RE: Glossy look

Many tools make beveling and highlights easy now... that page would be very
quick to create in Fireworks, for instance, even including the slicing and
buttons. (I know it wasn't made in Fireworks because opening the GIF shows
it can be compressed even more.... ;-)

Another tip for creating 3D-like effects is to squint at the reference
material and see where areas of light and dark lie. This shading helps to
model the 3D object in space. The beveled edges take either a steady hand
(or knowledge of channel operations) to work in a pixel-editor... the "DSS"
just has a gradient fill for shading... the little bit of dodging beneath
"Online" isn't something you'd likely see in the real world.

You don't need to buy a special tool to do this... older books on graphics
and technical illustration contain many useful tips. Buying a special
filter can make it easier in whichever tool you're using, and the newer
tools tend to handle the range of tasks people commonly need to do with web
graphics.

jd




John Dowdell, Macromedia Tech Support, San Francisco CA US
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