IN THIS CHAPTER
In this chapter, you learn about Adobe ImageReady. Although you can easily jump back and forth from ImageReady to Photoshop with a single click, you can also use ImageReady as a standalone program without ever opening Photoshop. Its sole purpose is to prepare your photos and art for use on the Web. It includes most of the same functions as Photoshop. You can set type for headlines, crop, adjust color and saturation just as you would in Photoshop. But because its purpose is specifically web graphics, it also handles tricks like animation, rollovers, and image slices that Photoshop doesn't do.
Why are web graphics different? When a picture is printed, you look at it on a piece of paper, or possibly a T-shirt or as the frosting on a cake. But when you see it on a video monitor, it doesn't necessarily have to just sit there. It can move. The earliest way to do this on the web was with GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) animation. You explore this and other motion techniques like slices and rollover buttons in the next chapter, but first you need to learn more about putting a simple image on a web page.