Understanding AlterCast

Adobe AlterCast is a server product that can generate JPEG and GIF images from Adobe Photoshop PSD files and SVG files, including those created by Adobe Illustrator 10 or later. Photoshop and Illustrator 10 also let you define variables and associate them with graphic elements in the image. AlterCast is able to supply values for variables defined in PSD or SVG files. These values then participate in the rendering of the image and the contents of the resulting JPEG or GIF image. Variables can be used for text strings within the image, for example.

To use AlterCast with Web pages generated by GoLive, you need to have AlterCast installed on the Web server that is serving the pages. GoLive itself does not use AlterCast directly in the authoring process. AlterCast is needed to preview the images within GoLive, however, and to view dynamically generated images in a Web browser.