Fireworks Vs. Photoshop

The Pub
1

After years of working exclusively with PS/AI for web design work, I am being forced into the world of Fireworks.

I’ve never used it before, so I downloaded the trial and I have to say that it’s going to be a tough adjustment. I’ve gotten very used to using layer effects for my font work. I can’t even figure out how to create a stroke in FW, and the dropshadow/glow effects they do have seem completely hamfisted. Not to mention the fact that the anti-aliasing is jacked and gradients seem to be raster rather than vector based (zoom in and you see crappy pixel artifacts).

I am sure that a lot of these issues have solutions that I as a new user don’t know anything about, so please - any designers out there familiar with FW? Keith, I know you do print, but I thought maybe you might have some experience.

By the by - I have no interest in the layout features that supposedly make FW so fantastic for web layout. I code my layouts and backfill with graphics. It’d be great of the guys who produce my specs used FW, but outside of that those things hold no real benefit for me. I just need something capable of producing solid graphics, not the crap I’ve been able to produce on it so far. Any suggestions for making the most out of this?

2

Hmmmm … this is the first I have heard of Fireworks. My wife is a programmer and had extensive web knowledge. I’ll ask her but I’m not sure she has ever used it.

3

Thanks… I figured out a couple of things, like the gradients (vector when a vector fill, raster when paintbucket fill… I think) and stroke.

Seems like everything about this has a default setting of “utter crap” - once you actually figure out how to do something, you have to go into the advanced settings to figure out how to do it like a professional and not an 8 year old girl.

The worst part is still the anti-alias engine. It looks completely bush league, and a search around the ol’ Google tells me I’m not alone in this opinion.