• Notice regarding image hosts and attachments. See here.

PS vs FW

Aruffell

Aruffell

Aruffell

Soldato
Joined
29 Dec 2004
Posts
5,653
Location
Chatham, Kent
I know a few web designers, and a few of them prefer PS over FW and vice versa.

Just wondering what you all prefer to make web graphics.

As Fireworks handles bitmap and vector, and is fantastic for making simple rollover button menu bars whereas some other people i know would prefer to make seperate images and use some kind of javascript to make the images rollover.

Just wondering what people prefer?

Andy
 
Photoshop for me.
Partly because I've been using it so long, I'm good with it. The main reason though is because I have no choice. I work with a lot of different people because of my job. (our designers, client's designers, freelancers) and every one of them use photoshop. When we're swapping work back and forth, it just has to be psd.



Aruffell said:
...would prefer to make seperate images and use some kind of javascript to make the images rollover...
Click to expand...

Why why why?
Combine your three background images (default, hover and selected) together and then just shift the background-position accordingly with css.
 
As above exactly. All the designers I work with use PS, so it really forces me to.

There's only one guy I know who uses Fireworks and he's a Flash developer who uses it to create vector shapes and then import into Flash - although why he prefers FW i don't know as PS can do this too.
 
I Also use PS, I never work with vectors so have never went to FW, I've always seen PS as better and just never used FW. Plus PS gives you everything you can think of, no skimping on features :)

One thing I do straight away in PS is set up guidelines, and let everything snap to them, it makes sure every things exact and makes it a breeze when splicing out for CSS etc.

As Tripnologist said JavaScript is not needed these days to do image roll overs, CSS does the job better, is more reliable in terms of the user not having JavaScript etc, and keyboard navigation can be thrown in with :focus. Similarly by combining all images and shifting the background with like Tripnologist said. This also solves the bug some browsers like IE have when you roll over and the roll over image is not loaded for a second. Think it's IE does it :p Very annoying!
 
For what it's worth, and speaking as a PS user, Fireworks is much better when it comes to outputting optimized web graphics. Smaller file weights, clearer compressed text... it does lots of clever stuff.

But like so many others, familiarity with Photoshop means I can do this sort of job more quickly/efficiently. Plus there's the old chestnut of a small company not seeing the need to pay for Fireworks when they've just coughed up hundreds for 'the' image program.
 
simisker said:
For what it's worth, and speaking as a PS user, Fireworks is much better when it comes to outputting optimized web graphics. Smaller file weights, clearer compressed text... it does lots of clever stuff.
Click to expand...

Got any examples of this? Like the same image exported in both?
 
Conrad11 said:
Got any examples of this? Like the same image exported in both?
Click to expand...
Not to hand, but I recently attended one of Adobe's seminars where Fireworks' superiority in this department was clearly demonstrated. I'll see if there's owt on t'web...
 
Photoshop, simply because I'm used to it. School have Fireworks on all their machines so I might try playing with it a bit next term :)
 
Fireworks is definitely easier to get into, the layers system is much more intuitive.

As for images for menus, yuck, if you need a particular font do it with an image-replacement technique (preferably a js/server based image generator combo).
 
philjohn said:
As for images for menus, yuck, if you need a particular font do it with an image-replacement technique (preferably a js/server based image generator combo).
Click to expand...

I don't even know what a js/server based image generator combo is and I've done over 150 websites in the last year. Sorry if I sound dense but could you give me an example please?

On 19/20 sites, I just use lists with a background image applied to ul li a.
The remaining 1/20 are clients who are deadset on using a 'fancy' font. For these, I just add the text to the background image and indent the list text off screen.
For headers that need a custom font, I use sifr.
 
Photoshop all the way :)

Been using it for years and just know my way around it + using guides you can make your website build look 99.9% like the mockup if you know what your doing :)
 
Wow, I did a test.

Created an image in photoshop....saved it as PNG8 (using the Save for devices tool) and it was 46KB....copied the same image to fireworks and used the Export tool with exactly the same settings at Photoshop it came out as 26KB....pretty impressive.

...only thing is though is that the colours are slightly off..
 
Last edited:
Well i've tried both, and i always use Fireworks, purely because it's easier to use, or at least i find it so.

When it comes to learning a graphical application Fireworks felt easier so i stuck with it, though i understand it has limitations in comparison.

I can understand some people wanting to stick to Fireworks though, its easier to use. Plus everything you plonk onto the canvas automatically becomes it's own object/layer, which for me is great since i plonk bits and piece everywhere, then you also have the ability for regular layers like in Photoshop.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom