Products used/reviewed:
The following products were either used to create elements of or the website itself.

For the Website:

When we initially started we used Adobe Photoshop 5 to create the frames for the animated ClipsAhoy gifs. Originally we were going to do them completely in PS5, but found it easier to do the frames and then use Gif Construction set as the animator as it was less complicated.

We found later that we actually switched to Fireworks for the animations as it was reasonable to learn how to create the frames and animate them in that product and no longer have a need for photoshop or gif constuction set.

Photoshop 5 has a whole lot of neat features and could have been used for clipart touchups, but it was opted not to because we found that we were used to PhotoDeluxe and everything was easy at hand there. It may be possible that we may switch to Photoshop in the future for clipart touchups, but we prefer a tried and true program. We also found inserting lettering to be more awkward in Photoshop than Fireworks.

Photoshop did seem to have at hand the tools that we were looking for to create our animated gifs so it was used. I like the positioning tools that it contains, as well as some of the other tools and functions not available in Photodeluxe.

Overall, it is preferred for gifs, but not for the clips. Although the tutorials are all over for Photoshop, I far prefer to use Fireworks and cannot recommend Photoshop as a preferred product.

 

Grade 2 out of 5.

Next Review: Gif Construction Set