What is Adobe Imageready Cs2 and what can you do with it opposed to Photoshop?

Answer 1

The primary difference between the 2 is that Photoshop is an image/graphics editing program, where ImageReady is primarily a website image production program, used to prepare images for web deployment after they've been finished in Photoshop.

ImageReady (no longer sold as a standalone program - it's incorporated into Photoshop CS3 and CS4) was initially created as a program to deal specifically with the unique image editing and conversion of images destined for website use. Prior to its creation (around Photoshop 5 or 6 if I remember right), a user had to go through a painstaking process of editing, resizing, converting, masking, etc., before the resulting file result was achieved. There was also no method of determining approximate download time for a given file type and size (remember that IR was created before broadband cable was widespread as an ISP). Most sites usually require many images, and doing it before IR was developed meant a lot of time WA consumed.

ImageReady streamlined the whole process of preparing images for use on the internet. All common file types are represented, and with the latest versions you can make minor changes in compression, size, etc., and view the changes without having to do a final save. I still remember getting a copy of the first release - it was a godsend for increasing production.

Now that it's integrated into Photoshop, it's even easier to use, and they continue to add additional tools and elements. For example, they've added tools for dealing with images destined for mobile devices. You can also do batch processing of files.