How to improve quality of photos or clipart downloaded from web?

Question

Hi,
My name is Gail and I am new to this forum. I am a novice in Adobe Photoshop Elements 2. Searched but couldn't find answer to this question:
When I download images from the web (right click and save as)they often appear blurry, especially if I enlarge. Usually only the choice of jpeg or bitmap to Save As. How can I improve the quality? Please answer simply as I have limited knowledge in this area. :)
I have Photoshop Elements 2. Operating system is Windows XP. I usually use the clipart or photo in Printshop 21 when creating greeting card, etc. or in making a DVD cover design.
Can someone help, please?
Gail

Answer 1

Hi Gail,
I'm afraid the short answer to your question is that often you cannot improve the quality.
The holy grail of web site design is to create web pages that take up as little computing memory as possible. The reason for this is down to the fact that the contents of web pages have to be transmitted over the public Internet - bit by bit and byte by byte from a hosting server to the viewer's desktop. Therefore fewer bits and bytes to shunt around mean faster download times and improve the length of time it takes an entire page to display correctly on your screen.
With this ideology in mind many applications, Photoshop Elements included, have features built into them to downsize images to the smallest possible file size (bytes) for displaying at the author's chosen size at an acceptable quality.
That said, there are other examples on the Internet where people provide 'thumbnail' images that link to larger versions of that image or even to the full original file size. Look out for those instead.
Hope this helps.
Mark
PS. Don't forget about the whole issue of copyright. That is another reason why some people will render their work to such small file sizes (i.e. to prevent unauthorised copying and printing).