Adobe ImageReady
Adobe ImageReady is a discontinued bitmap graphics editor that was shipped with Adobe Photoshop for six years. It was available for Windows, Classic Mac OS and Mac OS X from to ImageReady was designed for web development and closely interacted with Photoshop.
Function[edit]
ImageReady was designed for web development rather than effects-intensive photo manipulation. To that end, ImageReady has specialized features such as animated GIF creation, image compression optimization, image slicing, adding rollover effects, and HTML generation.
Photoshop versions with which ImageReady was released have an "Edit in ImageReady" button that enables editing of image directly in ImageReady. ImageReady, in turn, has an "Edit in Photoshop" button.
ImageReady has strong resemblances to Photoshop; it can even use the same set of Photoshop filters. One set of tools that does not resemble the Photoshop tools, however, is the Image Map set of tools, indicated by a shape or arrow with a hand that varied depending upon the version. This toolbox has several features not found in Photoshop, including:
- Toggle Image Map Visibility and Toggle Slice Visibility tools: toggle between showing and hiding image maps and slices, respectively
- Export Animation Frames as Files option: saves all or specified frames for an alternate use, e.g., to e-mail slides for review
- Preview Document tool: provides a preview of rollover effects in ImageReady rather than previewing them in a browser
- Preview in Default Browser tool: previews the image in a browser, including any rollover or animation effects
- Edit in Photoshop button: opens the current image in Photoshop
History[edit]
Adobe ImageReady was released in July as a standalone application.[1] ImageReady was packaged with Photoshop versions through (CS2). Starting with Photoshop 7, Adobe changed the version numbers of ImageReady to
| Version | Release date | Bundled with |
|---|---|---|
| v1 | July | N/A |
| v2 | July | Photoshop |
| v3 | October | Photoshop |
| v7 | February | Photoshop |
| v8 ("CS") | October | Photoshop CS |
| v9 ("CS2") | May | Photoshop CS2 |
With the release of the Creative Suite 3, ImageReady was discontinued. According to Adobe, ImageReady's features were merged into Photoshop only by popular demand.[2] (Even before discontinuation, some of ImageReady's web optimization functionality could be found in Photoshop's Save For Web & Devices tool.) At the same time, Adobe published Fireworks, which was originally ImageReady's competitor before Adobe's acquisition of its developer, Macromedia.
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