Web Design in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

Tools Overview

GIFs can be created with a wide variety of graphics programs and utilities.

Image-editing software

There are many tools available for creating GIF files. The professional industry standard remains Adobe Photoshop (Version 6 is available as of this writing), a full-featured image-editing application (see http://www.adobe.com for more information). However, if you work on a PC, you may want to try Paint Shop Pro, which has some of the same features at a lower cost. You can download a demo at http://www.jasc.com.

Web graphics tools

Two tools, Adobe ImageReady and Macromedia Fireworks, have been designed from the ground up to address the special requirements of Web graphics. In addition to providing superior optimization features for web delivery, they also offer web design shortcuts, such as building imagemaps, slicing images into sections (to be held together by a table), animation, and adding rollover effects.

Adobe ImageReady comes bundled with Photoshop Version 5.5 and higher. It provides advanced optimization features, optimization previews, interactive palettes, and all of the functions listed previously. It has a similar interface to Photoshop, and it is easy to bounce back and forth between the two.

Macromedia Fireworks combines a vector-drawing application with a bitmap editor. Among its many impressive features are editable text, “live” effects that can be edited at any time, side-by-side export previews, animation features, rollover buttons, advanced image-slicing ...