Well, accept the sad news: ImageReady has been discontinued.
Hopefully, most of its features have been included in Photoshop CS3. Of course it’s not as convenient as before, but I already know guys who are happy with the changes.
So, we’ve lost (it’s in Adobe Fireworks CS3 now):
– Export to Macromedia Flash SWF
– Image map tool
– Group sectors in table (however, you can export subgroups of sectors as a table)
As you may have noticed, these features are very useful for those who are interested in web design.
If you’re expecting the new and improved Fireworks-2-Photoshop integration to make you happy, you’re wrong. It actually sucks. Fireworks just doesn’t understand styles and clipping layers. I hope Adobe fixes it one day.
Now I must say that not everything is so bad and we are not doomed yet…
So here are the features that were included:
– Slice Tool/Slice Selection Tool –
These tools are available on the toolbar.
– Rectangle Tab Tool/Rectangle Pill Tool –
This is available through the Rounded Rectangle Shape tool.
– Pallet of slices –
In the Slice Options dialog.
– Animation Palette (love this one) –
Window > Animation. It has two modes: Frames and Timeline. Frames mode corresponds to the Animation palette in ImageReady.
Timeline gives you a simplified version of the timeline in Adobe After Effects, which is really cool.
– Edit animated GIF files –
Photoshop CS3 can create animated GIF files.
File > Save for Web and Devices. Unfortunately, you can’t just open an existing animated GIF file like before.
OBJECTIVE! you can if you want to use the Import function.
File > Import > Video Frames to Layers… you won’t find GIF in the list of available formats. It doesn’t matter, in the File name: type the name of the GIF file with the extension .
For example: animation.gif and press the Load button.
That’s it, now you have your GIF animation and you can edit it the way you are used to in ImageReady.
Import > Folder As Frames – Do the following:
File > Scripts > Upload Files to Stack.
In the Load Layers dialog, choose Folder from the Use menu. Browse to the folder that contains the images you want to include and click OK.
Choose Create Frames From Layers from the Animation palette menu.
Export > Layers as files –
File > Scripts > Export layers to files.
Variables –
Image > Variables.
Select File > Save for Web & Devices –
This is a very important menu. Here you can save your file as GIF animation.
Simply select the desired GIF preset and if you’re satisfied, you’re done. If not, there are plenty of settings to play around with. In the color table, you can choose the loop options.
That’s all, I hope after this article you won’t blame Adobe for what they have done 🙂
It’s better that he doesn’t know what Autodesk has done to Maya. I guess that’s a good topic for the next article 8)