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65 Comments
- webresources, on 12/29/2008, -2/+26Very nice post. As the post asks: Yes , I believe Fireworks is dying.
- Bukowsky, on 12/29/2008, -3/+26I use Photoshop on a daily basis, but I can't remember the last time I used Fireworks.
- jiminizer, on 12/29/2008, -1/+23I still use Fireworks a lot for web graphics. I use photoshop if I need to edit an image or something but for making buttons and logos etc I prefer Fireworks.
- onedeep, on 12/29/2008, -0/+17Decent vectors and image editing, all in the same program. Think of it like this:
Image Editing: Photoshop > Fireworks > Illustrator
Vectors: Illustrator > Fireworks > Photoshop
When creating websites, you need both vectors and image editing. So I can either run two programs than have way more power than I will ever need, or I can run one program that does just enough. - wheezy360, on 12/29/2008, -0/+11Dugg for Fireworks. Doesn't get enough love.
- absolutzombie, on 12/29/2008, -0/+10Actually - in my experience CS4 is really showing the new progression for Fireworks - and I am starting to use it again. Photoshop is really meant for just that - photos - where fireworks is really tailored for web graphics\sites. No need to flip between Illustrator and Photoshop for designing a site - just do it straight away in Fireworks - it has bitmap and vector effects built in. It's clickable pdf output is an awesome tool for an interactive design briefs, and it has new CSS outputs that really speed up a design's first phase of production.
If you're a designer using both Illustrator and Photoshop now to do your initial site designs - you should take a very serious look at Fireworks CS4.
CS4 in general is a great upgrade by Adobe. - inactive, on 12/29/2008, -1/+11I'll be in the minority but I'd still prefer to use Fireworks although I think each has their own little differences that makes them better for different tasks and yes, technically Photoshop is more powerful.
- KVachon, on 12/29/2008, -4/+12Fireworks is redundant, it was macromedia's try at a photoshop type image editor, but only for web & flash graphics. But now since the two companies merged it really doesnt have a place or purpose in the creative suite.
- darny, on 12/29/2008, -1/+9Me too. JPG compression is a lot easier to handle in fireworks. I can get a much better quality image at much smaller file sizes (bytes) in fireworks. Also, dreamweaver uses fireworks to create web photo albums, which are also pretty neat.
- ciano, on 12/29/2008, -2/+9Well, someone might happen to own a copy of Fireworks that came with a software bundle and therefore feel no need to pirate Photoshop. That's why I use it anyway. And the only differences I have found so far between Photoshop and Fireworks is that Fireworks doesn't have as many brush strokes, doesn't support color profiling, and is easier to use.
- cricke, on 12/29/2008, -0/+6I've been using Fireworks for a couple of years doing webdesign and I'm never going back to photoshop which is clearly not made for webdesign..
Firework is not meant as a competitor (as in a photo editing application) to PS. Its built for doing interactive design. - defectDS, on 12/29/2008, -1/+7From someone who has used Fireworks exclusively for all 5 years of his budding career, I always thought of it as the perfect mix between Photoshop and Illustrator. It is the ideal program for web design.
I think it is a lot more useful than just for "quick mock ups" as it is deemed as in it's product description. I'm not trying to plug my work. I'm just trying to show that the program is a lot more powerful than people give it credit for:
http://blaklitegraphics.deviantart.com/favourites/ ...
That said, Fireworks CS4 is crap. It's completely buggy and at sometimes unusable because of the new confounded text and vector engine. Blehhfskdjf. I need to revert to CS3. - mikembley, on 12/29/2008, -0/+5I dont think it is dying, I think its a valuble part of Adobes CS's, Fireworks is brilliant for Web Design and quick editing. Over the years its functionality has improved to become more compliant with the other Adobe Applications.
Its like what Illustrator is to Photoshop, Yeah you can do vectors in Photoshop but you dont get all the neat tools, etc.. Yeah you can do slicing and hotspots in Photoshop, but why not do all the web stuff in Fireworks which is pretty much what i use Fireworks for and is much speedier than Photoshop.
Photoshop > Fireworks ( Slice & Dice, Op & Export ) > Dreamweaver - jugglingjon, on 12/29/2008, -1/+5Fireworks is a lot better than Photoshop for vector based work, and faster than Illustrator for web layouts.
- BrockSky, on 12/29/2008, -0/+4Nothing beats Fireworks when it comes to slicing and optimizing for web. Please notice I said "for web". Photoshop is certainly more powerful as an image editor, but when it comes to simple web layout work, nothing beats Fireworks.
- jggube, on 12/29/2008, -1/+5This is probably the most comprehensive resource I've seen on Fireworks. Fireworks is a good entry-level graphics editor, but with the cost of Photoshop Elements, I think Fireworks is on it's way out of the lineup.
- Yez70, on 12/29/2008, -2/+5I hope not. It's my preferred app. Photoshop is too complicated for the basic user.
- blueZhift, on 12/29/2008, -0/+3Absolutely. I only create graphics for the web and have never really had any need to drop the big bucks on Photoshop.
- cesclaveria, on 12/29/2008, -0/+3I have been using Fireworks for years and I love it, I really hope to have it around some more time. It ran just fine on my old pc when photoshop even refused to install.
- curiouslyvague, on 12/29/2008, -0/+3I sure hope that Fireworks isn't dying out, as a web focused rapid prototyping, optimising and slicing program it beats the illustrator/photoshop combo hands down
I might need to reach into Photoshop occasionally as Adobe seems to think that useless new features are more important than fixing basic tools like saturation controls or font palettes/anti-aliasing, but grabbing objects (whether vector or bitmap) on the canvas and manipulating them directly (illustrator style), instead of the brain exploding "which of the 30 photoshop layers is this item on" means getting thoughts down in pixels is much faster and more rewarding for me.
I'd only give up fireworks if the toolset was integrated into Illustrator, it's a closer direct comparison in workflow but is currently wayyy too geared to print and resolution independence instead of outputting bitmaps from a mix of pixels and vectors. And all in an open format source file called PNG...
Maybe it's an opportunity for a third party tool like pixelmator... if Adobe continue to ignore FW, or kill it, us web pros will be demanding a tool that isn't just a sideline of a print design product (in the current climate, print output should be a sideline of a web tool!) - ngmcs8203, on 12/29/2008, -0/+3Fireworks is great from mock-up to graphic delivery for DW. Are you and I the only two who remember the CS3 intro videos that showed how it was meant to be used now as part of the Adobe Creative Suite?
- julzmon, on 12/29/2008, -1/+4Try making pixel perfect anything in Photoshop or Illustrator. In Fireworks it's so easy and it's all vector. Once you give it a chance you feel like Photoshop is for image manipulation and Fireworks is for webdesign.
- annjay, on 12/29/2008, -2/+5At this moment I am not seeing any future of fireworks in the industry. By the way good collection.
- absolutzombie, on 12/29/2008, -1/+4Photoshop is getting too bloated for its own good already.
FW CS4 has the same interface as PS CS4. - dwyn, on 12/29/2008, -0/+3If you are used to Photoshop for Web stuff then Fireworks might seem strange to you, but having used both Fireworks and Photoshop for many years (since the inception of Fireworks) I can tell you for sure Fireworks is superior in speed and ease for building Web pages, just as Photoshop is superior for photo manipulation, compositing, prepress, and digital painting.
The vector and type tools in Fireworks are much faster to use and manipulate than Photoshops are. Fireworks is actually ALOT more like Illustrator, and it should not even be compared to Photoshop.
But to each his own, I say. - e3boy, on 12/29/2008, -0/+3Working in fireworks is twice as fast for me than photoshop.
That translates to making twice as much money over the same time span.
Fireworks was design for web design, photoshop was for photo editing.
So i hope it never dies. - arma, on 12/29/2008, -0/+3Fireworks shall prevail!
- cre8tivate, on 12/29/2008, -0/+2Fireworks!=Photoshop.
You "Photoshop for everything" people may never get that.
Adobe has several tools in its collection for us to use to accomplish our design goals. It's up to us to decide how to use these tools. Yes, there is some overlap in features, but then again, so too between Illustrator and InDesign, or Illustrator and Photoshop, or Dreamweaver and Fireworks, or Illustrator and Photoshop, etc etc.
Fireworks runs circles around Photoshop for web design and prototyping. Adobe needs to work on it's marketing engine to make people understand the vital differences between the two programs and when it is appropriate to use each of them. - cesclaveria, on 12/29/2008, -0/+2prepare to be dugg down because you stated your opinion and the people who uses/likes photoshop feel like you just attacked them.
- FredFredrickson, on 12/29/2008, -3/+5Why would anyone use Fireworks instead of Photoshop?
- freq, on 12/29/2008, -1/+3I've been using fireworks off and on for many years, and it's still a great little program for slicing and optimizing web graphics and doing fast page mockups. Why use a chainsaw when a pair of scissors will work just fine for the task?
- heiroglyph, on 12/29/2008, -0/+2Why does everyone think that pixels == Photoshop?
Fireworks was great at what it was intended to do, it is much more specialized than Photoshop for web graphics. It also handles alpha channels in a more logical manner. Absence or transparency of paint is alpha. Duh.
In the same way that TVPaint is not Photoshop (it is much more painterly and handles animation/video much better), it was not intended to be Photoshop and fills different needs.
Photoshop started as photo retouching for print media and is perpetually forced into other fields, often with sub-optimal results. - mysticalone, on 12/29/2008, -0/+2forgot me /s tag. Yarrr.
- cre8tivate, on 12/29/2008, -1/+3No, Fireworks was not Macromedia's try at a Photoshop competitor. Macromedia moved towards a more "web" or electronic based system with it's flagships like Flash, Director and Dreamweaver, and let it's Print side wane by slowly letting go of Freehand. They knew they couldn't compete against Adobe in the print arena, but they knew they could rule the web. Fireworks was built for the web, Photoshop was built for print. In Adobe's "catch all" style, they have slowly morphed Photoshop into a one size fits all bloat-app that really doesn't fit anybody.
- Coottie, on 12/29/2008, -0/+2I like Fireworks for certain things but it is limited and as others have pointed out, once you know photoshop there may not be a use for it. When you also consider the Gimp as a free alternative to photoshop, I think fireworks days are numbered....unfortunately.
- DonCarcharo, on 12/29/2008, -0/+1I've been putting together website mockups in Photoshop since the mid nineties and I've been reasonably happy with my workflow (especially with the advent of the CS suite). However I keep hearing people say that I should give Fireworks a try since my mockups use a healthy portion of vector graphics and my templates are all CSS based.
Is there really that much of a benefit over Photoshop for doing web interface design? What about for someone like myself that uses Coda for template development instead of Dreamweaver? I'm just curious how this app could improve my workflow - especially now that I actually own it. - dstrader88, on 01/12/2009, -0/+1I enjoy Photoshop and really know how to navigate through it as well - its hard to switch after learning something like photoshop. However, I have tried using Fireworks but it seems to be a little more confusing. I use Photoshop a tons and just haven't use Fireworks just because Photoshop seems to have more power - !
- Heidenreich12, on 12/29/2008, -1/+2I have tried Fireworks and find it less superior to Photoshop in many ways. It really doesn't help that Adobe owns Macromedia now, so there's really no point in staying with Fireworks as it will die off eventually when Adobe finally decides to cycle it out
- Sparky9292, on 12/29/2008, -0/+1Basically an app that integrates into Macromedia Dreamweaver to do 99% of your image editing stuff that you need for the web.
- FredFredrickson, on 12/29/2008, -0/+1Pixel-perfect in Photoshop is cake - after all, it's a raster image editing program at heart. Illustrator isn't for pixel editing, so I don't even know why you would bring that program into the equation.
- taketheleap, on 12/29/2008, -1/+2Fireworks is pretty CSS friendly; it allows you to slice up your image pretty quickly, but the obvious downside is that it's not nearly - not even close - as powerful as Photoshop.
If Adobe was smart, they would incorporate some of the best features from Fireworks (viewing slices as green overlays for example) into Photoshop CS5, and just outright kill Fireworks.
No sense competing against yourself! - Cowicide, on 12/29/2008, -0/+1To clarify, I should have said what I want is tighter integration of PS and DW. I think FW is only a distraction from this pursuit for Adobe.
- Cowicide, on 12/30/2008, -0/+1If you are a pro, Photoshop CS4 will fly on your hardware. CS4 is actually faster than older versions on my hardware b/c of the changes under the hood (i.e., utilization of video card). The "bloat" doesn't bother me since it doesn't affect me at all. I like having many powerful tools at my disposal. I wish they'd "bloat" it even more and let us export seamless 360 degree Java, Flash and QTVR panos straight from PS after you stitch them.
The bottom line is that is makes my workflow quicker. If there is some "bloat" that I don't need to use... I simply ignore it. If this was the 90's... you'd have a point.
If you are a pro, you'd also know that FWCS4 does NOT have the same interface/functionality of PSCS4. While Adobe did put some lipstick on the pig to make it look like PS... it's still the clunky Fireworks many of us know and hate in the end. If you don't understand why the lack of smart object support in FW makes it practically useless for the top pros... then you're probably not a top pro. - MtheoryX, on 12/30/2008, -0/+1FW CS4 has the exact same looking interface as PS CS4...at least on OS X, that is.
- heiroglyph, on 12/30/2008, -0/+1That's how everyone thinks it works, until they actually try it.
Between project layers the unpainted areas are transparent as expected, but that doesn't help you cut through the background color you selected for the project.
Go ahead, try to make a 32bit PNG or TGA with transparency without adding an alpha channel layer. - Darkyuubi, on 12/31/2008, -0/+1Adobe...Fireworks
Wow that sounds weird. Still quite use to saying Macromedia Fireworks... - ElBeh, on 12/29/2008, -0/+1Even though it's Adobe software, it's not half as bloated as Photoshop.
- FredFredrickson, on 12/30/2008, -0/+1Why would you lay out a website in Illustrator? O_O
- FredFredrickson, on 12/30/2008, -0/+1"Absence or transparency of paint is alpha. Duh."
That's how Photoshop works. Have you ever used it? -
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