Design Tools Question

[Turbo]

I have used PhotoShop and Dreamweaver for many years building and managing corporate sites (Dreamweaver I know very well, and Photoshop intermediate stuff, but nothing real advanced).

With the adult sites I'm starting to build, I am sure there are tools that make some of the functions specific to these types of sites easier and quicker, but I don't know what they are... Specifically:

- Animated gifs and banner ads
- Building gallery pages
- Creating thumbnails
- Optimizing images (Photoshop does this, but I'm guessing there is an easier way than image by image).

Thoughts and recommendations? Thanks!

[Lunae]

Hi Turbo,

For:
- Animated gifs and banner ads
- Creating thumbnails
- Optimizing images (Photoshop does this, but I'm guessing there is an easier way than image by image).
I use Macromedia Fireworks, is perfect for that and very easy to use

For:
- Building gallery pages

Arles: http://www.digitaldutch.com/arles/

Regards,
Lunae

[Xstr8guy]

Arles is great for thumbnails and image optimization, too. I wish I had started using it earlier. I remember downloading a trial version a long time ago, but I had a hard time getting the settings right, so I quit trying. Now, I would never give it up!

[Jasun]

Fireworks rocks for big batch conversions. It makes what used to take a couple of hours take about 10 minutes, only the first one of which you actually need to be there.

[Lunae]

Originally posted by Jasun
Fireworks rocks for big batch conversions. It makes what used to take a couple of hours take about 10 minutes, only the first one of which you actually need to be there.

Yes, I agree, the batch conversions utility of fireworks is fantastic without it, resizing and optimizing thumbs would last much much longer. Fireworks is a great program indeed.
Also I remember renaming the thumbs and pics with a great program called renamemaster...
There are lots of good utilities out there

[Jasun]

To rename images in sequential order, I use ACDC, but it means I have to drag them from my Mac onto my PC over the network, rename them, and then drag them back.. it's a bit of a pain in the hole.

anybody know a Mac utility that does this?

[Lunae]

I am afraid i can't help you with that, I am a pc user

[Turbo]

I just downloaded the 30 day trial of Fireworks. The batch process function to scale images is alone worth the price!! I am a big Dreamweaver Fan, but had never used Fireworks. I'll be interested to see the integration between the two.

Thanks for the recommendation on Fireworks.

Ryan

[Lunae]

Originally posted by Turbo
I just downloaded the 30 day trial of Fireworks. The batch process function to scale images is alone worth the price!! I am a big Dreamweaver Fan, but had never used Fireworks. I'll be interested to see the integration between the two.

Thanks for the recommendation on Fireworks.

Ryan

Your welcome, once you learn it you will love it, it's a fantastic tool

cheers,
Lunae

[Bec]

Hmm-- I'm using Fireworks4 -- and haven't discovered this batch process thing! I've been doing each thumb by hand. Someone want to share just what I click to get a bunch of images to resize all at one time?

[Jasun]

Yeah, it's really easy.

Go to FIle>Batch Process

then select all of the images you need to resize, click "next" and you've got a bunch of atributes. I use JPG "Better Quality" to bring down the colour depth and file size, and you can even resize them to fit a fixed or maximum dimension.

Do it once again, but when you do it the second time, shrink them to maximum width and height of 110 pixels or something, and with the "Rename" attribute, add "Thumb" or whatever you need to at the beginning or the end, and you've got thumbnails with the same name all done in about 5 seconds.

Yay.

[Bec]

Oh I could just KISS you Jasun!!! Yowza that's gonna free up a LOT of work time! Yes!!! Yess!! Yesssss!

:: said in my best sensual voice ...::

[Xstr8guy]

Originally posted by LdyLnWolf1
Oh I could just KISS you Jasun!!! Yowza that's gonna free up a LOT of work time! Yes!!! Yess!! Yesssss!

:: said in my best sensual voice ...::

For some reason, I don't think the sensual voice is gonna do anything for Jasun.

[Bec]

For some reason, I don't think the sensual voice is gonna do anything for Jasun

LOL .. probably not, but it hopefully conveyed how I excited I was

[Jasun]

At this point I'll take it from a goat.

I've been working on a Twink site all day, and I'm coming out of things to say other than "call me when you grow soem fucking pubes, kid"

Eesh.