Optimization

Well, we drew it - no doubt about that , but it's a bit early to hear applause and champagne corks popping.

Since "weight" (size) of an image for the Web is imortant - the less is the better, first of all let's see what we can do to help our creature loose some bytes . Optimization palette serves us well for this purpuse.

What a choice do we have here ... Of course, our smiley is not that fat in the first place, but just in cases - here are the options:

Fig.1

1. File Format menu - Gif the only option we've got. That's why they call it a GIF- animation, da-ah!

2. Color Reduction menu: Creates color tables. Lets not to disscuss all the menu options here , if you are intrigued by it then refer to the Photoshop help files. Selective - our case. This color table produces images with the greatest color integrity. Selective is the default option. So leave it be.

3. Dither menu: Some images viewed on the Web are created using 24-bit color displays (millions of colors mode), but many Web browsers are used on computers using only 8-bit color displays (256-color mode), so that Web images often contain colors not available to many Web browsers. Computers use a technique called dithering to simulate colors not available in the color display system bla-bla-bla... Interesting so far? Those four colors we used on our smiley it's not reason enough to play smart - No Dither.

4. Transparency: Preserves fully transparent pixels as transparent which makes our smiley looks good on any background color on the Webpage we post it to. Checked by default - we should be alright here.

5. Interlaced: I do not even know what it is, better not touch it.

6. Compression: Lossy compression reduces file size by selectively discarding data. Don't ask me what data. All I know is that it can dramatically drop down the image weight if it is a critical issue. In that case the balance between picture quality and it's weight is a matter of trial and error .