If you don’t have specialized software
Admittedly, Photoshop CS2 just plain can’t do some things. It won’t make you a good cup of coffee. It can’t press your trousers. It doesn’t vacuum under the couch. It isn’t even a substitute for iTunes, Microsoft Excel, or Netscape Navigator — it just doesn’t do those things. However, there are a number of things for which Photoshop isn’t designed that you can do in a pinch. If you don’t have InDesign, you can still lay out the pages of a newsletter, magazine, or even a book, one page at a time. (With PDF Presentation, you can even generate a multi pages PDF document from your individual pages.) If you don’t have Go Live, you can use Photoshop to create a Web site, again one page at a time, complete with rollover buttons, image maps for links, and animations. You also have tools that simulate 3-D in Photoshop. Page layout in Photoshop isn’t particularly difficult for a one-page piece or even a tri-fold brochure. Photoshop has a quite-capable type engine, considering the program is designed to push pixels rather than play with paragraphs. And, for the first time, Photoshop shows you a sample of each typeface in the Font menu — no more trying to remember which fonts are which! Choose from three sizes of preview in Photoshop’s Preferences (as shown in Figure 1-7).
However, you can’t link Photoshop’s type containers, so a substantial addition or subtraction at the top of the first column requires manually recomposing all following columns. After all, the biggest advantages of a dedicated page layout program are the continuity (using a master page or layout) and flow from page to page. If you work with layout regularly, use InDesign CS2. Adobe GoLive CS2 is a state-of-the-art Web design tool, whose interoperability with Photoshop is exquisite. It’s a piece of cake to use Photoshop and ImageReady to create complex Web graphics, including rollover buttons (buttons that change appearance when clicked) and animations, and then drop those PSD files right into a GoLive Web page. (Read about creating complex Web graphics in Chapter 17.) However, if you don’t have GoLive and you desperately need to create a Web page, Photoshop comes to your rescue.
After laying out your page and creating your slices, links, and rollovers in ImageReady, use the Save Optimized As command to generate an HTML document (your Web page) and a folder filled with the images that form the page (see Figure 1-8). One of the advantages to creating a Web page in GoLive rather than Photoshop is HTML text. (Using Photoshop and ImageReady, all the text on your Web pages is saved as graphic files. HTML text not only produces smaller Web pages for faster download, but it’s resizable in the Web browser.) Although Photoshop doesn’t actually work in three dimensions (digital images have width and height, but not depth), you can use it in conjunction with your 3-D software. In addition to creating textures, Photoshop now includes the very powerful Vanishing Point feature, which lets you map artwork onto simulated 3-D surfaces. (Read about Vanishing Point in Chapter 10.)
Being able to finally see typeface samples is definitely a plus.
Figure 1-8
You can create an entire Web page in Photoshop/ImageReady.
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