Adobe® CS4 Web Workflows: Building Web Sites With Adobe® Creative Suite® 4

Part IV. PHOTOSHOP TO BRIDGE TO FIREWORKS TO DREAMWEAVER

CHAPTER 09 ASSET CREATION AND COMPING PG. 280

Chapter 10 ADDING INTERACTIVE FORMS IN DREAMWEAVER PG. 280

When Adobe acquired Macromedia, there was great interest—and some downright concern—about how Fireworks would be treated in the home of Photoshop. Somewhat surprisingly, the answer is "exceedingly well." Not only has Fireworks thrived under Adobe's management, it turns out that Photoshop and Fireworks are excellent workflow partners. Photoshop definitely plays well with others.

Although Fireworks is beyond decent at manipulating bitmaps, Photoshop is the true champ. With more tools and a longer history of shaping digital information, Photoshop is better equipped at correcting and cleaning up digital photographs that make up much of the modern Web. Fireworks, for its part, excels at optimization and maintaining editability—something that Photoshop picked up from Fireworks's talent pool.

Adobe Bridge provides a much needed conduit between the two graphic programs. While Fireworks can import native Photoshop files and vice versa, a more frequently used workflow is for Fireworks to incorporate digital images after they have been adjusted ...