Adobe ImageReady is a discontinued

bitmap graphics editor A raster graphics editor is a computer program that allows users to create and edit images interactively on the computer screen and save them in one of many raster graphics file formats (also known as bitmap images) such as JPEG, PNG, and GIF ...

that was shipped with

Adobe Photoshop Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor developed and published by Adobe Inc. for Microsoft Windows, Windows and macOS. It was originally created in 1988 by Thomas Knoll, Thomas and John Knoll. Since then, the software has become the indu ...

for six years. It was available for

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

Classic Mac OS Mac OS (originally System Software; retronym: Classic Mac OS) is the series of operating systems developed for the Macintosh family of personal computers by Apple Computer from 1984 to 2001, starting with System 1 and ending with Mac OS 9. The ...

and

Mac OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. Within the market of ...

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 using various methods and techniques to achieve desired results. Some photograph manipulations are considered to be skillful artwork, while others are consider ...

. To that end, ImageReady has specialized features such as

animated GIF The Graphics Interchange Format (GIF; or , see pronunciation) is a bitmap In computing, a bitmap is a mapping from some domain (for example, a range of integers) to bits. It is also called a bit array or bitmap index. As a noun, the ...

creation,

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

optimization, image slicing, adding rollover effects, and

HTML The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaScri ...

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 Adobe Creative Suite (CS) is a discontinued software suite of graphic design, video editing, and web development application software, applications developed by Adobe Systems. The last of the Creative Suite versions, Adobe Creative Suite 6 (CS6) ...

, 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 (1992–2005) headquartered in San Francisco, California, that made products such as Flash and Dreamweaver. It was purchased by its rival Adobe Systems ...

, whose application

Fireworks Fireworks are a class of 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 l ...

had been a competitor to ImageReady.

References

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