Adobe ImageReady

Infobox Software
name = Adobe ImageReady



caption = Adobe ImageReady CS2 running on XP
developer = Adobe Systems
latest release version = CS2 (9.0)
latest release date = April 2005
operating system = Windows and Mac OS X
status = Discontinued
genre = Bitmap graphics editor
license = Commercial
website = None

Adobe ImageReady was a bitmap graphics editor that was shipped with Adobe Photoshop by Adobe Systems. It was available on both Windows and Mac OS X platforms from 1998 to 2007.

ImageReady had fewer features than Photoshop and was designed for quick editing of web graphics rather than effects-intensive graphics editing. To that end, ImageReady has specialized features such as animated GIF creation, image compression optimization, image slicing and rollover effects, and HTML generation.

The Photoshop Toolbox had a quick link to ImageReady — the Jump to ImageReady button enables editing of the current image directly in ImageReady. The ImageReady toolbox is similar to Photoshop's toolbox. One set of tools that looks different, however, is the Image Map set of tools, indicated by a shape or arrow with a hand. The toolbox includes several features not found in Photoshop, including:

* Toggle Image Map Visibility and Toggle Slice Visibility tools — These tools toggle between showing and hiding image maps and slices, respectively.
* Preview Document tool — This tool provides a preview of rollover effects in ImageReady rather than viewing them in a browser.
* Preview in Default Browser tool — This tool previews the image in a browser, including any rollover or animation effects.
* Jump to Photoshop — This button opens the current image in Photoshop.

ImageReady was written in the C++ programming language [Bjarne Stroustrup. [http://www.research.att.com/~bs/applications.html C++ applications] , 2007-05-25. Retrieved on 2007-06-19.] .

Release history

Adobe ImageReady 1.0 was released as a standalone application. ImageReady was packaged with Photoshop between version 2.0 and CS2. Adobe synchronized the version numbers of ImageReady and Photoshop beginning with version 7.0.

* "current release"

With the release of the Creative Suite 3, ImageReady has officially been discontinued, and the expected reason is that since Adobe now owns Fireworks, they don't need ImageReady, and will continue to develop Fireworks instead. There is some ImageReady-style functionality in CS3 found via File > Save For Web & Devices.

Criticism

Early versions of Adobe ImageReady could only generate table based code without providing the option of generating table-less code using CSS for positioning.However, beginning with Adobe ImageReady 7, Adobe provided the option to generate CSS from sliced designs.

While Adobe has implied that Fireworks can replace the functionality of ImageReady, Fireworks cannot work with the slices and multiple rollover states that were generated with ImageReady. Therefore, according to Adobe Tech Support, the only option for any designer who has multiple projects to maintain that were created in ImageReady is to downgrade to Photoshop CS2. There is no promise of a future solution.

References