ImageReady was designed for web development and closely interacted with Photoshop.

ImageReady was designed for web development rather than effects-intensive photo manipulation.

This toolbox has several features not found in Photoshop, including: Adobe ImageReady 1.0 was released in July 1998 as a standalone application.

Starting with Photoshop 7.0, Adobe changed the version numbers of ImageReady to match.

Around the same time, Adobe purchased rival software developer Macromedia, whose application Fireworks had been a competitor to ImageReady.