SAVING IMAGES FOR THE WEB

Not all pictures can be displayed on the internet. Being able to see an image on your computer, does not guarantee that it can be seen on the web (in a browser). Browsers can only display images that are saved in certain file formats. The most common are: gif and jpg (jpeg). What is a file format, you ask? Well, let me begin by explaining that every file on your computer is saved in one kind of file format or another. When you save a document, the computer adds some "hidden" information to it that tells the computer what kind of file it is. That way, when you go to open the document, the computer will know what program it needs to open it with. That information is known as a file format.

When you save files, you generally just save them in the format of the program that created it. For example: a document you create in Microsoft Word is saved as a "Word" document, unless you specifically tell it to save as some other format. Word is the "native file format" because Word is the program in which the document was created.

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