Photoshop saves images as PSD(Photoshop) files. When you are done editing an image, you must save it in a .gif or .jpg file format. Review Image File Types if you don't know which format to use.

To export as a .gif or a .jpg, go File... Save for Web. A window will appear like the one to the right. You can choose JPEG or GIF from the pulldown. The file size will appear underneath the picture on this window. Experimenting with various settings will give you different file sizes and slightly different looks to the preview picture.

For JPEG(.jpg) images, the main setting you will mess with is Quality. The higher the quality you choose, the less compression and the greater the file size. The lower the quality number, the more compression and the smaller file size. I generally find a Quality of 49 good for most photographs but you can play with the Quality number and see the image change before you select OK.

For .gif images, the main setting you will mess with is Colors. 256 is the maximum number of colors GIF will support. Lowering the number reduces the file size. You can play with that. The other setting that is commonly used is Transparency. GIF is the only compression type that can be transparent. If you want your image to blend in with the background(ie text letters in an image) check Transparency. Note: If transparency doesn't work for an image, you may need to copy the whole image, open a new image(File... New), select Transparent and Edit...Paste.)

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