tab-style image

I have created some in the past but not in an easy way. What graphics program do you use?

Photoshop 6 or Fireworks 4

Could you post a copy here of what your talking about. Unfortunatly, my work server here has safe-surf or whatever, and Hotmail is banned.

You know like the tabs on files with the links on each one so it represents other files/pages.

These are some sites that may give you an idea:

http://www.dilbert.com
http://www.amazon.co.uk
http://www.floodlight.co.uk

like so: winco.info ?

All I did was to use rounded rectangles and then trim off the bottoms. I use a pretty dated progam called Adobe ImageStyler so I doubt I'd be able to give you much in the way of app-specific advice.

Good luck!

Tee Hee. Image Styler! I remember going to an Adobe showcase about three years ago when they were just debuting that program. We thought it was so amazing! I'm actually kind of surprised that it never really took off - if I remember right it's fiarly similar to Fireworks in a lot of ways.

hey! you laughing at my archaic junk?

I still use it for 2 reasons:
1/ comfort level - after all this time, I'm really familiar with it
2/ history - on occasion, I have to go back and redo graphics for sites that are years old. I'm not sure if .ist files can be imported into ImageReady.

The downside is that I've read that certain conflicting dll's in Photoshop6/ImageReady render ImageStyler inoperable and Adobe no longer supports IS so there is no fix available. Not wanting to find this out the hard way, I'm kind of stuck with PS 5.0 until I add another PC to the network.

Similar to Fireworks? Sure, I'll concede "similar" but I'm just so much more comfortable with the Adobe layout than I'll ever be with Macromedia.

Julia, how did you create yours?

Cheers
Jo

Much the same way as Taff but with more of a side slope by slicing up rounded rectangles and blending them together, or using the transform tool to distort the shape to get the desired slopes. Site is no longer built that way so don't have it to show you. Best thing is to create shapes and play around with the differnt transform tools until you get a shape you like.

Someone else has suggested using the pen tool for irregular shapes - as it's a tool I've never really used before, any thoughts on if it would be faster using the pen or the shapes?

Thanks all, anyway, you've defintely given me something to work on!

Jo

Ummm... I don't think the pen would be faster in this case, unless you were really comfortable with it. In my experience it usually takes people a lot of practice ot get the "hang" of the pen tool. You could try playing with it and see how it goes, but it would probably be easier to draw shapes using selections and move/transform them get the right shape as Julia suggested. Do you know how to use the Channels palette for saving selections? That could be helpful here and it's not too hard to use. A simple rounded rectangle with the bottoms cut off, as Taff suggested, would probably work fine.

Yes rounded rectangles with the bottom lopped off works well.

Also if you are using Photoshop using transform>>>skew will allow you to create some interesting tab shapes. I'm sure other graphics apps must have a similar way to do this too.

Well, I've tried both ways - the pen tool does take some getting used to so I've followed the shape/lop which has actually worked very well & everyone at work is very impressed! So hopefully that's a big payrise on the way (extremely doubtful!)

Thanks very much
Jo