Slicing images up into sections for placement in a table has been
the webdevelopers bane since it was first discovered that cool
designs could be created with tables, and images would load faster
if they were cut up into smaller pieces. If you couldn't afford the more expensive
graphic programs that expedited this process for you, you were
stuck doing it by hand. Definitely not a fun time, but
Jasc has
come to the rescue with it's latest release of
Paint Shop Pro!
PSP7 includes several new web features, one of which is a
slicer that handles the job very well.
The Slicer not only slices the image into neat little sections
but also saves the location of each section as a table cell
and generates the HTML! Not only that, but if a rollover
effect is your desire, PSP will also generate the necessary
JavaScript! Does life get any better than this?
The Slicer tool can be found in the File Menu under
File > Export > Image Slicer . Once the dialog
box opens, you're faced with an array of choices, tools, cell
properties, rollovers and more!
The tools are pretty straight forward and do what you would expect.
The Arrow is a selection tool used for selecting a section that has
already been sliced. The Grid is cool. Use it to automatically select equally divided
areas. The Slicer selects areas of varying sizes. This is great
for dividing up an image for use in tables where you only want
certain sections of the image to appear in the table. Delete erases
a cut made in error and Pan is used to move around an image that is
larger than the preview area. But let's look at this whole thing in
more detail.
