ImageStyler is Dedicated Towards Web Graphics Production
ImageStyler's target market is what Adobe calls the "Creative Business User" -- someone who understands how to create pages for the Web and already uses tools such as FrontPage, PageMill, or Fusion -- and who needs the ability to create professional-looking graphics relatively quickly.
The smart thing about the design of ImageStyler itself is that it doesn't try to do everything or read/write every file format in existence -- just the most important ones for the Web. For example, it can import GIF, JPEG, EPS, Photoshop PSD, BMP, PICT, and DIB files, and exports only JPEG, GIF, PNG, and PSD. But when it does the export, it writes a very tightly optimized file automatically, without the numerous options that some competitive products make you go through. It does this by selecting an adaptive palette with Web-safe colors for the best tradeoff between size and quality. You can always change things yourself, of course.
Another of their approaches to simplicity is that everything you create in ImageStyler begins as text, shapes, or imported graphics. Each object keeps its identity even while you're editing things, and to top it off, all these objects are "live", so you can see exactly what's going on at all times. This little gem took about 30 seconds to create, not including deciding which of the cool styles to use:
ImageStyler didn't get its name out of nowhere, by the way. Its most powerful feature is its graphical styles, which are combinations of graphical attributes that can be selected from menus or that you can design yourself -- from the existing 100 or so predefined styles or from scratch. You can apply a style to literally anything, from a background image to text -- and cut/paste styles or individual attributes from one object to another.
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