How to export images from Photoshop for print web & social media

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Smart Objects 9:03
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Course info

93 lessons / 12 hours 20 projects Certificate of achievement

Overview

Course Overview

Hi there, my name is Dan Scott. I am an Adobe Certified Instructor (ACI) for Photoshop. 

In this course I will teach you everything you need to know about getting started with Photoshop.  

This course is for beginners. You do not need any previous knowledge of Photoshop, photography or design. We will start right at the beginning and work our way through step by step. 

You will learn the Photoshop 'secret sauce' whereby we will magically enhance our background and when necessary completely remove people from images.

By the end of this course you'll posess super skills! 
  • Learn the skills to mask anything… including the dreaded hair. 
  • Using your amazing new masking skills, you will be able to clearcut images.
  • You will learn how to make type interactive. 
  • Together we will look at popular current visual styles and learn the tools and tricks necessary to recreate them. 
  • There is a fun section where you will learn how to distort, transform and manipulate images
  • We will create our own graphics using simple techniques from scratch. 
  • I will teach you to retouch photographs like a professional.. 
  • Finally - any good Photoshop user should know how to put an island inside a bottle! 

There are exercise files available to download so that you can follow along with me in the videos. There are lots of assignments I will set so that you can practice the skills you have learned. 

If you have never opened Photoshop before or you have already opened Photoshop and are struggling with the basics, follow me and together we will learn how to make beautiful images using Photoshop.

Course duration 8 hours 35 mins + your study.

Get the completed files here.


Awarded the Best Photoshop Course by Learnopoly in 2023

Daniel Scott

Daniel Scott

Founder of Bring Your Own Laptop & Chief Instructor

instructor

I discovered the world of design as an art student when I stumbled upon a lab full of green & blue iMac G3’s. My initial curiosity around using the computer to create ‘art’ developed into a full-blown passion, eventually leading me to become a digital designer and founder of Bring Your Own Laptop.

Sharing and teaching are a huge part of who I am. As a certified Adobe instructor, I've had the honor of winning multiple Adobe teaching awards at their annual MAX conference. I see Bring Your Own Laptop as the supportive community I wished for when I was first starting out and intimidated by design. Through teaching, I hope to bring others along for the ride and empower my students to bring their stories, labors of love, and art into the world.
True to my Kiwi roots, I've lived in many places, and currently, I reside in Ireland with my wife and kids.

Certificates

We’re awarding certificates for this course!

Check out the How to earn your certificate video for instructions on how to earn yours and click the available certificate levels below for more information.

Downloads & Exercise files

Download Exercise Files

Transcript

Hi there, this video we're going to look at exporting a few different ways. We're going to look at print, then we're going to look at social and web, and then we'll look at exporting for other Adobe products. You're sharing it between your Photoshop document, between say Illustrator, InDesign, After Effects. Let's start with Print. 
We made this earlier in the course. We want to get this out to our printer. Best way to give it to them, instead of a JPEG, there's something called a PDF. I don't have to explain, you probably know what a PDF is, but to get it out of Photoshop, go to 'File', and we go to 'Save As'. It's a weird kind of place for it. And down here, we want to find 'Photoshop PDF'. I'm going to stick it on to my 'Desktop'. I'm going to give it a name, this is my 'All Stars'. I put the date backwards often when I'm sending things out. So if there's any amends it's got some sort of kind of code on it, so I know which version is what, and which version the amends were made to. The nice thing about this - I'm going to click on 'Save' - it's going to freak out a little bit, it's going to open up a PDF document. All you need to do is set it to 'High Quality Print', and turn Preserve Photoshop Capabilities 'off'. You turn this off because, basically with this on, it's just a Photoshop document, it's not really ready for print. File size is huge, and it keeps in the PDF, lots of detail that the printer just doesn't need. 
So let's turn it off. Let's click 'Save PDF', and that now, on my desktop should be, on my desktop, 'All Stars. pdf', it's small enough. You can see it's only 1.7 Megabytes, and that can be sent to a printer. Now let's say I want to send something else to print, but I just want, instead of a PDF, they've asked for a JPEG. This is pretty easy, I'm going to do it to this option we've got here. Made it, I want to send it out to my printer, and they just want a JPEG. When you go for a Print JPEG, it's different from a Web JPEG. They have slight variances, they look the same, but one has a lot more data, like this one here is going to have a lot more as a print document. 
So to do it let's go to 'File', 'Save As'. And in here let's pick 'JPEG'. Just the JPEG one, not any of the other fancy ones, just want the plain old JPEG. Let's stick it on my "Desktop', I'm going to call this one 'Bottle Island'. And if you don't like the dates backwards, just a v1, v2 works just as good. Now if this is going to a printer, say I'm a photographer, I've got this looking perfect, I probably want to crank this up to it as largest file as I can. It's going to make the file size bigger, but it's going to retain a lot of the quality, that I've done and put into my Photoshop document. 
So a PDF is the all round-- just send a PDF, it's easy, it's emailable, the file sizes are small. And what you don't know is that it still retains a lot of the vector, that's in some of, say the logos and text. So will print nicer, but if you just have images, a JPEG will print just as good, because there is no vector, there is no logos and text to keep that crisp edge on. As long as when you're saving that JPEG, you use the 'File', 'Save As'. Not the 'File', 'Export', 'Save for Web', or 'Export As', which we'll do in a second. Just make sure that quality slider is dragged to the top. 
So that's the Print, let's look at going out for Social or Web. So we've got this object here, and we want to send this out to a website. And they've given us a specific size we need to use. We looked at this before, we're going to go to 'Image', 'Image Size'. At the moment it's way too big, it's becoming quite a big file, and it doesn't need to be this big, it's just way too big. So I'm going to make it-- they've asked for it to be no more than 1500 pixels wide. So I've switched to 'Pixels', put in this width, clicked 'OK'. Now I want to save it as one of two options. If I want this background in, it’s going to work best as a JPEG. JPEGs are great for quality, and they keep the file size really small. The one thing they don't do though is transparency. 
If I want this background off and I want, just the model on a transparent background, this only happens generally when you're going to a website and they want to be able to see through to other parts of the website, this kind of part to be invisible. So let's look at both, so with it on, let's go to 'File', 'Export'. We’re going to send a JPEG, but we're going to do it the proper way for Web. We're going to use the Export As, doesn't seem as exciting as, Save for Web. But Export As has some nicer features, let's go to 'Export As'. 
The cool thing about Export As is that-- you know how we went to image size and adjusted it, we could do it in here on the fly, we don't have to do it that way I just showed you. That was a waste of time, we can do it here. Keep the original at the big size and just adjust the size on the way through. We can pick a JPEG. Nice thing about this JPEG is that it's different from a print one. Mainly because it excludes some of the data that is only needed, for a printing document, not for going online. So the file size is going to be smaller. Then it's up to this slider here, on your quality. Whereas it went to print, we're not too worried so much about file size, because we're probably emailing it or sticking out on a USB stick. So we can keep it quite high, but we're going to a website, they want it as low as you can go. 
So what you want to do is, down here be at 100%. And then just go as low as you were wanting to go. Watch this, I'll get down to like 2%. You might zoom in one more, because you can see it's starting to do all that yucky noisy stuff. So how high do I need to go? It's up to you, I'm like-- some images will go quite low. And some images will have to be quite high before they start looking bad. This one here, it's a professional photograph, both of them. So I can go quite low, so I'm going to go out to 100%. It looks pretty good at 40%. The file size over here is tiny, it's 0.1 Megabytes. So I'm happy with all of that. You don't need to worry about anything else here, click 'Export All'. Give it a name, I've gone to my 'Desktop'. This is going to be my 'Hair 01'. And it's going to be my 'JPEG', click 'Save'. And that's the JPEG version. 
Let's say that I want to do the transparent version. So JPEGs just don't allow transparency, we go to the same place to export a PNG. 'File', 'Export', 'Export As'. And in here you can see it's defaulted to JPEG. You see, it just fills in the background with white. And it's not what we want, we want this one here called PNG. And as long as Transparency is ticked, you can see, you get that kind of invisible check board looking thing. Same thing, it's remembered the width, I've got it down to 100 pixels. I'm going to click 'Export'. 'Desktop', this one's going to be called 'Hair 02'. Click 'Save'. Jump to my 'Desktop', and I'll show you those two files. 
On my Desktop, there's Hair01 and Hair 02, can you see, the file size is different. The PNG is about twice the size, a little bit more. Not a big deal unless you're running a website, and if you were putting that on my website, I wouldn't be happy because that's nearly half a Megabyte, it's ginormous. But if I wanted the transparency, and I needed it 1000 pixels, this is something I'd had to live with, but JPEGs are smaller, but don't have transparency, so you might have to decide. Most of the time you're probably just kind of using JPEGs, but there will be the occasion that you'll need a PNG. 
Another thing you can do, is straight out of Photoshop. There's this option at the top here called Share. So I've got my image here-- see this little option here? You might not have it if you've got an earlier version of Photoshop. Click on 'Share the Image'. If it's really big you'll have the option of getting down to small. And you'll have to log in to these different accounts. For me, I love Instagram for this type of sharing, but for some reason it's not there. I bet you, by the time you're watching this video it'll be in there, but you can do cool things, like I can share with my email, I can share it with Twitter and Facebook straight out of Photoshop. Basically it knows what to do. Gets the very best out of it for those different platforms. There's a little sneaky trick. Let's look at the last option here where we're--
We've made this, it's got different layers, we've got the girl on the front there. Got a text behind it. And I want this now to go into an InDesign document. So instead of saving out a PDF, or a JPEG, or a PNG, it's best just to save it as a PSD. You don't have to save it at all. I'm going to save it to put it on my desktop. So 'Save As', onto my 'Desktop'. Still going to be a Photoshop document it's going to be called 'Soul v1'. Hit 'Save'. 'Maximize Compatibility', perfect. I don't actually do anything, just leave it as the working Photoshop document. Then in InDesign, let's say it's this cover that I want to replace. Doesn't make a whole lot of sense, this is from the InDesign course. I've got an InDesign course if you want to jump in and do that as well. 
What I'm going to do is go to 'File', 'Place', which is InDesign's Import. I'm going to find my Desktop, and I'm just going to use that PSD that I was working on, 'Soul v1'. Click 'Open'. I'm going to click, hold, and drag it out. It's totally not appropriate from this cover. Mainly because it's to do with gardening, and now I have kind of a landscape image to go into my cover here. Let's say that I decide that that's perfect for me. So exactly what I needed. I'm going to right click it, 'Arrange' it, 'Send to Back'. I'll delete this original one I had in here. Let's say I've got my image in, we've been working on a Photoshop for the cover, but now I need to put it into this longer document. You can see, InDesign has a few different pages here. 
The reason why you just keep it as a PSD, is that InDesign will keep that link, and then when you do adjustments in Photoshop, so let's open up Photoshop, and let's decide we're not using the text now, we're going to hit 'Save'. Back into InDesign, and in InDesign, under the Links Panel, there's this little asterisk here that says, "Caution: Double click to update." Double click, and it updates. Jump back into Photoshop, we want the text but we're going to change the wording. We got Dan because I like writing my name all the way through this course. And I 'Save' it, back into InDesign. And this one here, double click to update. And there's giant Dan in the background. 
It works the same for most other Adobe products. Illustrator, you can go to 'File', 'Place', and put in the same PSD. AfterEffects, you can bring in. Illustrator, ready, set, Illustrator, Premiere Pro. Adobe XD, Muse, rest in peace. Just use the PSD, is the easiest kind of inter application format. So that's kind of a brief roundup of the ways of exporting out of Photoshop. You and me are getting close to the end, there's a few more videos, hang in there. Just a couple more, then green tea time.

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