A glance at Photoshop integration with Fireworks
Jim Babbage
newmediaservices.ca
communitymx.com
Table of Contents
Communication—that’s what this industry is all about. For years, Adobe® Fireworks® and Adobe Photoshop® have been like those two brothers who never really talked to each other and wouldn’t share their knowledge either.
With the release of Creative Suite 3 (CS3), these two applications have finally buried the proverbial hatchet and are clasping hands—if somewhat tentatively at times.
Many graphics professionals use more than a single application to create their work. Personally, I’m always moving from Fireworks to Photoshop, depending on my client’s needs and the goals of the project.
This shuffling back and forth has become much easier with CS3. A great deal of effort was put into making Fireworks and Photoshop more compatible in this release. Here’s the list in brief:
- Improvements to the Photoshop import and export functions within Fireworks
- Hierarchical Layers panel
- Fireworks support for Photoshop Layer Effects, with the Live Filters menu
- Support for commonly used Photoshop blend modes (which means Fireworks just got seven more blend modes for you to play with—that’s 45 blend modes in all!)
- Adobe Bridge/XMP data integration
Requirements
To follow along with this article, you will need the following software:
Fireworks CS3
About the author
Jim Babbage's two passions—teaching and photography—led him to a career in commercial photography. With the release of Photoshop 2.5, Jim became involved in the world of digital imaging, and he soon began designing for the web in addition to taking photographs. Jim is a regular contributor to Community MX, where he has written articles and tutorials on Fireworks, Dreamweaver, Photoshop, and general web and photography topics. He teaches imaging, web design, and photography at Centennial College, and web design at Humber College. He is a partner at Newmedia Services, and has been a guest speaker at TODCon and a presenter at Adobe MAX.
