Adobe ImageStyler

Adobe ImageStyler is a software program that helps non-professionals as well as professionals easily create unique Web graphics such as banners, headlines, navigation bars, backgrounds, and buttons. It's an application that handles such tasks involved in Web creation as: designing visual effects; optimizing graphics for quicker loading in a browser; producing JavaScript rollover effects; and even batch-updating Web pages. The program combines the illustration tools of Adobe Illustrator with the photographic rendering and manipulation facilities of Adobe Photoshop, and has additional new layering and editing features of its own. You can create objects in ImageStyler or use bitmap or vector files produced by both Illustrator and Photoshop, and you don't lose the scalability of vector graphics. This feature gives you design flexibility.

ImageStyler contains 100 pre-designed styles, dozens of shapes (ranging from umbrellas and trees to typographical dingbats), and Web page templates that can be used to quickly create sophisticated and professional Web pages, with JavaScript rollovers, by even the most design-impaired individual with no HTML or JavaScript code background. The image to the left is a template from ImageStyler. The image to the right was created using the ImageStyler template and customizing it.
This program is intuitive enough for someone just starting out in Web design; yet it has the power and features that would appeal to intermediate and advanced users. Creating Web graphics can be time-consuming and tedious. ImageStyler cuts your production time and you don't need extensive design experience or HTML expertise. Novices will be amazed at how easy and quick it is to create professional designs. Just within the tutorial in the first chapter of the User Guide, you learn to create a sophisticated Web page with a JavaScript rollover effect.

Adobe ImageStyler Features:

- Creating Objects--Create and customize graphics objects from shapes and text using familiar drawing and type tools.
- Pre-designed Styles--Apply pre-designed styles included in ImageStyler to objectsShapes & Styles, or combine up to 100 graphical attributes, such as colors, transparencies, and embossing, on up to 5 layers to create customized styles. The image to the right shows some shapes from the ImageStyler Shape palette with pre-designed styles that I applied to them.
- Editing Abilities--Edit any style attribute or object without changing the others you've already applied--objects and styles are always "live" in ImageStyler.
- Rollover Effects--Add JavaScript rollover effects to a graphic, making it change appearance when the mouse moves over it or clicks it.
- Image Maps--Create navigational image maps (graphics that link to URL's when clicked) by associating URLs with graphical objects in a few quick steps.
- Linking Graphics--Link related graphics with handy aliases and any change you make to one graphic updates all the others.Export Palette
- Auto Layout--Use the Auto Layout feature to slice your composition on export, automatically producing table-based HTML pages that reference and reassemble images with pixel-level accuracy.
- Batch HTML Replacement--Design graphics templates and automatically apply them across your site using the Batch HTML Replacement command. Batch-replace dozens (even hundreds) of H1-H6 or class-tagged text with either styled text or graphics with text.
- Export Capabilities--In the Export palette, choose GIF, JPEG, or PNG formats before posting your graphics. As you create, see exactly what your Web layouts will look like online using the Preview in Browser command.
- Active Preview--With the Active Preview feature, interactively adjust your graphics' image quality to optimum file size for fast downloading.
- User Interface--Lower your learning curve with the intuitive Adobe-standard interface that ImageStyler shares with Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe ImageReady, and Adobe PageMaker software.