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Adobe ImageReady 1.0
Part 2

Industry-leading graphic utility for the Web

Finally, an Adobe graphics tool for Web designers.

• LiveView window - this enables the designer to view the original and the compressed image side-by-side for comparison
• Optimize palette - gives the designer interactive control over the compression options for GIF, JPEG, PNG=8 and PNG-24 files
• Previewing capabilities - enables you to preview the image by simulating browser dither, or you can preview it live in the browser of choice
• Animation palette - integrated tool (See Figure 2) for creating and editing GIF animations
• Client-side image maps - the ability to assign URLs to layers in an image
• the Core set of imaging tools - really a subset of Photoshop, including key tools, resizing commands, image adjustment commands and filters

Figure 2. The ImageReady Animation palette

Another unique feature of ImageReady is located at the bottom of the image you are working on. By clicking on the bottom of the image window (See Figure 3), you can view the image size, deminsions and the download time at 14.4/28.8. You can also, at any time, view the same information for the optimized image. Both views of the image may be seen by clicking on the "Optimized" or "Original" tab of the image.

Figure 3. The ImageReady image window

These unique Web image utilities, along with multiple undo, editable type, batch processing "Droplets," and the Actions palette, which lets you record a sequence of editing steps for use with other images, will make this tool invaluable for Web developers and graphic designers.

Adobe has once again shown that they do listen to their users, and they haven't discounted Web graphic developer's needs. ImageReady may become the standard by which all other Web graphics tools are judged. If this first beta is any indication of what's to come, I'll soon be adding the tool to my own Web development toolbox. If you'd like to check it out for yourself, make sure to visit Adobe's ImageReady free demo download page.

This article first appeared in April, 1998.

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