pruning" their file sizes by optimising them for viewing on the web,
can sometimes create problems for the recipient. For instance (1). His/
her email inbox gets clogged because pixs attached to your email are
huge. (2). Where s/he has access to Yahoo!'s unlimited storage, time
required to view EACH image still presents a potential problem. Web
users are not patient people plus, NOT everyone uses broadband! That's
why I wrote this article-tutorial titled "Make It Easy For Others To
View Your Pictures - Optimise Them For Display On The Web Before You E-
mail Them!"
Three Web-Relevant Graphics File Format Acronyms And Their Meanings
In case you are unfamiliar with the subject of graphic file formats, I
provide brief descriptions of the three main graphic file formats used
on the web, and which I have mentioned at least once in the body of
this article:
a). JPEG means "Joint Photographic Experts Group" : useful for
displaying "photographic or continuous tone" images.
b). GIF means "Graphic Interchange Format" : useful for displaying
images with large areas of flat colours(e.g logos, icons, and
navigation buttons).
c). PNG means "Portable Network Group": An improved replacement format
for GIF.
I Now Describe How You Can Proceed Below, By Making References To A
Personal Example
1. Load the graphics editing software on your PC (If you have none,
ask around for advice from people who know, about which one to buy -
and where . It won't take you long to find someone who can help).
Note: in this example, I use Adobe Photoshop 7.0.
2. Click "File-Open" in Adobe Photoshop, then use the "Open" dialog
box that appears, to navigate to the folder/location of the image(s)
you wish to optimise.
Note: In my case, sometime ago, it was a JPEG graphic of the front
cover of my ten ways manual (the Self-Development Bible?) that I had
designed for screen printing onto T-shirts I intended to print for
sale locally. The initial file size was 1.8MB approx.
I call it up into Photoshop using steps 1 and 2 above.
3. Once it opens, I click "File-Save For Web..." on the main menu and
a "Save For Web" dialog interface appears.
4. Looking at the "Settings" panel to the top right, I notice that the
JPEG setting (which can be any one of four possible settings for
"desired image quality" namely: Low, Medium, High & maximum) is
currently set to "Maximum".
A display on the bottom left of the image reads "JPEG (indicating the
image's file format), 1.653M (indicating the displayed image's size),
603 sec @ 28.8Kbps (indicating estimated image download/view time at
28.8 kilobyte per sec internet connection speed).
Remember : Your purpose is to bring the image size(& by
implication the download/online display time) as low as possible
without significantly losing image quality.
You need to understand graphic file formats to do this right. To learn
the difference between the different graphic file formats and when it
is best to use each one, press F1 in photoshop and click "search" on
the browser based help interface that appears, then type "About file
formats", and click "Search".
The results page that appears to the right offers - among other things
- links to explanations about different file formats. Also there is a
link that leads to information about "choosing a Web optimization
format".
Explore the links and you should soon be familiar with why JPEG is
often the preferred format for web optimisation of photographic images
etc.
Note: Another way to learn about the different graphic file formats
(such as JPEG, GIF, and PNG) and when best to use EACH is to do a
search on the web.
5. Next I click the graphic file formats selection drop menu and
choose "Medium". The interface soon changes, and the resulting image
display quality still looks acceptable. So I check the bottom left
display which now reads: "JPEG (for image format), 339.9KB (for the
optimised image's size), 133 sec @ 28.8Kbps (for the optimised image's
download time at 28.8 kilobyte per sec internet connection speed).
Doing a quick calculation, I am pleased to discover that I have
achieved a MASSIVE 81.7% file size reduction (from 1,800KB to 339KB!)
using this quick and easy process, without impairing displayed image
quality.
Now imagine if I had six(6) such files to email to my friends. Rather
than slam their mail boxes with 10.8 MB worth of picture attachments,
they will only have to contend with approximately six files totalling
2 MB altogether(!) - each of which would take about 122 secs to
download at 28.8kbps. But it's actually likely to be BETTER than that
because in reality, the simplest/most basic net connections today run
at 56kbps and higher, so that it would actually take 60 seconds or
less to view the optimised images!
6. Next I click the "Save" button to accept the optimised image,
navigate to the desktop using the "Save Optimised As" dialog box drop
menu, add "_optimised" to the default filename of the image and click
"Save" to store the new image to the desktop, where I will later find
it and send it as an email attachment to an acquaintance for his
comments.
Note that not only does the optimised image look almost (if not just
as) clear as the original, it also has the exact same dimensions, so
nothing really is lost - at least to the human eye, which is the
benefit of the lossy compression format called "JPEG".
Summary
Many people come online in a bid to quickly check their mails or find
some information or upload some data etc. Quite often, this causes
them to have little time or patience to "WAIT" for top- heavy web
pages or "fat" images to download.
As a result they tend to be "click-happy" - and if your pictures take
too long to appear - could "click away " to do other more pressing
things (possibly promising themselves they will come back another time
to view the lovely pictures - but often "forgetting" to do so).
If you really want people to take time to look at the pictures you
send to their email boxes, make the extra effort to optimise those
pictures(using any good graphics application) for quick/easy display
on the web.
Most good graphics editing software will offer something similar to
Adobe Photoshop's "Save for Web" tool. Play around with with your
program a bit, read up the instructions provided in the Help section,
and you should soon be up to speed with making your pictures/images
web optimised AND viewer-friendly :-)

Learn Photoshop Elements On Your Own...: http://www.psselements.tk/