There has been a lot of discussion in blogs and newsgroups following the recent closing of the transaction for the acquisition of Macromedia by Adobe. I have been reading a lot about it in the last few days, official words and commentary alike and there’s one thing that’s really been bugging me in many of the coments I’ve seen.
There’s a lot of people who seem to be confused about what Fireworkis is or what it can do. They speculate that Fireworks is doomed because it’s not as “strong” as Photoshop or worse, because it “competes” with ImageReady. Both statements are dead wrong.
First of all, Fireworks is fundamentally different in nature than both Photoshop and ImageReady as it is a true vector based application (not a raster application with awkward vector features tacked on like Photoshop…). Fireworks’ bitmap tools indeed do not have the depth of Photoshop’s but it doesn’t have the same purpose either. Fireworks was designed for the creation of Web graphics only. It does not have Photoshop’s print heritage. There is really no direct comparison between the two apps other than they their sharing some functionality and both are used to create Web sites graphics (although I really can’t think why anyone would subject themselves to the tedium of laying out a Web site in Photoshop…).
Secondly, comparing Fireworks with ImageReady makes even less sense despite what many people seem to think. ImageReady is really nothing more than a glorified slicing, optimizing and exporting tool and while those tasks are certainly part of what Fireworks does they’re only a fraction of its functionality. Fireworks is first and foremost a creative tool whith which you design site layouts and graphics, not a mere “slicing and dicing” tool used after the “real” work gets done in a more sophisticated application like Photoshop or Illustrator.
With Fireworks there is no middle man, you create then slice then optimize and preview graphics right within the same integrated and efficient interface with precise and flexible vector as well great bitmap tools. Regardless of the innacurate information some are spreading about Fireworks and beyond all the speculation surrounding the acquisition and plans for specific products, I choose to hope that Adobe will be smart enough to recognize the unique nature of Fireworks and keep it around and develop it further. Fireworks really should have a future and deserves better recognition than what it got under Macromedia’s inept marketing efforts on its behalf…
If Adobe gets rid of Fireworks, they are totally nuts. I will NOT switch to image ready or Photoshop. I love Fireworks!
Hear hear! But it seems Adobe are keeping Firefox so woo hoo!
Yes.I like Fireworks!
I use Fireworks for all my web graphics, but you would be surprised at the number of templates that I get in PSD format.
I’m not surprised Jason, I get PSD files all the time too. But I still don’t understand why so many designers choose to do design and layout work in Photoshop. If Fireworks didn’t exist, I’d probably be using Illustrator or FreeHand to do the same work. Photoshop is a terrible choice for layout work. Any vector based app is much better suited for it IMO.