I have an email template that's done in Photoshop for a weekly newsletter. It's sliced up and the only parts that stay the same are the header and the footers, the height of the email is always different.
What would be the best way to just change the middle part when creating a new email, leaving the top and the bottom as an asset? Should they just sit in separate PSD files and then be combined after it's saved to HTML?
If it is indeed email, you can't really use background images in CSS, or rather you shouldn't. It's best to create the traditional table layout and place the header and footer in table cells. Then it's a really easy matter to edit the middle content.
background and Microsoft's VML.
background in both table and body tags. See backgrounds.cm for more info on how a "bulletproof" background using both techniques works.
Should they just sit in separate PSD files and then be combined after it's saved to HTML?
YES. You should never use Photoshop slices for html email. Separate your header and footer images and create the rest in code.
If you have any further questions on the code side, stackoverflow's html-email section is the place to go. Here are a few links you might find also find helpful:
