Saving the File in Photoshop 5.5

One of the advantages of this technique is that the files created are quite small in size, given that the image consists of flattened monochromes. Only one condition has to be met to maintain this small size: you must save the file in GIF format.

Here's how to optimize saving the image using Photoshop 5.5:

1. Select Background in the Layers palette, then click on the Delete current layer button (the Trashcan).
   
   
2. Select File > Save for Web.
   
   
3. Select GIF in the first Settings pull-down menu and check the Transparency box.
   
   
4. Select the Perceptual and No dither options in the following two pull-down menus.
   
   
5. Specify the value 8 in the Colour field and check that the optimized image is not too deformed.
   
   
If the image is too deformed, try entering 16 instead of 8.


6. If the background of your page is not white or has a pattern, open the Matte menu. Select Other, then choose the background colour for the page (or a colour similar to that of the pattern) in the colour picker that appears.
   
   

This is what the save options are likely to look like:



Figure 8: An example of save options for text with a coloured outline.


Then all you have to do is validate these choices to save your image in GIF format. If you want to maintain your original document, you can save it in Photoshop format.