Hey Maestro's,

 

I'm not in any way a talented graphic designer, I know the only way I'll get good at it is to practice practice practice. And I've been using fireworks and I'm getting the hang of it. However I do have friends who have studied graphic design and they all prefer using photoshop.

 

Does anyone know both photoshop and fireworks well enough to give a few pro's and con's on using either product?

 

Also is it advisable to keep working on getting good at graphic design when you're a web coder more than a designer? I've been debating whether or not I could get away with just mastering codes and letting graphic design slide...

 

Any comments?

 

Regards,

 

Cari

Hey,

 

I'm no expert, but there isn't much difference, you can use either, it is a case of whatever you feel most comfortable with.

 

Personally, I have both but prefer Photoshop, but only because I have used it the most. Some friends of mine who are professional web designers use Fireworks.

 

Photoshop is really for Graphic design etc and can be used for web design. However, Fireworks I believe was made especially for web design (Please someone correct me if i'm wrong), but whatever you use, you'll still be able to design professional looking websites and graphics with them.

Oh and regarding the designing aspect when you are focusing on coding.

 

I began by designing and coding my websites. Found the Xhtml and CSS easy to learn, however, Graphics were different. I was ok with the design programs, making things which looked quite good. However, when it came round to putting a whole site together, I started to realise that I don't have a natural designer's eye.

 

I believe you can practice and get really good with graphic and website design, definitely good enough to make good looking websites anyway, but obviously it will take time. However, being impatient, I went the other way and have decided to stick with coding and am going into the development side with asp.net etc instead! With a lot of jobs, if you are a coder, you wont be having to make the designs anyway, just put them together.

 

There are a lot of good designers on here, such as Dizi, who will be able to give you a lot more help.

Fireworks is a good software to make web designs. It supports both vector and raster. Check this link and you will know why you should use fireworks.

 

 

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/fireworks/arti..._fireworks.html

 

However, there are some problems like saving images is not as good as photoshop.

Thanks Mike, for your advice

 

And art, thanks for the link.

 

Cari.

Another good link for Fireworks users here

hmmm I think for beginer is better photoshop, because there are a lot of tutorial websites, I don't know about fireworks much, moreover photoshop and fireworks are tools that helps you to express your imagination, it doesn't matter with wich you will work, you can create outstanding designs with both.

Do Photoshop, Fireworks is like 1/100th as good as PS. I tried both, and I have stuck to Photoshop.

Photoshop is an industry standard and has inifnite more applications than fireworks. Furthermore, online free help and advice for photoshop is extensive.

Being able to use a graphics program well won't necessarily make you a good designer, and being a good designer won't necessarily mean you will want to use a graphics package. There are some excellent designs out there which have never seen a single incarnation in photoshop or similar (check out calm banana for instance).

Of course, I'm not suggesting that you shouldn't get experienced using a graphics package, just to be aware that it won't make you a good designer necessarily. My advice would be to read some good web design books (here's a good thread) experiment with minimal page layouts, fonts, sizes, margins, columns etc. Get a feel for a layout that flows, and then begin to think graphics. Just my opinion....

Good luck, and btw, have you thought about trying GIMP? Save yourself the extortionate photoshop licence!

Photoshop is Good one!

I use Ps, but for optimizing Fireworks is better. When I finish design in PS I save it in .png and open it layered in Fireworks...so that means I use both lol

It really is down to personal preference. I think Photoshop is extremely powerful and capable of more as it's built for designers aswell. I've always used Fireworks as it's very quick and I find it alot faster to build a website than Photoshop - as I personally find the layers easier to work with and also applying and tweaking effects quicker.

 

I suggest getting both trial versions and trying some tutorials to see what you feel most comfortable with.

It really is down to personal preference. I think Photoshop is extremely powerful and capable of more as it's built for designers aswell. I've always used Fireworks as it's very quick and I find it alot faster to build a website than Photoshop - as I personally find the layers easier to work with and also applying and tweaking effects quicker.

 

I suggest getting both trial versions and trying some tutorials to see what you feel most comfortable with.

 

Agreed. I use Photoshop for nearly all web design/graphic design/interface design, though I've found that fireworks is a good alternative with things that need to be altered continuously (as most of it is vector).

 

I personally would suggest learning fireworks if you need to learn web graphics quickly.. If you've got some time, invest it into learning Photoshop, it's definitely worth it.

 

Oh, and I've been using fireworks for a few years and only within the last year have I transferred over to Photoshop, and my graphics have improved phenomenally.

Dont know if it is just me, but I have always found Macromedia products unintuitive and even a bit clunky.

I have been using Fireworks for a good while now and have suddenly got both due to having a software update. Although I don't know all the ins and outs of photoshop yet, I do think it is better for the design side, I agree with, I can't remember who said it but they said Fireworks felt a little more clunky. I think Photoshop seems to be easier to get a professional finish with. I like the blur and history buttons on the left amongst other things I certainly don't think that you could create an extremely good graphic from scratch in Fireworks. Then again I did go from a rather old version of Fireworks to Photoshop CS3

 

Elise