A few links to some of the tools and references I use.

Adobe:

• Acrobat. V4 released mid '99. You can now run Reader from a CD - see my PDF on this subject.
• Photoshop/ImageReady. PhotoShop v5.5 & ImageReady v2.0 an interesting combo though IR is a resource hog (watch for patches?). These two were used to make the interface used on this site. IR can take a PSD and with button states on different layers, output HTML, rollover JavaScript and optimised images - clever. Note the IR scripts are a bit verbose, it you look at tthis page's source code I've done a bit of pruning of redundant code.
• Illustrator.
• Adobe patch downloads index page.
• Adobe Technical Support main page.
• Adobe User-to-User Web Forums.
• Acrobat SDK. Developer's info on Acrobat.

Other Graphics Tools:

• Painter. Get painterly effects that Photoshop struggles for. Really needs a graphics tablet to get the most out it.
• Ulead Web Razor. GIFAnimator for Animated GIFs, SmartSaver for good compression to GIF/JPG/PNG, Cool3D for simple or animated 3D text and simple shapes.
• Debabelizer. The Swiss Army knife for format swapping/file manipulation. Even with the the batching/actions now in Photshop, DeBab still has a few extra tricks.
• PhotoTools. Toolbars in Photoshop (and supposedly ImageReady also). Saves remembering so many keyboard shortcuts, build your own toobars. Includes: DropShadow, Bevel, Emboss, Glow, Button Maker and Texture Maker plug-ins - all easy to use. Included as a standalone is PhotoAnimator a very Photoshop friendly GIF animator.
• Mask Pro. Very useful if you have a lot of masking work. Nicely thought-out controls, easy to use.
• AX-Icons. Nice shareware Icon editor.
• Hypersnap DX. A very competent screengrab-tool, shareware. Can grab Direct X and some 3D card stuff too. The maker is responsive to TS requests and has on occasion done 'early' beta to fix problems for me. Impressive service.
• AcroBuddies

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Acrobat/PDF related sites:

• PDF Zone
• Planet PDF
• AcroBuddies

Graphics related sites:

• I-US. Large site with extensive links/tutorials of graphics programs and techniques. Recommended.
• Navworks. Various subscription tutorial packages. The interface on these pages is developed from a template from their Interface Foundry. Even though there are lots of free tutorials on the web, the content here is worthwhile.
• Pixart. A good collection of tutorials for graphics programs/techniques.

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