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I’ve been using Macromedia Fireworks for years. At first, I had a bit of a difficult transition from Photoshop to Fireworks. Fireworks is really half Illustrator and half Photoshop, entirely geared towards web design. For example, it only operates in RGB – no CMYK. You won’t be creating print layouts in Fireworks. But the ease of which you could export web-optimized slices won me over, and I’ve never looked back. I still use Photoshop for working with photography, or to create specific visual effects – but hardly ever for creating web comps. Here’s a few reason’s why:

Fireworks plays better with Flash

Since Fireworks is vector by default, that means that objects you copy and paste into Flash tend to stay vector objects. This keeps your Flash file lightweight and editable, instead of bloated with bitmaps that you have to rework in Photoshop.

Find and replace with Fireworks

When you create a bunch of screen comps and then the client wants to change details across them, that usually means a lot of lost time to busywork. But with Fireworks you can find and replace 10pt Myriad with 12pt Helvetica Neue across a folder full of comps. If you’d like to create two sets of comps with different color schemes, that’s easy too. Just duplicate your folder of Fireworks PNG files, and run a series of find and replaces on colors instead of fonts. I can’t even tell you how much time this has saved me over the years.

Fireworks can save as PSD, AI and more

Let’s say the client loves your screen designs, and now they want the final files as Illustrator files instead of Photoshop files. If you made your comps in Photoshop, you’ve got a long week ahead of you remaking them in Illustrator. But not if you created them in Fireworks – just export as Illustrator. Changed their mind again? Export as a layered Photoshop file instead. Just because you work in Fireworks doesn’t mean everyone else has to.

Fireworks can use your Photoshop filters

Most Photoshop filters work just as well in Fireworks too.

Fireworks has layers and frames

Fireworks has layers just like Photoshop, but it has frames also. Want to create all your comps in one file? Just put all your global items (your masthead, for example) on a shared layer and then create your individual art on frames. When you’re ready to export all your comps, choose “Export Frames” and Fireworks will save each frame as it’s own image.

There’s a ton more timesavers like these

I could go on all day like this, but I’ll stop here for now. If you’re looking to work more efficiently on your screen designs, you owe it to yourself to check out Fireworks. Besides, Fireworks works hand-in-hand with Dreamweaver to make your web workflow even more seamless.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 10th, 2006 at 2:46 pm and is filed under Web Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.