The Ignite interface

Working with Source and Output files

When you start a new file or import some artwork in Ignite you'll see that your image is in source view. Ignite keeps your original artwork in the source view. When you want to create a web image from your artwork click the New output button and choose a file type (GIF, JPEG, PNG or WBMP). Give the new file a name, Ignite makes an output file for you. There are several advantages to this way of working...

1. You never overwrite your original artwork with a GIF file. Anyone who's ever done this will appreciate just how useful this is!
2. You can have as many output files as you want. So you might want to try your image as a GIF and a JPEG, or you might want to try several GIFs with different palettes and bit depths.
3. You can compare the different output files side by side to see which you prefer.
4. You can easily save any of the output files, or all of them at once, just by clicking the Save all outputs button on the toolbar.

The Inspector

The Inspector interactively changes depending on whether you are using Source or Output view, and which objects you have selected.

In source view
In source view the canvas is selected (you can see the round selection handles around the edges of the image). The Inspector shows the Frame pane which lets you add new frames if you want them, and the Canvas pane. You could split this image by clicking the Split image button on the canvas pane or add notes to yourself or your web team by clicking on the Notes button.

In the second image (below) the image itself has been selected by clicking on it (can you see the square selection handles?). This image was imported into Ignite from a piece of clip art. Originally it was a WMF file, now it is an object on the canvas. The Inspector has a added new pane to let you work with the selected object, the Drawing pane. Here you can adjust the width and height, position, cropping and duplication of the object across other frames (if there were any).

In output view
In output view the Inspector adds the panes you need to optimize your images. Of course this depends on which file type your output images is. The Output file pane lets you control where the file is saved, which frame in a multiframed document you want to save (or all of them as separate files or all as an animation). It controls whether the image is saved whole or uses splits if you've added any and it gives you access to the html controls. To save your GIF file automatically all you have to do is click the Save this output button. Ignite has already come up with settings to optimize the GIF for you (you can see them in the GIF file pane) and, if you're happy with them, just click the button. Find out more about Ignite's automatic optimization in 'Optimizing your web images automatically'.

With a GIF file as the output file you can see the GIF file pane and its sister pane showing the palette controls. It shows the settings Ignite has chosen automatically for this file but you can alter all of these yourself if you want to. You can find out more about how to use these in 'Managing GIF optimization

All settings are recorded in Ignite with your artwork when you save it as an IWI file, so you don't need to remember which options gave you the best results.

The Inspector allows you to:

• change any property for any object or part of the canvas with a single click
• modify GIF (or JPEG) saving settings
• choose Suggest Settings to use Ignite's automatic optimization feature
• change colours, fonts, sizes, transparency, dithering, colour palette and more, easily and quickly
• save your own settings for a GIF or JPEG as program defaults for new files
• see the file size of the resulting GIF or JPEG before saving it to your hard disk
• set up multiple frames for your animations using Frame and Canvas properties

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copyright © Ben Summers, 1999-2003. All rights reserved