NEW AND IMPROVED PHOTOWEBBER™ 2.0 FROM MEDIA LAB HELPS BUILD HOT-LOOKING WEBSITES WITHOUT BURNING UP YOUR BUDGET

The Innovative Tool That Turns Photoshop Designs into Instant Web Pages

Can Keep Your Web Project On Time & Within Budget

Longmont, Colorado - June 13, 2001 -- Web sites are busting out all over this Spring with color, interactive images, movement, graphical buttons, pop-up menus and the best in contemporary design. Every marketer wants a hot-looking web site, or at least a terrific home page. The cost of building these powerful, interactive web pages can burn through today's limited budgets quickly.

With a refreshingly cool solution, Media Lab today announced a new and improved version of its innovative software tool for keeping online graphics projects on time and on budget.

"PhotoWebber is the fastest way to turn a Photoshop design into a web page," said Chris Perkins, CEO of Media Lab. "It may also be the best investment your creative department makes this year."

Six ways to save time and money with PhotoWebber 2

1) Create finished web pages instantly from Photoshop files without any HTML or Javascript programming.
2) Convert Photoshop files into HTML pages that can open directly in Dreamweaver or GoLive for further enhancement.
3) Build realistic website comps for online review. Clients who are traveling or located in a distant city will have easy access to review artwork at their convenience.
4) Try out ideas for page layouts or test interactive functions without tedious re-working.
5) Re-purpose existing print artwork to the Web with little effort.
6) Save hours and hours of tedious drudgery slicing and optimizing web graphics.

"PhotoWebber gives designers a shortcut just when they need it - at deadline," said Robb Kerr, president of Digital Iguana and a popular Photoshop trainer. "Most designers prefer to spend their time in Photoshop actually 'designing' rather than in some other application 'programming.' PhotoWebber lets them do just that."

Most graphical Web designs start life as Adobe Photoshop files. Designers create images on the computer screen and modify them until the layout looks just right and meets client approval. That's the creative part.

Then comes Step Two - the drudgery of chopping up the design into individual graphics and pasting them together again with HTML code. Not only is this process boring, it's expensive. And every time the graphics change, the designer must start over and go though the whole thing again. This is a time-consuming process and contributes significantly to the high cost of creating and maintaining a graphical Web page.

PhotoWebber changes all that. By eliminating the entire "slicing and dicing" process, and by providing an intelligent translation of the designer's intention from Photoshop into a web environment, PhotoWebber reduces Step Two to minutes instead of hours.

PhotoWebber recognizes and preserves all layer positions and transparency, automatically creates rollover buttons and pop-up menus, converts solid color layers appropriately to web-page background color or to cell background color, and allows users to drag-and-drop frame dividers at any time. Because the user determines file placement, new web pages can be saved to the same folders as the current web site; this means additional pages created with PhotoWebber are easily integrated with the existing site structure.

What's New in PhotoWebber 2?

"PhotoWebber is not necessarily the best solution if your web pages are text-heavy," said Perkins. "But it's ideal for graphically intense home pages or web sites with significant interactivity or graphical elements throughout. Art directors and graphics department heads will love the new features in PhotoWebber 2."

Pop-up menu support. PhotoWebber allows the designer to create graphical menu items in any shape and position them anywhere on the page. Because menus are no longer limited to boxy charts with text-only buttons, designers can imagine entirely new ways to link pages within a site. Buttons can look like skulls and daggers, or faces, or types of clothing. Buttons can be arranged in a circle around a central graphic, or located on the corners of the page. A down-click on the mouse can appear as a different graphic. All these capabilities are available whether the designer chooses to work in style sheets or tables.

HTML extensions including Quicktime, Flash, Shockwave, Java applets and MPEG movies. Designers can plug animation files and movies directly into a web page without any coding.

Layer effects (Photoshop 5) and layer styles (Photoshop 6) now carry over seamlessly. PhotoWebber 2 handles the newest Photoshop effects like drop shadows without a hitch.

Preview interactive pages without leaving PhotoWebber. The new preview function saves time by displaying with one click exactly how the rollover buttons and pop-up menus will work.

Improved control of tables. Designers can define the size and precision of cells in a table to control the amount of detail. Reducing the number of small graphics creates a more orderly workspace with more elegant-looking tables that load faster.

Page alignment options. Designers now have more control over how the web page will be oriented in the browser window - left-aligned, centered, or right-aligned.

New user interface. A more sophisticated and elegant user interface offers more options for designers to customize the software to their preferences.

Why do I need PhotoWebber if I already have ImageReady?

"Why would you need a toaster if you already had a broiler?" Perkins responded. "Because a toaster does the job automatically. Making toast in a broiler is a 'hands-on' project. You have to watch the bread until it browns on one side. Then turn it over and watch until it browns on the other side. Who has time for this?"
PhotoWebber offers these advantages over ImageReady:

• Instant web pages. "Users who aren't using PhotoWebber don't understand why PhotoWebber users are always raving about how fast it is, " said Perkins "But what they usually don't grasp is that it is not just faster - it is instantaneous. To instantly see your design as a working web page, especially when your design is still under development is both thrilling and calming. It's thrilling simply because it's so immediate, and it's calming because now you're not waiting until you are done, you are not merely guessing it'll work as a web page - you know."
• Graphical popup menus. ImageReady only supports text popup menus, and doesn't even use the text the user has already placed in Photoshop. PhotoWebber, on the other hand, can make popup menus out of any graphic layer in the document. And what's more, these menus can cross frame boundaries, work in both style sheets, and tables, are calculated by PhotoWebber automatically, and are free of constraints. No commercial package except PhotoWebber supports any of these capabilities.
• No HTML programming. PhotoWebber never constrains the design because of HTML code limitations. It produces clean, solid code that runs under any popular browser.
• No slicing. PhotoWebber uses existing Photoshop layers, interprets information about the size and position of each layer, and automatically creates table slices or cascading style sheet layers. It allows designers to work with familiar Photoshop formats, instead of forcing them to switch to a different metaphor.
• Page alignment. PhotoWebber supports left, center, and right alignment for web pages whether they are done using style sheets or tables. Page alignment works in all browsers. Once again, an industry first.
• Browser-specific warnings. PhotoWebber's "back-seat driver" signals when a design choice will create a conflict in a specific browser and suggests alternatives.
• Drag-and-drop frames. The user can insert a frame divider at any time and drag it to any location on the screen. Graphics can even cross frame boundaries.
• Instant plug-in support for Quicktime, Flash and Java applets.

System Requirements

For Macintosh: Power PC, OS 8.1 or higher, Photoshop version 3 or higher, 32 megabytes RAM, and 30 megabytes free hard-drive space.

For Windows: Pentium or higher; Windows 95, 98, 95/98 ME, NT, or 2000; Photoshop version 3 or higher; 64 megabytes RAM; and 30 megabytes free hard-drive space.

Pricing and Availability

PhotoWebber 2.0 is now available. Price for the download version is $US 199; the CD package costs $US 249 and includes the Getting Started tutorial booklet.

Cross-platform PhotoWebber includes both Mac and Windows versions and costs $US 329 when downloaded or $US 379 for the CD package.

Discounts for volume purchasers and site license pricing are available. For more details, or to download a trial version of the software, visit the Media Lab website at www.medialab.com.

PhotoWebber 2.0 can be ordered from Media Lab's online store at www.medialab.com/store or by phone at 800-282-5361. Visa, MasterCard and American Express are accepted. Three online catalogs offer PhotoWebber at both standard and student pricing for single-copy purchases - Publisher's Toolbox (www.pubtool.com), The PowerXChange (www.thepowerxchange.com), and Publishing Perfection (www.publishingperfection.com).

About Media Lab

Based in Longmont, Colorado, Media Lab publishes software used by graphic designers and web designers to create animated presentations and graphical web pages. Media Lab's award-winning web-page design tool PhotoWebber has received numerous favorable reviews since it was introduced in April, 2000. The company's multimedia design tools - PhotoCaster, AlphaMania, and Effects -- have been used to create pioneering special effects seen at the EPCOT Center at Disney World in Florida, in numerous music videos and in motion pictures such as Batman and Robin, Air Force One, and Armageddon. Media Lab can be reached via the web site at www.medialab.com, by email at sales@medialab.com, by phone at 800-282-5361 or 303-546-7929.

Trademarks

PhotoWebber is a trademark of Media Lab. Photoshop is a registered trademark and GoLive and ImageReady are trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated. Java and Javascript are trademarks of Sun Microsystems. Dreamweaver, Flash and Shockwave are trademarks of Macromedia. QuickTime is a trademark of Apple Computer, Inc. All other trade names are trademarks of their respective owners.

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Press Contact

Donna Druchunas or Tom Summerall - press@medialab.com