After you have completed the download of your free web site template from www.layoutbank.com and customized your layout using PaintShop Pro, you must slice and optimize the site in order to effectively market your client’s business on the World Wide Web.

Slicing and optimizing gives the site the power to build your clients business.  Slicing allows you to break large images into smaller images so that the page will load quickly.   To begin the process of slicing and optimizing the site, you will need to work in Photoshop.  Use the rulers from the view menu—show rulers.  The rulers will appear along the top and left side of the active window.  Rulers provide a guideline when dragged from the rulers using the Move Tool.

Guidelines are lines that float over the image, but they do not print.  You can move, remove or lock a guideline to avoid moving it by accident.  To view the guides, select View—Show/Hide Guides.  To create a guide, drag using the Move Tool from the horizontal ruler which will create a horizontal guide.  In order to place a guide, the Rulers Option has to be turned on.  A vertical guide is placed the same way, dragging from the vertical ruler.  Both horizontal guidelines and vertical guidelines are layout dependent.  They vary based on colors, button placement, pictures and other layout features.  The placement of guidelines varies from one layout to another.  Each layout has a unique style with different color combinations and placement of buttons, logos, graphics, taglines and other features.  Guidelines need to be strategically placed according to the style, emphasizing important aspects of the layout such as the company name, logo and buttons.