RE: What you'd like to see in the upcoming Flash 3 book...

[John Dowdell]

At 4:13 AM 7/15/98, Carrie Dailey wrote, of Fireworks:

>WHY ELSE would I want it ??  I doubt that it will address my other needs any

>better than Photoshop 5.  The ability to create vector images and export

>them to Flash would have been my main motivation.  I really cannot

>comprehend that MM did not make this possible!!



Fireworks was intended for tasks other than a curve-creation tool for Flash.


If you wish a curve-creation tool, use FreeHand or some other drawing tool

-- FreeHand lets you mirror, envelope, fractalize, simplify, very coolly

autotrace, use graphic search'n'replace, kern to the bone, do text-on-path,

much much more. FreeHand is superlative as a curve-creation tool.


But Fireworks and Flash can use FreeHand as their intense curve-creation tool.


Flash goes out to clean, crisp, animated vectors. Fireworks goes out as

rich, funky pixels.


Try it: produce some graphics in Fireworks, then consider how you'd use

those brushstrokes and textures in Flash. Vectors can't efficiently

describe that type of information.


Why use Fireworks rather than Photoshop 5? They actually serve different

purposes. Photoshop remains the definitive photo-processing tool. If you're

scanning, nothing matches Photoshop's color management, its masking, and

other image-prepping abilities.


Advantages Fireworks has over Photoshop 5:


--  Good kerning

--  Text-on-path

--  Typography and layout abilities

--  Good brushstrokes (make that *great* brushstrokes!)

--  Everything editable, all the time

--  Everything editable, all the time

--  Animation

--  Image-slicing

--  Compression

--  Imagemaps

--  JavaScript rollovers

--  HTML production for image tables

--  Everything editable, all the time



Summary: Fireworks-without-Flash is not quite fish-without-bicycle, but

close. FreeHand helps with complex curves for Fireworks, Flash, Photoshop,

other tools. Photoshop is great for photos. Fireworks thinks "web graphics"

from start to finish.


Tip: Try Fireworks. If you create pixel-based graphics, it's very cool.


jd








John Dowdell, Macromedia Tech Support, San Francisco CA US


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