format

When designing in Photoshop what's the best formate to save your files in for a web page? I have been using PNG but I don't know if that is compatible with every browser.

Deonya, The PNG format is a good choice in and of itself because it can do a lot, but the BIG problem with it is many browsers won't be able to display PNG images properly. It's no fun making images that a lot of people can't see. PNG is still relatively new (5 years old) as a format, and Many browsers still don't support its features (such as transparency). I've got pretty current versions of both Netscape and IE. Netscape displayed a matte background in PNGs that have a trans. background; while Explorer refused to even load the PNGs that had features that weren't supported.

If you want to play it safe (and have everyone be able to see your images), just go with the old generalization that JPEG is best for photographs and GIF is best for graphics. For the most part, this is true.

As a web designer, what you care about most is: (1) file size and (2) image quality. Photoshop's Save for Web dialog box displays the file size of the image based on the Optimization settings you choose, and even gives you an estimate of how many seconds it will take for viewers to download the image for viewing. The 2-UP and 4-Up options let you compare the image quality of differently optimized images side-by-side so you can choose the best looking and smallest image possible before you save it. If you'd like a lot more info on this topic, see my tutorial,

A Guide to Preparing Images for the Web.