Adobe Fireworks CS5

What kind of image editing software do you really need? John Hillman looks at the differences between Fireworks and Photoshop, Adobe’s two big beasts of the graphic design world.

For many years Adobe Photoshop has sat at the top of the image editing tree, the undisputed king of the swingers, holding court to a design community enthralled by its transformative powers.

But speak to someone who makes their living online, such as a front end developer or content specialist, and you are likely to be told that the only tool you’ll ever need is Photoshop’s more modest cousin – Adobe Fireworks.

So this poses the question: which one is right for me? Should I save a sizeable wedge of cash – and disk space – on Fireworks? Or is it imperative to master the industry standard bearer and invest heavily – in both time and money – on Photoshop? Hopefully this article will help you answer these important questions.

Photoshop for the pros

There is no getting away from the influence of Photoshop across the media industry. The fact is that if you are planning or embarking on a career in this field then people will expect you to have an excellent grasp of Photoshop. It is more than the industry standard; it widely considered essential knowledge for design professionals. Anyone who harbours an ambition to wield the sorcerers touch across multi-source graphics simply has to learn Photoshop.

Fireworks for the web masters

And yet, and yet, talk to a web designer and they’ll advise you to avoid the profound complexities of Photoshop – as far as they’re concerned it’s a tool for photographers that has some relevant web design features; Fireworks, on the other hand, has been designed and built for the digital community from the very start.

Key to this point-of-view is the fact that Fireworks lets you quickly and easily export your finished images and graphics to the web. It does so making sure that they are fully optimised for the Internet, meaning that your new site’s loading times are kept to a minimum – an essential factor in web design.

However, Fireworks is far from appropriate when it comes to advanced photo-editing. You can’t really airbrush something in Fireworks, you can in Photoshop. Fireworks doesn’t have a content aware fill tool for removing unwanted objects in an image, Photoshop does. Photoshop is a tool for digital artists, Fireworks generally isn’t.

Just choose the right tool for the job

Another thing to consider is the fact that Photoshop, and its vector controlling wing-man Illustrator, are designed to seamlessly integrate with Fireworks so if you want to be the cats whiskers of the design world then ultimately you’re going to need everything, so start saving for the full version of CS5.

If you are starting out though, and web design is your chosen path, then many web developers would tell you to avoid Photoshop and concentrate your efforts on Fireworks, at least to start with.

On a very basic level just think of Photoshop as a photographer’s tool and Fireworks as a web designer’s.

Find out more about Photoshop and Fireworks here!

Price:

Adobe Fireworks CS5 - £238 (ex VAT) for the full version

Adobe Photoshop CS5 - £548.00 (ex VAT) for the full version

Adobe Photoshop CS5 Extended – £794 (ex VAT) for the full version

System Requirements for Adobe Photoshop:

Windows

• Intel® Pentium® 4 or AMD Athlon® 64 processor
• Microsoft® Windows® XP with Service Pack 3; Windows Vista® Home Premium, Business, Ultimate, or Enterprise with Service Pack 1 (Service Pack 2 recommended); or Windows 7
• 1GB of RAM
• 1GB of available hard-disk space for installation; additional free space required during installation (cannot install on removable flash-based storage devices)
• 1024×768 display (1280×800 recommended) with qualified hardware-accelerated OpenGL graphics card, 16-bit colour, and 256MB of VRAM
• Some GPU-accelerated features require graphics support for Shader Model 3.0 and OpenGL 2.0
• DVD-ROM drive
• QuickTime 7.6.2 software required for multimedia features
• Broadband Internet connection required for online services*

Mac OS

• Multicore Intel processor
• Mac OS X v10.5.7 or v10.6
• 1GB of RAM
• 2GB of available hard-disk space for installation; additional free space required during installation (cannot install on a volume that uses a case-sensitive file system or on removable flash-based storage devices)
• 1024×768 display (1280×800 recommended) with qualified hardware-accelerated OpenGL graphics card, 16-bit colour, and 256MB of VRAM
• Some GPU-accelerated features require graphics support for Shader Model 3.0 and OpenGL 2.0
• DVD-ROM drive
• QuickTime 7.6.2 software required for multimedia features
• Broadband Internet connection required for online services*

System Requirements for Adobe Fireworks:

Windows

• Intel® Pentium® 4 or AMD Athlon® 64 processor
• Microsoft® Windows® XP with Service Pack 2 (Service Pack 3 recommended); Windows Vista® Home Premium, Business, Ultimate, or Enterprise with Service Pack 1; or Windows 7
• 512MB of RAM (1GB recommended)
• 1GB of available hard-disk space for installation; additional free space required during installation (cannot install on removable flash-based storage devices)
• 1280×1024 display with 16-bit video card
• DVD-ROM drive
• Broadband Internet connection required for online services*

Mac OS

• Multicore Intel processor
• Mac OS X v10.5.7 or v10.6
• 512MB of RAM (1GB recommended)
• 1GB of available hard-disk space for installation; additional free space required during installation (cannot install on a volume that uses a case-sensitive file system or on removable flash-based storage devices)
• 1280×1024 display with 16-bit video card
• DVD-ROM drive
• Broadband Internet connection required for online services*

We are currently building a list of exciting vouchers for you to choose from. While we do this, why not take a look at our expert review for the Adobe Fireworks CS5 review