How to Speed Up Slices in Fireworks
- 1). Open your project in Adobe Fireworks and identify areas better suited for GIF or JPEG slices. In general, GIF works best for areas with obvious color separation, such as cartoons, text and line drawings. JPEG works best for photographs. Some areas might contain both elements, such as a photo with text overlay or a portrait with a solid background color. Selective JPEG will work best for these areas. Identifying area types before slicing your image allows you to plan the best layout.
- 2). Press "L" to select the Lasso Tool. Click and draw around areas requiring heightened detail in the Selective JPG areas you identified. As an example, you may outline a portrait, but leave the background unselected. There is no need to outline text or buttons, because Fireworks has an automated feature for such areas. Click "Modify" in the top menu, "Selective JPEG" and "Save Selection as JPEG Mask." The image appears to change color, but this is only a marker and does not actually affect the image color.
- 3). Press "K" to select the Slice Tool. Click and draw rectangular slices around the areas you previously identified. These slices appear as a green overlay. If you need to create several equally sized slices, you can copy and paste slices, complete with any optimization settings you choose. You can then drag the copy to a new location.
- 4). Click each slice you wish to optimize as a GIF. Click the left drop-down menu from the Optimize window and select "GIF". Click the "Colors" drop-down menu and select the number of discrete colors the image slice requires. As an example, a hard black and white image would need only two. If you cannot see the Optimize window, press "F6."
- 5). Select each area requiring JPEG optimization. Select "JPEG" from the left drop-down menu of the Optimize window. Enter a value from 1 to 100 in the "Quality" field. Higher values offer greater detail, but have larger file sizes. Finding the optimal quality setting requires trial and error. In Selective JPEG slices, this setting is applied only to the background, but you must enable Selective JPEG settings. Click the icon next to "Selective Quality." Check "Enable Selective Quality" and choose a higher quality setting in the field to the right. This setting is applied to the detailed area you selected earlier. Check "Preserve Text Quality" or "Preserve Button Quality" to automatically apply higher quality settings to buttons and text. Click "OK." Each slice should now be optimized for speed.
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