Nuggets: Photoshop 5.5 - It's Webcentric man...
Yeah, I'm a Web artist guru-type and this is my tool...
That don of image editing software, Adobe Photoshop, has been updated to integrate more tightly with the Internet (again...?). Photoshop 5.5 includes Adobe ImageReady 2.0, a Web production component that aims to avoid you using use multiple applications when designing for Web.
5.5 is based on the standard Adobe user interface that all you creative types know and love, but with a set of new features for optimising and compressing Web graphics. Stuff like JavaScript rollovers, animation and image slicing is a cinch thanks to a 'jump to' button that whips the image into Adobe ImageReady for saving straight into HTML.
Multiple LiveView panels in the Save for Web window help you find the best compression options to cut down on those pesky image download times. Another new feature is Lossy GIF which cuts down file sizes by 10 to 50 percent, or so Adobe says. The Background Eraser and Extract Image command attempts to reduce the hassle of image-masking, letting you create instant transparency so that images can be cleanly put on another background. Loads there to get your artistic little mitts around. The full version will hit the shops in July for £425+VAT, and you can upgrade from version 5.0 for £75 or 4.0 for £119.
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