Creating Slices


Slices are not the easiest concept to grasp, but they can save you a lot of file space, after you determine what they are about. Simply put, slices divide an image into smaller files. Each slice is an independent file, containing its own optimization settings, color palettes, URLs, rollover effects, and animation effects. Slices can give you increased image quality when you are working with documents that contain more than one kind of image, or text and images. They can make pages seem to load faster because each slice becomes visible as soon as it's loaded, giving the viewer something to look at while the rest of the image loads. Slices also let you create image maps that do useful things when you click part of an image. They can take you to new pages, show an enlarged view of the slice, or anything else you care to program them to do.

Slices are assembled in an HTML table in the document's HTML file. By default, the document starts with one slice that comprises the entire document. You can then create more slices in the document. Both Photoshop and ImageReady will automatically make additional slices to complete the full table in the HTML file. Note that this means you must choose HTML and Images when saving a sliced image, rather than Images Only, and you'll need to copy the HTML that ImageReady creates into your web page file.

Slices are created by dragging the Slice tool, which looks like a drawing of an X-Acto knife . Select it from the ImageReady toolbox, the Photoshop toolbox, or simply press the K key to activate it. Drag a selection box across the area you are slicing. If you make a slice across the middle of an image, by default, you have defined three slices: one above and one below where you have sliced. Slices that you create are called user -slices . Slices that Photoshop generates are called auto-slices . If you place a slice across the middle of a picture, Photoshop will place auto-slices above and below it. Slices can be vertical as well as horizontal. Subslices are created when you overlap two or more user-slices. Figure 24.17 shows a sliced image.

Figure 24.17. The numbers in the upper-left corner of the sections are their slice numbers .




Teach Yourself Adobe Photoshop CS 2 In 24 Hours
Sams Teach Yourself Adobe Photoshop CS2 in 24 Hours
ISBN: 0672327554
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2005
Pages: 241
Authors: Carla Rose

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