Mac

Windows

Latest trial version

Fireworks from Macromedia is a mighty Web graphics tool. It integrates tightly with Dreamweaver and helps create menus and rollover buttons. There is an improved animation component and support for graphic enhancement and compression. See the magazine feature for more details.

The system requirements for running Fireworks are relatively high, a Pentium II being recommended, as well as 64Mb of available RAM.

Web link: www.macromedia.com

New 30-day trial

Formerly CORELXara, Xara X is an advanced graphics illustration package that may well prove to be the perfect all-in-one solution for many Web authors. See the magazine review to find out why it's so brilliant.

Important: if you have previously installed a Xara X beta version or release candidate then it is recommended that you uninstall your previous version before installing this final release.

Web link: www.xara.com

3DWebButton is an easy-to-use utility that creates 3D buttons and headings for your Web site. Using the step-by-step approach 3DWebButton lets you quickly build bevelled and textured shapes with 3D text labels. A preview of your work is continually displayed above each of the 11 steps, which allow you to set the button shape, colour, texture map and more. An optional drop shadow is included both for the button and the text label. You can drag and drop the light source around the button to change the intensity and direction of the illumination.

Requires MS Internet Explorer 4 or later. This shareware version places watermarks on buttons you create.

Web link: www.rudenko.com

To install, copy the file projpeg5.8bi from the folder on the CD (as above) to your Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro plug-ins folder. See the readme for more info...

ProJPEG is a great plug-in tool for Adobe Photoshop and PaintShop Pro, providing intuitive control and superb file size savings to improve the speed of Web page delivery. This new version has improved memory handling to allow ProJPEG to work for Web graphics or hi-res JPEG images, and advanced Photoshop actions support for batch processing and work flow. The zoomable and resizeable image preview allows you to contrast the original image to the compressed image simultaneously, and examine JPEG artifacts at magnification. There's also a facility for variable compression so you can create smaller files that look better by compressing background areas of images more and the important foreground areas less.

Web link: www.boxtopsoft.com

Latest version

Photo album software that looks like a real photo album. Your electronic albums can be sent to your friends as single highly-compressed files (viewed with the free viewer), self-extracting album files (no software needed to view) or can even be published to the Internet. The program incorporates a lot of features to make attractive and fun collections of your snaps.

Web link: www.xequte.com

New version

IrfanView is a fast, simple freeware image viewer and editor that supports all major graphic formats, including BMP, DIB, JPEG, GIF, animated GIF, PNG, PCX, multipage TIFF, TGA, and more. It features TWAIN support, slide shows, batch conversion and modifications such as colour depth, crop, blur and sharpen. This version has a new thumbnail option, an improved print option and a new advanced batch option.

Note: IrfanView is free for personal use; the registration fee for commercial use is $10.

Web link: http://stud1.tuwien.ac.at/~e9227474/ english.htm

Latest version – 30-day trial

The old favourite Paint Shop Pro continues to mature. You could see PSP as a more affordable version of Adobe's Photoshop – it does come very close and now also includes more Web orientated graphics functions. It's a great all-round graphics application offering fantastic image creation, editing and manipulation possibilities.

Web link: www.jasc.com

Trial version

There's a lot you can do to optimise and shrink image file sizes (and thus speed up access to your Web pages), and JPEG Compressor has just about every tool you need. You see your original image next to the one you are optimising and as you adjust the various compression settings the optimised image is updated in real-time. A readout provides you with file size reduction details and bandwidth saved. Using audio-style graphic equalisers, JPEG Compressor lets you tweak detail quality, luma (intensity) and chroma (colour) channels. There are a number of time-saving presets available that can do the adjustment for you.

Web link: www.winsoftmagic.com

Mac OS

NOTE: The Mac programs on this CD are mostly in archived 'HQX' (BinHex) files – they can be extracted with several applications, including Stuffit Expander (which is on the CD...). Clicking on the links below should set the process in motion. You may receive a message that the file cannot be loaded into Simple Text — if so, start Stuffit and then open the HQX file you want from within Stuffit.

New trial version

Fireworks from Macromedia is a mighty Web graphics tool. It integrates tightly with Dreamweaver and helps create menus and rollover buttons. There is an improved animation component and support for graphic enhancement and compression. See the magazine feature for more details.

The system requirements for running Fireworks are relatively high, a G3 or better being recommended, as well as 64Mb of available RAM.

Web link: www.macromedia.com

New shareware version

GraphicConverter is a top-rated graphics editor that looks like a cut-down version of Photoshop. Its primary purpose is converting images between different file formats and creating Web optimised graphics, but it also features a strong set of tools for drawing, text input and re-touching. A single Photoshop style tool palette has all the commands you need for basic image editing including, marquee, crop, lines, rectangles, colour and textures. It imports over 100 image formats and exports to over 40. You can batch convert images as well as set up slide shows.

This update includes many enhancements, additions and bug fixes.

Web link: www.lemkesoft.de

ProJPEG is a great plug-in tool for Adobe Photoshop, providing intuitive control and superb file size savings to improve the speed of Web page delivery. This new version has improved memory handling to allow ProJPEG to work for Web graphics or hi-res JPEG images, and advanced Photoshop actions support for batch processing and work flow. The zoomable and resizeable image preview allows you to contrast the original image to the compressed image simultaneously, and examine JPEG artifacts at magnification. There's also a facility for variable compression so you can create smaller files that look better by compressing background areas of images more and the important foreground areas less.

Web link: www.boxtopsoft.com

ImageVice is a PhotoShop (3.0 or higher – or other compatible application) plugin that compresses GIF, PICT, BMP, and PNG files by up to 70 percent, without sacrificing image quality. This is a great tool if you need to work with the smallest image file size possible. This preview version will begin to delay execution if you use it for more than 30 days or 100 images.

Web link: www.boxtopsoft.com

30-day trial

WebButtons is a beveled button and banner creator for Web pages and multimedia presentations. It has an intuitive user interface, three-dimensional button effects, antialiased text, dithering to Web-safe colours and a batch language. This version is compatible with OS 9 Multiple Users and includes bug fixes.

Requires Quicktime JPEG compressor.

Web link: www.3am.pair.com