Photoshop is the best. I use it alot

The people that can talk without much bias are those that have used the 2 for some work. If you can only use one, you are tempted to say 1 is the best.

YANDE800:

Photoshop is the best. I use it alot

Question - can you and have you used FF?? Do you do web graphics?

for me i started with photoshop and used it for photo-retouching, then i delved into corel draw and illustrator and used it for basic graphic designs and vectors, and then web designing found me learning fireworks, at first i couldn't stand it (fireworks) cos the interface and workflow is way different from photoshop, but after some hours with video tutorials and practice i got the hang of it, now it's photoshop that's feeling alien to me,

i taught fireworks, photoshop, flash, dreamweaver and corel draw amidst other multimedia softwares at niit so please permit me to share my thoughts on this,

fireworks was created by macromedia, whilst photoshop came from adobe, so, that explains the difference in their interfaces, 

for me i guess it all depends on what you wanna do;

with photoshop there's nothing you can't do, i guess your imagination is your limit, but to master it will take years cos there are so many concepts, trick, tips and tutorials out there, its just like after effects - there's no end to learning all there is to it, its very good for image retouching, take the marquees for photoshop for instance, u can't compare them with the puny likes of fireworks

you can see from the images here that with your mastery of photoshop you become a god with your creative abilities

fireworks is very good for web design and very easy to learn, you can use it for SIMPLE WORK with vector and bitmap images, i use it for optimizing my graphic files, and since it integrates with dreamweaver and flash, you can work with both softwares in real time, designing your banner and then switching to dreamweaver and adding your CSS, hyperlinks, coding and j-query,

another reason i love fireworks for web design is you can use it to create a web design template that looks like a real functioning simple website, you can even add hyperlinks to each text or picture that would take you to the page u linked it to, though not a professional website suitable for upload, you could just cook up your design and let your client have a feel of what his website would look like, all with widgets and CSS, html coding, all done within fireworks CS4 and CS5

and if you're crazy about gradients i suggest u stick to fireworks, the possibilities of infinite gradients creation and manipulation make fireworks better than photoshop where gradients are involved (if u ask me)

its also possible now to create your entire website with all your web pages in fireworks and then after importing it into dreamweaver, whala! CSS would have been created for you, based on the designs you made in fireworks, although still under construction, it poses an easy way out for those of us who are not really CSS lovers

and in CS4 and CS5 you have some photoshop functionality embedded (Live Filters), not to mention 9-slice scaling, and you could create an interactive pdf document with fireworks

i could go on about illustrator and corel draw but that's outside the question,

so, summary, fireworks is good for web design and makes the work very easy, especially if you're into dreamweaver and flash like i am,
photoshop is also good, there are those who design websites strictly within photoshop, but the process na long tin,

and please let's not compare fireworks with photoshop, it's like comparing 3ds Max and Maya, there's no point and its futile

if you're going into after-effects i suggest you learn illustrator first and then photoshop, they integrate well with after effects, fireworks and corel draw doesn't.

let me stop here,

@llouis , can 3D buttons,glossy buttons etc be made in fireworks, i need a grahic editor only for web design.how long will it take to learn fireworks?

@llouis that was excellently said and very exclusive too. For people that are observant, if you read what lous, myself and dual core said, you will see that we made similar points to the fact that for web graphics exclusively - FW is the way.

I use Fireworks because i started out with it and even though i switch to Photoshop once a while, i still feel much at home with Fireworks.

Why would you use Photoshop for web-designing? This is 2012 Internet 2.0 or is it 2.5 is the order of the day. Figure out a CMS and run with it, Wordpress is excellent, if you want to be fancy, move on to Joomla, but again Wordpress is a great CMS for most uses,

http://www.Sasmuk.com

^^^@Chief06, you are not on point.

Why am I not on point ? Why do you need photoshop to design a website in 2012 or Fireworks? CMS is the way to go, and neither PS or Fireworks is any form of CMS.

Then again, it's just my opinion,

^^^You are not on point still. Just my own opinion.
Take a look at my website - www..net - it was done partially with drupal CMS anyway.
I had to first design the template with Macromedia Fireworks, then i made a custom drupal template and integrated my design into it.

Another thing i do is to convert existing sites into CMS - in fact, ever since the CMS stuffs came, my income has increased drastically doing these so-called conversions.

The guy that developed www.3stiches.com - a very popular Nigerian website - he was my former web-student (but he is professional today in his own area), he is very excellent in graphic development. He usually develops fantastic-looking themes from the scratch and sells them, logos and all those.

And all these stuffs are used in CMS. Are you trying to tell me that you will design the template of a website with CMS or the logo or individual images with CMS?

Chief06:

Why am I not on point ? Why do you need photoshop to design a website in 2012 or Fireworks? CMS is the way to go, and neither PS or Fireworks is any form of CMS.

Then again, it's just my opinion,

Yes, you are right my man. Especially when web design is just a hobby for you.


BACK TO THE PROGRAM


The issue of Photoshop vs. Fireworks is usually funny to me. It's exactly like Windows vs. MAC. I've read severally from the two sides in various articles and while I strongly belong to the Photoshop side, the strong point of FW users is that what you will do in 5 steps in photoshop might be done by just one step in FW.

, and I have seen the UI works of true FW users and it's so awesome. So, the point is, there is no software better than the other. what works for a designer does not necessarily need to work for the other. Just master one that makes your works come out nice (or more importantly, "nice and fast" and use it.

But to serve as a counterpoint, all freelance projects that I've done, they've always required PSD as the deliverable. and at work, there is even no FW installed on any system, So, if you have plans to wok in an agency where what you do is mainly UI to be sliced by a frontend Developer, or just working in an agency generally, don't waste your time on FW.

My point.

Chief06:

Why am I not on point ? Why do you need photoshop to design a website in 2012 or Fireworks? CMS is the way to go, and neither PS or Fireworks is any form of CMS.

Then again, it's just my opinion,

Your opinion is wrong man. Even if you make use of CMS, there are times when you have to develop custom templates for the CMS. Unless you download templates and use it just like that. Or like the last person said - if web design is a hobby to you.

A professional like me however, despite being a programmer, have to do some template tweaking from time to time. Convert a site from table layout to DIV-based.
Convert a site from wordpress to Joomla, from Joomla to Drupal. . . .and many times i had to work on the templates.

I have had to clone websites too, and make the pirated look different from the original, graphics tweaking, logo manipulating, scrapping and recyclying, aye, lots of others.

So many stuffs like that, so there is no day i do not do graphic design work. Even the template of my site was designed by me.

bouzymill:

Yes, you are right my man. Especially when web design is just a hobby for you.


BACK TO THE PROGRAM

Hehehehehe

PS all the way!

I feel dat to b d best in graphic both of dem beta cn't rily chose cos they re both gr8.