WebImage Create/Edit Image Maps Everett MA

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Originally published at Internet.com

WebImage is Group 42's commercial release of the popular GraphX Viewer client. WebImage builds on GraphX Viewer's features and ease of use and also adds many excellent new features. Perhaps its best feature, WebImage allows you to quickly and efficiently create and edit clickable image maps in either NCSA or CERN compliant formats. WebImage nearly rivals Map This! when it comes to developing quality image maps.

WebImage, however, offers much more than just image mapping; additional features include image optimization (automatic detection of an image's color content for saving the image in variable bit depths in order to reduce the graphic's file size), interlaced GIF and PNG images, one-click simplicity in creating transparent gifs, a smart decoder for automatic encoding and decoding of files (single or multi-part files and in UU or XX encoding formats), printing capabilities, and the same excellent thumbnail catalog management system as found in GraphX Viewer.

While available in both Windows 3.x and Windows 95/98/NT releases, it's the 32-bit version that really excels. This version includes an animation wizard that is on par with WebImage's image mapping tools in terms of features and ease of use. Creating great-looking, small, multi-frame (animated) graphics is almost as simple as creating a normal, single-frame graphic. To date, GIF Construction Set and Ulead GIF Animator is the only other app that comes close to WebImage in terms of creating, editing, and previewing animated graphics. The Windows 95/98 release also includes a partner app called I Spy.

Sporting an Explorer-like interface, I Spy is a quick, handy tool for previewing images within a hard drive's subdirectories. Four different options are available for viewing thumbnails of a variety of graphics types - large, medium, and small (icon-sized) thumbnails, as well as a icon listing with file details. Graphic types supported by I Spy include GIF, JPEG, PNG, BMP, TIF, TGA and more, although support for Photoshop (PSD) images is noticeably lacking. Also surprising is the lack of right mouse button functionality in both I Spy and WebImage.

WebImage's specific objective is to be the graphics tool of choice for 'net and (specifically) Web users. It succeeds at its goal in part by bringing together the impressive features listed above and also in part due to Web Effects - additional features specifically designed for Webmasters. Web Effects allow for easy creation of basic images from scratch, button stamping of images (for adding a distinctive iconic quality to your images), adding of borders to your images (for adding an additional distinctive look), text additions, animation tools (in the 32-bit release), and embossed tiled backgrounds (for yet another interesting and quite unusual look).

Additional image enhancements for graphics include rotation, resize, mirror, brightness, color contrast, gamma, remove noise, and invert. Graphics file types supported by WebImage include those listed above for I Spy as well as Fax G3/G4, SunRaster, PCX, and XWD. WebImage isn't limited to Internet users; graphics users of all types will likely find WebImage to be a critical application. Still, for the many Web graphics designers out there, due notice is served — your tool of trade has arrived.