But when i really started to get deep into it, i ran across many weaknesses. In FW, you can’t combine shapes without permanently committing to it. In PS you can create a shape layer, add shapes to it, cut out shapes from it, etc. Each shape is always retained for later editing, which is great!

PS’s “blending options” are far more powerful than FW’s equivalent. FW has the same features, but they seem to be there mainly for compatibility for if you import a PSD into FW. For example, in FW, you can’t add a gradient overlay other than black to white. WTF?! You can’t add a Stroke made with a gradient or a fill. You can’t add a fill pattern with your own image. Very limiting stuff!

Clipping Masks that work like in PS are missing and FW’s regular masking features are not a good replacement.

You can’t take advantage of the web’s large selection of free PS brushes, if you use FW. For example, if you want to make a grungy style page, it helps to have grungy brushes. Sure, you have some flexibility in FW’s brush engine (which i really like!), but it would be great if you can create your own brush like you can in PS. This is a biggie. I’m reading a lot of web tutorials on creating web mockups, and many use custom PS brushes.

I know I should be using FW for web design, as it’s clearly what it’s designed for, but its limitations are too much for me still. I think mostly it’s that thoroughly unlovable interface, along with the type issues. Plus no easy clipping masks (that I can get working anyway) and no way to add both a vector and bitmap mask to an image. “Bleurch!” sums it up. I never did like the Macromedia way of doing things and still don’t!

Simon

Yep, I agree with you about actually making the final graphic – Photoshop’s slicing and dicing tools are really undercooked. But given that the bulk of the work should be in the ideas in the first place, which for me are easier to execute in PS, I stick with Photoshop.

Of course, if you could properly open a PSD in Fireworks, you could do the creative bit on PS then slice and dice in FW. What’re the chances of that I wonder?

Simon

…Just group them first

I guess part of the issue is that they don’t want to annoy long-term users of any of the apps by genuinely changing the interfaces to be more standard, but I do think that in the long run it’ll be necessary.

As regards this whole “Group as mask” thing in FW, I can sort of get it working but it just seems to add a translucency too. Plus you can’t use a single object to mask multiple layers (a la PS’s clipping masks) I don’t think?

yeah, I can see why you get frustrated with FW. I too use both (plus illustrator) and there are elements that each app could learn from the others. For instance, in Photoshop why do I not have better control over paths? If I want to join to open end points of a vector path in Illustrator I hit Cmd-J and they’re joined… not so in PS or FW. I’ve always thought FW should have an ‘artwork’ and ‘preview’ mode like Illustrator that you can toggle between as it can get really confusing trying to find the edges of a vector shape with no fill in a full raster preview mode.

PS could learn a lot about web optimisation for graphics from FW. If I try saving for web in PS I end with files that are HUGE (for web at least), so I usually end up taking those into FW anyway to TRULY optimise them. Generally I’ll reduce their size to around a half or sometimes a quarter this way!!!

Then we come to FW’s layer handling which you rightly point out is a poor cousin to PS with fewer options in the layer palette itself and more stuff linked to the actual object through the objector inspector palette – a bit confusing really for UI.

And the circle goes on and on… come on Adobe, you write all of them, so write them all as well as each other for the same feature sets.

To be fair, Adobe have NEVER written an app that could handle text well apart from InDesign. Illustrator makes MASSIVE files when using a lot of text (always twice the size that equivalent Freehand files used to be back in the day, but had nicer drawing tools than Freehand… so it was always good to use both, as now with PS and FW). PS is very clunky and slow with text, quite buggy palettes as well that don’t always update to show the font/colour/size of the text I just selected, but rather showing me settings I last used for a different block of text… very poor. FW was and still is (Macromedia legacy) awful and even PageMaker used to be bad compared to Quark. For the company that INVENTED PostScript (and PS fonts) you’d think they’d be better at implementing it inside their own apps huh!?

Right, anyway, onto the reason for my comment – your request for mask knowledge in FW. It’s right there at the bottom of the layers palette – add mask (same icon as photoshop’s add mask button in the layers palette!). If you make a new mask you can copy and paste either bitmap or vector items into the ‘mask’ channel for that layer and it’ll mask the item with that shape. Of course, it works in the same way as PS with Black>White greyscale shades allowing Alpha transparency for masks, but I’ve a feeling it works THE OPPOSITE WAY… ie: Black is fully revealed, white is fully masked, whereas PS uses black for masking and white for revealing – another quirk Adobe should have fixed when they first bought the company out. There is another way to make masks… draw your ‘mask’ object, make sure it’s layer is above the layer you want to mask, select both objects (or layers) then go to the Modify Menu>Mask>Group as Mask. To split the mask from the object again afterwards, just click the masked layer and ungroup… they’ll split into 2 separate layers again. This has been in Fireworks right from the beginning but was always a little obscure for PS users. Hope that helps

Oh… if you want to edit a mask, double-click it (for raster masks) or use the direct selection tool for vector masks and you’ll be able to grab the mask/contents separately.

Simon

Best wishes.