Chapter 16: Applying Color

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Overview

Fireworks MX is built specifically to output images to view on a monitor screen. Since Fireworks is a Web graphics program, you will not find print-related topics (color separation, halftone, and so on) because they aren't used on the Web. For print applications, use FreeHand 10 from the Macromedia Studio MX package.

But with Web graphics, there are still variables involved that affect the way your images are viewed by others. The viewer's monitor, video card, and settings determine how many colors can be viewed. In the not very distant past, the average monitor displayed 256, or indexed color. Statistics now show that most monitors can view thousands, if not millions, of colors.

Windows and Macintosh have different Gamma settings, used to adjust white point settings and to keep midtones from appearing too dark. The Windows system uses a white point setting of 2.2, which is also standard for television. Macintosh systems default to a setting of 1.8. Images appear lighter on Mac systems and darker and more saturated on PCs.

Tip 

Choose View ® Macintosh Gamma or View ® Windows Gamma to see how your images will appear on a computer with the other operating system.

Operating systems and browsers can also affect the quality of your images.

Tip 

AOL browsers are notorious for recompressing your images. I checked the AOL Web site and as of July 21, 2002, they have a statement that says they are caching system send images through a compression manager. AOL users can disable this caching compression but it's on by default. What this means is that AOL recompresses your carefully compressed images. Often times this results in very bad-looking images.

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