Creating gif files for a Web Page? To insure that you get the smallest file possible (hence the quickest download time for web browsers...) make full use of the index color command. Create your image in Photoshop. Then when its complete, switch mode to index color in preparation for saving it as a gif. Don't automatically accept the default number. Enter a lower one. If the default is 255, try entering 165. If the default is 123 try 65 and so on. Look for the image to break up. If it does, do "undo mode" and try again with a slightly higher number untill the image remains relatively unchanged. The lower the index number the smaller the file. I've seen files go from 36k to 18k by paying close attention to the index number.
Mark Greene-mgreene@pecosdesign.com
Pecos Design-Graphic Design
When designing a web page your choice of fonts and the color of fonts is limited. To get around this, design a type treatment, save it as an eps (for example in Freehand) open in Photoshop, turn it into a GIF file and place that on your home page.
Brad Lehrer-bldesign@tribeca.ios.com
Brad Lehrer Designs, Inc-Graphic Design
If you have a web page that has several photographs that are in gif format, you're safest if you save them with a common palette. Otherwise, you may have more than 256 colors, and some may end up dithered. In PS 2.5.1, cut & paste the photos into one large file. Convert to indexed mode, and choosed Custom palette. The resulting palette will be a custome 256 color palette. Make sure to save the palette. Then you can convert each photo to indexed mode, and load that custom palette each time. All the photographs will share the same 256 colors, and there should be no ugly dithering.
Judy Litt-QuaLitty@msn.com
QuaLitty Design-Graphic Design
You can control tabs and spaces in a netscape webpage by using invisble gifs. Create a 1 pixel by 1 pixel gif and set it to transparent. You control the vertical and horizontal spacing by entering the appropriate values in the height and width attributes of the image tag. For example, to create a 20 pixel wide tab you would use the following html <img src="invisible.gif" width=20 height=1> You can use the same gif over and over again throughout all your pages just by entering different width and height values. This whole technique will offcourse become redundant when the tab feature of HTML 3.0 is implemented.
Maynard Demmon-imark@3rdplanet.com
imark design-Graphic Design
1) Another method of using a pixel as a spacer is to emply the HSPACE and VSPACE tags, which determine the area an image is allocated on screen. That way, if the transparency fails, there is only a single pixel different from the screen. It also renders faster since there is no scaling.2) Do your initial page design in a strong graphics program such as Illustrator, Quark, or Photoshop. Rather than letting the limitations of the Web determine your design, and making your page like everyone else's, take advantage of the powerful tools you have and make a design that is what _you_ want. Only once you have a clear idea of your design should you go to HTML and try to figure out how to execute your idea. HTML is an acceptable tool for creating final designs, but it's a terrible way to try to come up with original designs.
Thomas R. Karlo-tomkarlo@the-tech.mit.edu
NewMarket Ventures, Inc.-Information Architect
When designing graphics for the Web in PhotoShop and using Drop Shadows, choosing the wrong (Web)background can make the drop shadow look really ugly. To combat this, save your graphic with a transparent background layer. That way, when you decide you want to change the background on your web page, you can fill the now transparent layer with that color so it will look good on any web page
David Wier-dwier@airmail.net
The August Wind Collection-Composer, Songwriter, Poet
