Creating Web Graphics

Creating Web Graphics: Specialized Tools for online delivery

Product: ImageReady
From:  Adobe, www.adobe.com (originally released in July, 1998)
Price: US$219; now bundled with Photoshop.

A "tryout" version (it expires 30 days after installation) of ImageReady is available by registering.

Animated GIFs and more
Animated GIFs are one of the most commonly used effects on the web, but the tools most people use to create them have, so far, been primarily of the shareware and freeware varieties. The three most common programs used for building GIF89a files are GIF Construction  Set (Windows shareware), GIF Builder (Mac shareware), and Microsoft's GIF Animator (Windows freeware). There are, of course, many relatively inexpensive commercial titles, too, including Gif.Gif.Gif, Ulead's GIF Animator, and the ubiquitous Corel Photo-Paint, which, unlike Photoshop, supports animated GIFs.

Adobe hopes its entry into the web graphics arena will persuade users of shareware Web imaging tools to part with some cash. Its ImageReady sells for US$299 -- a hefty sum in a field of shareware and freeware competitors -- but one we think serious graphics creators will appreciate. Citing Equilibrium's DeBabelizer as its main competitor, Adobe has endowed ImageReady with a number of image optimization capabilities, all wrapped in a very Photoshop-like interface.

We were concerned that ImageReady is unable to import AVI or QuickTime images directly, as GIF Construction Set and GIF Builder can. For that, you'll need Adobe Premiere, plus the free plug-in Adobe released for this purpose. Alternatively, you could save animations as individual frames and assemble them in ImageReady.

ImageReady's real strength, we think, is its ability to define a complex set of image resizing, recoloring, and other optimization functions and then save the resulting set of operations as an executable file that Windows or Mac users (yes, ImageReady, like almost all of Adobe's apps, is available for Windows and Mac) can then drag-and-drop files onto, to process images with unparalleled ease.

More info is available at Adobe's web site.

Product: Xara
From:  i/us Corp. (formerly online at www.i-us.com, now at http://www.xara.com/)   (reviewed version release date: April 6, 1998)
Price: $149 US or $199 Cdn. (upgrades US$99)

After 9 years at Corel Corporation as Exec Director, Worldwide Sales Arlen Bartsch left in '96 to pursue his interest in internet distribution and software marketing. That interest bore fruit this month when Arlen recently announced that his new company had licensed worldwide distribution rights for one of the gems in Corel's graphics crown - XARA 2.0.

Now, the software is available exclusively as a download from the company's web site at http://www.xara.com/.

Xara 2.0 is a vector illustration software application that requires a paltry 8 MB of disk space, yet does what CorelDRAW does in 150 MB. And, we should add, it is fast. With a slew of GIF and JPEG-related features, including animated GIF capabilities, Photoshop compatible plug-in support, image-mapping features (including the ability to automatically place the required HTML on the clipboard when you export an image) and refinements throughout, it is a valuable addition to the category of web graphics apps now available.

Xara created GIF89a files that were smaller than those exported by Photoshop, and Xara did a great job importing images from the clipboard or via drag-and-drop. It also successfully imported our Adobe Illustrator artwork as a vector graphic and displayed it -- anti-aliased! -- quickly and accurately, although we noticed that some Illustrator files, particularly those with text, created an error message (as they did in CorelXara 1.1, reviewed in our Draw Pardner! article). Vector files can be converted to bitmaps, or vice-versa, using one of the best auto-tracing algorithms we've ever tested. This screen shot shows the astonishing accuracy of Xara2's bitmap-tracing feature. (The image on the right is a vector graphics version of the bitmap on the left.)

Although we wish i/us Corp. would make a freely downloadable demo version available on its website, as Macromedia and Adobe have done with their respective web graphics apps, Xara 2.0 is worth checking out. It's a real bargain at US$149. (Update: The latest version is Xara X. Read about it here.)

For more info, visit http://www.xara.com/
See also: Macromedia FireWorks and Flash MX