There’s a lot of talk amongst users these days about the soon to be released Adobe Creative Suite 3 and how they have been separated into Web, Design and Production “flavours”. Many people think that this separation, especially the one between Web and Design (Print) is arbitrary and does not reflect the real life work flows of today’s designers. I completely agree.
The core of the isue is that, the Web Suite does not contain InDesign and the Design Suite does not contain Fireworks or Contribute. To me, Contribute is a niche product but Fireworks is already very important to many designer’s workflows and will become more so for people who relied heavily on the discontinued ImageReady. Many will now turn to Fireworks to perform the tasks they did in ImageReady. Maybe they will then realize that Fireworks is a lot more than a mere ImageReady replacement but that is another matter…
The point is that designers will increasingly need to work and publish in several mediums. The days of “pure” print or Web designers are counted and many of us already need to cater to mixed mediums workflows. Like many others, I need to work with both Fireworks and InDesign TODAY but I will now need to acquire one of the 2 suites then get the missing application as a standalone version thus increasing costs significantly.
I think this arbitrary separation between Web and print is a big marketing mistake on Adobe’s part. It is a disapointing blemish on one of the most exciting software releases I have ever seen. There is so much to love in each application’s new version. Adobe should have made their packaging far more flexible in order to better cater to their customer’s increasingly complex needs…
Agreed. Adobe has sent me a number of surveys over the past year asking about the products I use and soforth. There is always room for comments at the end and I’ve consistantly asked for a choose-your-own suite that would allow us to mix and match– the more we bundle-the less the expense, products priced along a scale, et cetera. I can’t believe I’m the only user asking after this. Too bad they don’t seem to be listening!
Agreed, too, and good point, Stephane!
BTW, I use Fireworks sometimes for small print jobs, not only for Web… I simply can’t trade the power and simplicity of use of this app with anything else… sorry:)
Michel,
As much as I love Fireworks I really would never use it for any kind of print task. It just does not have the right tools for it starting with its lack of true CMYK color space. I agree that Fireworks’ toolset is powerful and simpler to use
than many other graphic apps but it’s probably just because you are more used to it. I myself came to Fireworks from Photoshop and Illustrator so I was already familiar with both applications and I still use Illustrator almost everyday. I’m also having a lot of fun learning and using InDesign these days and I find it to be the epitome of power and sophistication and CS3 is even better in that way than CS2. It’s text handling in particular makes Fireworks feel downright primitive in comparison…
Joseph,
You certainly are not the only user asking for this and if we keep talking about it Adobe will have no choice but to hear us eventually. They might even listen and do something about it…
I’ll check on Illustrator these days, I guess:)
Problem is, I never got used to Photoshop interface — to me it was horrible. Then I found — by accident — Fireworks, and fell in love with the program
Yes, I know, I know… FW is not for print. So, (sighs), heading on for the Illustrator tutorials he keeps on DVDs in the basement