Tools Overview 267GIFTools OverviewWeb Design in a Nutshell, eMatter Editionart, icons, cartoon-like illustrations, etc. It will compress them cleanly (since it is a
lossless compression) and efficiently (LZW compression looks for repetition of
pixel colors).
You will also need to use GIF format if you want a portion of the image to be
transparent, since it is the only format universally supported by browsers. PNG
files can contain transparency information (actually, in a more sophisticated way
than GIF), but as of this writing, browser support is too spotty to use them
confidently.
GIF is also a good option for adding simple animation to your page without
relying on plug-in technology, Java programming, or server-intensive methods.
Most browsers display an animated GIF as easily as any other GIF. See Chapter 18,
Animated GIFs, for more information on GIF animation.
GIFs are not particularly good for photographic images. With the 8-bit limit, true
color information is lost and the subtle gradations of tone become pixilated when
the image is reduced to 256 colors. The quality of the image may be greatly
reduced. In addition, GIF is not able to condense photo-realistic image content
efficiently.
In many cases (especially for very small images), GIF will work just fine for all
image types, but you will get much better image quality and smaller file sizes if
you save photographs and continuous-tone images as JPEGs (seeChapter 15,JPEG
Format, for more information).
Tools Overview
GIFs can be created with a wide variety of graphics programs and utilities.
Image-editing Software
There are many tools available for creating GIF files. The professional industry
standard remains Adobe Photoshop (version 5 is now available), a full-
featured image editing application. However, if you work on a PC, you may
want to try Paint Shop Pro, which has some of the same features for a frac-
tion of the cost. You can download a demo athttp://www.jasc.com/.
Web Graphics Tools
Two new tools have shown up on the scene that have been designed from
the ground up to address the special requirements of Web graphics.
Macromedia Fireworks 1.0 combines a vector drawing application with a
bitmap editing program. Among its many impressive features are editable text,
“live” effects that can be edited at any time, side-by-side export previews,
animation features, rollover buttons, advanced image slicing tools, and much
more. It alleviates the need to switch between drawing programs, bitmap
programs, and specialized web utilities. For more information, see Macro-
media’s site athttp://www.macromedia.com/.
Adobe ImageReady 1.0 is a web graphic optimization tool that shares many
interface features with its sibling, Photoshop. It provides editable text, optimi-
zation previews, interactive palettes, and animation tools, among other
convenient features. For more information, see Adobe’s site athttp://www.
adobe.com/.