Flash® Catalyst™ CS5 Bible

Chapter 7. Using Fireworks with Flash Catalyst

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Creating a new file in Fireworks

• Fireworks tools

• Working with color

• Optimizing images

• Exporting FXG files

While Adobe Illustrator excels at creating vector-based graphics and Photoshop remains an industry standard in raster or bitmap graphic editing, Adobe Fireworks nicely bridges the two.

Fireworks's real strength, however, is in working with graphics created specifically for the Web. While both Illustrator and Photoshop now contain tools for dealing with the specific demands of Web graphics, neither program was created for that purpose. Fireworks, however, was designed from the very beginning for Web graphics. Its mix of both vector and raster tools along with its superior Web optimization tools make it an ideal choice for creating images for your Web site.

With the release of Fireworks CS3, Adobe added features to the program to also make it a good tool for doing rapid prototyping of Web sites. Today, many professional Web designers begin the process of creating sites in Fireworks, which allows designers to create initial design comps to present to their clients.

Unfortunately, Fireworks does not, at this point, work seamlessly with Catalyst. In some ways the two products fill the same niche: Catalyst provides a means by which designers can create initial prototypes of Flex projects, whereas Fireworks provides the same tool for HTML-based sites.

That said, many designers still prefer Fireworks over Illustrator and Photoshop ...