Saving for the web in Photoshop

In this lesson you will learn how to save Photoshop files for the Web so that they may be viewed as rollover images via a web browser.

First, organize your .psd files and rename them so that they contain NO capital letters, spaces, or special characters

File Names such as Mike's Great Image!.psd are best corrected at this point in the process

Changing the name to mikes_great_image.psd will save you many headaches down the road

Use the underscore (Shift-hyphen) to simulate spaces

The key to understanding this process lies in the Layers Palette (F7)

Full tutorial here...

Inserting YouTube videos into your webpage

How to link to a single YouTube video

Go to the video that you want to share, and look for the share details section under the video player. There you will see 2 options.

Option 1: Video URL (Permalink)

This URL points directly to the YouTube page that plays the video.
Copy and paste this URL into an E-mail and send it to your friends.

Option 2: Embeddable Player

Copy and paste this HTML snippet into your website to insert the video player directly into your page. This way visitors will be able to play the video without leaving your site. You may alter the size of the video (by changing the width or height). Example below:



Copy and paste this HTML snippet into your website to insert the video player directly into your page. This way visitors will be able to play the video without leaving your site. You may alter the size of the video (by changing the width or height). More on this here...

Getty Images - Stock Photography Site

Every day people around the world see us on the front pages of newspapers and magazines, within multinational advertising campaigns, on the covers of best-selling books, in motion pictures and everywhere else images are used to tell a story.

Web marketing can be the most powerful tool in your belt. See how our web-ready photos and footage make it work harder for you.

ShutterStock.com - Digital Stock Photography

~ 1,871,344 royalty-free stock photos
~ 27,057 new stock photos added this week
~ 60,336 photographers

How does Shutterstock Work?
You can subscribe for one month, three months, six months, or one year - and download up to 25 images per day (750 per month). You can even continue to use them past your membership period. There are no hidden or additional fees after you become a member. We also provide special licenses for multi-user accounts, print runs exceeding 250,000, and merchandise and media uses.

Shutterstock Homepage

Stock Photography Images

iStockphoto® is the world's preeminent collection of member-generated royalty-free images, at the world's best prices. There are no subscription fees or extra costs. Just the best Stock Photography, Vector illustrations, and Flash files online, at prices for everyone.

Visit iStockphoto's homepage here...

Inserting Flash into a Dreamweaver page

You’ve created a Flash movie using the “.fla” extension. The .fla extension is the design format for Flash, and is a huge file that takes up far too much bandwidth to put on a Web page. So, you’ll need to compress your .fla file into a lower-bandwidth “.swf” so it will load on a web site. (This is one of the great benefits of Flash: when compressed, the file is very low bandwidth so that nearly any connection speed can download the movie.)

Flash gives you a number of options when compressing your .fla file that will ultimately decide the quality and the load time for your Flash movie. You can experiment with different settings to determine the best trade-off between size and quality.

With your .fla movie open, choose: File > Publish settings

Under Publish Settings, there are three tabs to adjust settings: Formats, Flash and HTML.

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Replacing a cloudy grey with a blue sky - forums

I have Photoshop Elements 5, and Windows XP Home operating system. I am trying to replace a grey sky with a blue sky. I have "the photoshop elements 5 book for digital photographers" by Scott Kelby. He describes on pages 301-302 the steps necessary to replace the sky in a photo. I have followed the directions and have been unsuccessful. Obviously, I have missed something important. Part of the sky is changed and part isn't.

Any suggestions??

Click here for the answer, followed by a good tutorial...

Replace clouds in Photoshop

By Rick Wetzel

We've all taken photographs with dull and uninspired skies. This tip describes a subtle technique that goes beyond cutting and replacing. I've chosen a typical vacation picture that is in need of my cloud replacement therapy.

Do this tutorial...

Photoshop: How to make selections with the magic wand...

Using the Magic Wand tool won't separate out a portion by itself (unless you don't plan on using layers). This is what I mean: If you have selected an area, and apply any adjustments (including using a paint brush, or a curves adjustment for example), only the selected area will be effected. This is nice, but as I keep saying, that will permanently alter the information of that area!

Do tutorial...

GetBrushes.com - Your guide to the best Adobe Photoshop brushes free downloads on the net

GetBrushes.com is a brush exchange site, featuring the best Adobe Photoshop brushes on the net and their authors, free PS brush downloads, as well as linking you to the finest Photoshop resources, tutorials and art communities.

It doesn’t mater if you’re looking for grunge brushes or tech brushes, abstract brush or maybe gothic ones, here you’ll find all the resources you ever wanted, and more. All of the brushes reviewed by us are rated and categorized by brush type, author, quality and Adobe Photoshop version, plus documented with an example of usage and a screenshot for each brush set, to help you easily find and download the right Photoshop brush pack for your artistic needs.

Besides that GetBrushes.com strives to be a community for all PS artists out there, a place where you can meet, present your own Photoshop brushes and other stocks to the world, discuss and share your Photoshop tips, tricks and techniques, and well… have fun!

Homepage for GetBrushes.com

Photoshop Selective Color Adjustment

Here's a simple 'Adjustment Layer' technique on how to alter a particular color within a photo.

Click here for tutorial...

How to use the crop tool in Photoshop

The crop tool in Photoshop can actually do much more than crop your images. As I mentioned in the last section, the crop tool can be used to increase your canvas size. It can also be used to rotate and resample images, and in Photoshop 6 it can be used to quickly correct the perspective of an image.

Let's start by exploring the most common use of the crop tool... cropping, of course! Open any image and select the Crop tool. To select an area to be cropped, just click and drag in your image and when you let go, the crop marquee will appear. There's no need to be precise when making the first selection, because you can edit your selection before committing to the crop. You can always save some time if you get it right the first time; however, the default crop cursor makes it somewhat difficult to see exactly where your selection begins and ends.

Continue here...

Raw File Formats

The RAW file format is digital photography's equivalent of a negative in film photography: it contains untouched, "raw" pixel information straight from the digital camera's sensor. The RAW file format has yet to undergo demosaicing, and so it contains just one red, green, or blue value at each pixel location. Digital cameras normally "develop" this RAW file by converting it into a full color JPEG or TIFF image file, and then store the RAW file in your memory card. Digital cameras have to make several interpretive decisions when they develop a RAW file, and so the RAW file format offers you more control over how the final JPEG or TIFF image is generated. This section aims to illustrate the technical advantages of RAW files, and makes suggestions about when to use the RAW file format.

Read full article here...

RGB vs CMYK

A common error when delivering images by clients is the delivery of images in RGB-mode.

RGB is one of the two most widely used color modes and is used mainly for display on monitors.

CMYK however is the only right color mode for print.

Read full article here...

Image formats for the web

Choosing the right file format to save your images in is of vital importance. There are three image formats in constant use on the net — GIF, JPG and PNG. Each is suited to a specific type of image, and matching your image to the correct format should result in a small, fast-loading graphic. Saving and exporting into these formats will require a decent image editor.

When choosing the format for your image, you should always be conscious of both the image’s quality and filesize.

Read about the difference between GIF, JPG, and PNG files here.

Understand how colors work in Photoshop

Computers know nothing about images, or tone, color, truth, beauty, or art. They're just very complicated adding machines that crunch numbers. Fortunately, you don't have to learn hexadecimal or binary math to use Photoshop, but unless you like heavily pixellated output and wildly unpredictable color shifts, you really want to understand the essential lessons about images that authors Bruce Fraser and David Blatner lay out in this chapter.


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Adjusting Levels in Photoshop

Levels is a tool in image editing programs (such as Photoshop) which can move and stretch the brightness levels of an image histogram. It has the power to adjust brightness, contrast, and tonal range by specifying the location of complete black, complete white, and midtones in a histogram. Since every photo's histogram is unique, there is no single way to adjust the levels for all your photos. A proper understanding of how to adjust the levels of an image histogram will help you better represent tones in the final image.

HOW IT WORKS
The levels tool can move and stretch brightness levels in a histogram using three main components: a black point, white point and midtone slider. The position of the black and white point sliders redefine the histogram's "Input Levels" so they are mapped to the "Output Levels" (default is black (0) or white (255), respectively), whereas the midtone slider redefines the location of middle gray (128). Each slider is shown below as they appear in Photoshop's levels tool, with added blue labels for clarity:

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