If I am having to resize images this much, I will tend to do it in two or three stages. Resizing straight down to the small size will result in a loss of sharpness that is difficult to get back. So I would resize to around 50% of the final desired size and run the image through the Unsharp Mask filter at quite low levels – around 50% amount, 0.5 pixels, 0 threshold, usually applying this filter twice. I will then resize down to the final size, and run it through Unsharp Mask again.

Sure, when you resize the image you can use the ’sharpen’ option, but I prefer to have more control over my sharpening… and you should too! Just be careful not to apply too much Unsharp Mask as you can get unsightly halo’s appearing around areas of high contrast in your image. The best way is to use the ‘Lab Convert’ technique as outlined in this tip.

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It is useful to be able to expand a number of layer groups so you can quickly get at individual layers, then collapse down those layer groups to make it quick to move around the layers palette.

To do this, hold down Command/Apple and click on the layer group you wish to control. Then hold down Command+Shift and click on the arrow (that collapses a layer group) to the left of any of the highlighted layer groups.

Worth noting however, is that you can highlight multiple layer groups by Command/Apple clicking on the name, but if there are layer groups that are not highlighted in-between others that are highlighted, they will also expand and collapse.

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Here is the scenario – you have an image that you have colour corrected to your hearts content. You the go to ’save for web’ and disaster strikes – the contrast can go a bit wishywashy, saturation is lost and all-in-all your perfect image doesn’t look so perfect anymore! Don’t panic, just follow my simple step to perfect web colour!

1) Firstly, make sure you are working in the right colourspace. It’s best to do this whilst no image is open. Go to Edit>Colour Settings and select either ‘Europe Web/Internet’ or ‘North America Web/Internet’ depending on your geographic location. The only difference here is the CMYK colour profile – both use the same SRGB colourspace for RGB images.

2) Secondly, open your RGB image (you are using RGB for your web image – right!) – AND CONVERT TO SRGB PROFILE IF ASKED. This is an important step – becuase when you choose ’save for web’ your image is automatically converted to SRGB profile (which is more-than-likely creating the colour shift!).

3) Next, let’s get Photoshop displaying that image correctly. Many users view images in Photoshop with no ’soft proofing’ – meaning that Photoshop changes the way it displays colour in the application to emulate various production environments. The option is under View>Proof Setup. I work on an Apple Mac and change this to ‘Macintosh RGB’ – ‘Windows RGB’ can be used to emulate how the image will look on a Windows PC – I guess you would select this if you are working on a PC. It is worth checking your image using the ‘Windows RGB’ soft proofing method in certain circumstances – especially if you have very subtle tonal variations (colours close together) and you are worried about contrast. Also ensure under the View menu you have ‘Proof Colours’ ticked. This step is not essential – but I prefer to know roughly know what I’m getting at the end!

4) Finish up colour correcting your image (you are using adjustment layers for this I hope!) and save this as a separate version for web. The colour corrections you do in CMYK for print will be somewhat different to the colour corrections you do in RGB.

5) Now, the main part – once you have finished up working on your image, it’s time to go to the ‘Save for web’ option under the File menu. You might notice a colour shift straight away – DON’T PANIC!! The Save for web function has it’s own soft proofing colour engine, that probably is set to ‘uncompensated colour’. Change this by clicking on the arrow at the top right of the save for web window – and select ‘Use document colour profile’. Now you have got this selected you should notice the colours change in the preview and if everything has been followed they should now be pretty much exactly the same as your original image in Photoshop!

Pretty simple really – if you have problems, it will more than likely be that your image hasn’t been converted to SRGB BEFORE using the Save for web function. This is the process I follow when working with web images.

You just have to remember to change your colour settings depending if you are working on print jobs or Internet jobs – I tend to do this BEFORE I start working on an image as soon as I start Photoshop (in-fact, because I’m lazy I have an action setup to change between the two!).

It must also be noted that even amongst the same screens (with even the same settings!) colours can vary quite wildly. Everyone has their screens setup to their preferences with different colour, contrast and brightness settings, so you have to be a little cautious with low contrast images (eg subtle tones of grey) as I’ve found that these can be lost, especially on Windows systems.

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This is an easy little tip to remember – instead of the long winded way detailed above, simply create a solid fill layer – its on the adjustment layers menu at the bottom of the layers palette. Once in place, get rid of the layer mask that is automatically created.

You have now created a flexible background that will fill any dimension of canvas (if you remove the layer mask as detailed above). It is much quicker to edit the colour – just double click on the colour chip in the layers palette. It also takes up less memory, and applies much quicker than selecting a large canvas and filling it with colour. The final advantage is that it takes up less memory, which is always an good news when you are working in Photoshop!

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When you open a GIF in Photoshop, it opens it in Indexed colour, not RGB. This is not surprising, as GIF image compression works by reducing the number of colours down to reduce file size. However, the real trouble starts when you want to resize that image – the quality is awful!

Remember to put your image back into the full RGB colourspace before you resize it, it really will make the world of difference! Obviously, resizing image up always reduces quality, but if you are a web developer, often you just need to reduce down the size of a GIF a bit to make it fit in, and can’t put your hands on the last full uncompressed editable file!

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