Adobe ImageReady was a

bitmap graphics editor A raster graphics editor (also called bitmap graphics editor) is a computer program that allows users to Computer graphics, create and image editing, edit images interactively on the computer screen and save them in one of many raster graphics I ...

that was shipped with

Adobe Photoshop Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor developed and published by Adobe Inc., Adobe for Microsoft Windows, Windows and macOS. It was created in 1987 by Thomas Knoll, Thomas and John Knoll. It is the most used tool for professional digital ...

for six years. It was available for

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

Classic Mac OS Mac OS (originally System Software; retronym: Classic Mac OS) is the series of operating systems developed for the Mac (computer), Macintosh family of personal computers by Apple Computer, Inc. from 1984 to 2001, starting with System 1 and end ...

and

Mac OS X macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

from 1998 to 2007. ImageReady was designed for web development and closely interacted with Photoshop.

Function

ImageReady was designed for

web development Web development is the work involved in developing a website for the Internet (World Wide Web) or an intranet (a private network). Web development can range from developing a simple single static page of plain text to complex web applications, ...

rather than effects-intensive

photo manipulation Photograph manipulation involves the transformation or alteration of a photograph. Some photograph manipulations are considered to be skillful artwork, while others are considered to be unethical practices, especially when used to deceive. Mot ...

. To that end, ImageReady has specialized features such as

animated GIF The Graphics Interchange Format (GIF; or , ) is a Raster graphics, bitmap Image file formats, image format that was developed by a team at the online services provider CompuServe led by American computer scientist Steve Wilhite and released ...

creation,

image compression Image compression is a type of data compression applied to digital images, to reduce their cost for computer data storage, storage or data transmission, transmission. Algorithms may take advantage of visual perception and the statistical properti ...

optimization, image slicing, adding rollover effects, and

HTML Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It defines the content and structure of web content. It is often assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets ( ...

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

Adobe ImageReady 1.0 was released in July 1998 as a standalone application. Version 2.0 was packaged with Photoshop 5.5, and the program was included with Photoshop through version 9.0 (CS2). Starting with Photoshop 7.0, Adobe changed the version numbers of ImageReady to match. With the release of the Creative Suite 3, ImageReady was discontinued. According to Adobe, ImageReady's most popular features were merged into Photoshop. (Even before discontinuation, some of ImageReady's web optimization functionality could be found in Photoshop's ''Save For Web & Devices'' tool.) Around the same time, Adobe purchased rival software developer

Macromedia Macromedia, Inc. was an American graphics, multimedia, and web development software company headquartered in San Francisco, California, that made products such as Adobe Flash, Flash and Adobe Dreamweaver, Dreamweaver. It was purchased by its riv ...

, whose application

Fireworks Fireworks are Explosive, low explosive Pyrotechnics, pyrotechnic devices used for aesthetic and entertainment purposes. They are most commonly used in fireworks displays (also called a fireworks show or pyrotechnics), combining a large numbe ...

had been a competitor to ImageReady.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Adobe Imageready Adobe Photoshop Graphics software ImageReady Proprietary raster graphics editors C++ software ImageReady 1998 software Windows graphics-related software MacOS software Shareware