In today’s post, I thought I’d review the basics of setting up an Adobe Photoshop project. I will also be discussing the basics of exporting those projects to appropriate formats.
First, determine how the image will be used and which mode the project should be setup for. Print projects can be set up for CMYK, LAB, Grayscale, Bitmap, Duotone or any subtractive color mode. Web projects should be set up for RGB, an additive color mode.
Second, determine the resolution. Although the standard print resolution is 300 ppi, resolution is depending on the scale and quality of the project. (Newspaper is usually 200 ppi.) Web, however, is usually 72ppi. Because web projects are susceptible to size limitations, due to speed of downloads, etc., it is important to keep the size of a file as small as possible without reducing quality.
Third, determine the format. When the finished photoshop file is used as a link within other Adobe products, leave it in the .psd format.
If the linked photoshop file is ever modified, use the “edit original” option on the drop-down menu on the links panel.
Under the File>Export>Export as or File>Export>Export for Web (Legacy). Online formats can be tiff, gif, png, and jpeg. Each has its positives and negatives.
The following is from https://www.grafi-offshore.com/en/image-editing/the-differences-between-psd-tiff-gif-png-and-jpeg/
TIFF (Tagged Image File Format)
TIFF is a lossless file format which is popular among graphic artists, photographers, and publishers. The information is retained in layers, which depends on how you save the file. It is also a favorite of printers because there is no loss in quality when the image is printed. TIFF is also supported by various photo editing applications such as Photoshop, Lightroom, Illustrator, Photomatix, Google Nik, and more . A TIFF file, similar to a RAW file, is extremely large. In addition, you can’t display images on the Internet using this format.
GIF – Graphic Interchange Format
The file extension GIF was introduced in 1987 by the American computer service agency and internet hosting company CompuServe. The abbreviation GIF stands for Graphics Interchange Format. For a long time GIF was very popular for use on the web. Nowadays it has been surpassed by PNG. The advantages of GIF are the support of animations and the (limited) support for transparency. A disadvantage of GIF is that it only supports 256 colours. The risk of losing quality when compressing a GIF file is large, especially for colourful images. Nowadays GIF is used on the web, mainly for simple animations.
PNG (Portable Network Graphics)
PNG, originally created as an improved replacement for GIF, is a popular format used by photographers and graphic designers. That’s because the format supports lossless data compression, which means a lot of information is retained when you save and reopen your images. PNG files can also be shared on the web. One of the best features of PNG is that it has transparency options. You can easily overlay a PNG image into a background (usually represented by a white-and-gray checkerboard), maintaining transparency and giving the overall photo or graphics a 3D quality. This feature also allows more efficient images editing; photo editors and graphic designers can easily apply their edits in layers.There is data compression involved but not as much as in GIFs, which allows you to retain a high-quality image. However, the size although compressed, is still more than a JPEG image.
JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group)
Used by most digital cameras as their default format, JPEG is the most common file type which can be used online or for hard prints. Its lossy compression algorithm removes minute details that your eye is least likely to notice to save space. However, the compression ratio is adjustable so you can select the level of quality you want in your image. In general, the compression is enough to provide a reasonably high-quality image without worrying too much about the file size.
