What is the difference between photoshop and fireworks

They're each known for offering a distinct set of tools for various creative tasks. But how do you know which software you should practice? How can you determine which software would most benefit your goals as a creative designer? Let's explore some of the primary differences and why you might choose to specialize in one of these design suites. To start off let's tackle the lesser-appreciated software known as Fireworks.

It was originally created by Macromedia which sold to Adobe in The software is now used primarily for web design because of its ability to handle both vector and bitmap graphics. Fireworks also typically handles mockups and wireframes easier than Photoshop.

Anyone who is familiar with Adobe InDesign knows about master pages and templates which can be duplicated and transformed at will. Fireworks has a similar interface where you can build an initial homepage layout as the master page, then design internal pages based on this primary template.

People stick with Photoshop because it still offers many of these same features with a more familiar interface. Fireworks cannot compete with Photoshop's ability to edit or composite images and mock these into a layout design. Wireframing is one thing, but digital mockups are a whole separate concept. For pixel-based mockups I would recommend using Photoshop to create your designs. Whenever this topic is brought up many of the same talking points get repeated.

I'll summarize them as efficiently as possible. Photoshop is primarily a bitmap graphics program working in pixels. But you can still create vector graphics using the paths tool.

On the contrary, Illustrator was created primarily as a vector-based program. I'm not sure it's even possible to work directly with pixels using Illustrator. But Fireworks can handle both vector and bitmap graphics — it is sort of an in-between which isn't primarily focused on either medium. But since Photoshop can also handle both styles of graphics it might be all you need. Looking back 10 years ago vector graphics were much less important on the web.

Vectors aren't based on pixels but are instead generated using mathematical formulas to create line segments. This means you can scale them larger to the size of a billboard without any loss in quality. Nowadays the modern web has changed quite a bit. Scalable Vector Graphics can be embedded right into a website and scale or animate on their own. When choosing a design program it all comes down to personal preference. If you're trying to create graphics which are meant to scale then Illustrator is probably your best solution.

There are some variations to this rule, such as with iOS app icons mostly created in Photoshop. Adobe Fireworks is an open API tool, which means that developers can build their custom connections with third-party software.

Adobe Photoshop CC supports integration with various digital asset management systems and project collaboration platforms. Adobe Photoshop CC is ideal for professional photographers, designers, and artists. As part of the Adobe Creative Cloud service, it offers reliable and industry-standard tools that help users easily design posters, icons, banners, web pages, and mobile app graphics.

Both Adobe Fireworks and Adobe Photoshop CC were evaluated by a group of reliable B2B experts who conducted a full examination of all important aspects of every solution. Their final score was calculated by means of unique SmartScore model which calculates an individual partial score to every component including: main features, client support, mobile device support, security, customer satisfaction as well as market presence. We realize useful features are not the only thing important to a company so we do our best to pay attention to all sides of a solution before giving it a final rating.

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Adobe Photoshop CC. Pricing: by quote. Pricing Model. Adobe Fireworks. List of Features. Pricing Info. Learn more about Adobe Fireworks pricing. Languages Supported. Prominent Clients. Both exported images look pretty much the same, but Fireworks beats Photoshop by 8 kb in this case. Please note: Fireworks and Photoshop have different compression technology. Lets use the background image on WebDesignerWall as an example.

If I export the background with Fireworks, I can reduce its file size by 20 kb. I get about 16, visits per day on average. Yes, that is megabytes per day! Could you imagine how much bandwidth I can save if I compress all the graphics on the site with Fireworks? Most importantly, I can make my site load faster and that is a big deal! If you have Photoshop and Fireworks installed on your computer, try it yourself. You will be surpised with the results. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet enim.

Etiam ullamcorper. Suspendisse a pellentesque dui, non felis. Maecenas malesuada elit lectus felis, malesuada ultricies. Curabitur et ligula. Ut molestie a, ultricies porta urna. Firewors was born to create site layouts. Photoshop for photo editing. A lot of time. In Photoshop, Save for Web will do this and also reduce the file size by removing all unneeded meta-data.

Compression and optimisation are just better. One area where it falls down, though is custom brushes. At least when it comes to JPEG. The images are noticeably sharper, and the file sizes are very similar to the ones saved in fireworks..

You could also use smush. I ran a quick test with the background image using shush. Photoshop is made for editing photos not to design websites..

So use the right program for the right result! But test and text about your background is a little questionable: 1. Many of your daily visitor are your affectionate estimators me too so they download your background only the first time…. FW sucks in that department. Always been a fan of FW. I read somewhere recently that when you save a file in Photoshop on a mac it puts some extra meta data in the file, but when you upload it to the web the extra data gets taken out.

That could explain the difference in file size? Maybe fireworks doesnt put in any extra meta data in? Your findings might be correct, but I doubt you will save MB in traffic. In fact, if you have changed your images now, after finding out FW does better compression, all your regular visitors will have to download them again, which will cause a peak in traffic that could take a long time to compensate by the couple of kB you have saved with the compression.

But still, when a new project with heavy graphics comes up, I will definitely check if FW does a better job than PS. Tnx for the tip. Interesting…must be why I prefer using Fireworks.

Besides the compression I think Fireworks is a much simpler interface to use. During a webmeeting with an Adobe Engineer, he said to me that FW was built for compression, compression and compression and today quick mockup.

Some people i speak to assume that everyone also uses Photoshop to design all websites. I wish Fireworks was championed by more designers like in this post as i would like to see more articles and tutorials written for it. You will see some better results, visually and with file size. I love them both, but Fireworks is simply amazing when it comes to website design. You can quickly go to from wireframing using master pages and symbols , to interactive PDFs client presentations then using the same file start design over it!

Hi there! Well, great article this! I could never guess this but as a designer i always used both but for web layout and logos prefer Fireworks. Its funny, i always had this discussion with designers about Photoshop and Fireworks and its really impressive how people loves Photoshop! In some cases they even never had started Fireworks! Adobe off course have an easter eggs in their package!

Well done! I always run my Fw exported images though other compressors since they can always be optimized more. Above 50, the subsampling options change and you get a better result with corresponding larger filesize. Why not try this : save to JPG with Fireworks.

Now save the same image from Photoshop, specifying to optimise for the same file size. Do the images look different? If so, the algorithm for optimisation is different…. Good article! I have followed your posts for quite a while and I really admire the quality of your work and content. Fireworks faces two problems. Boss: Well. What does Fireworks do? Me: Edit image files and reduces website graphic file sizes better than Photoshop. End of discussion.

With quick turn around times in the workplace and the fact there is no time to deal with any learning curve at all. You go with the one you know which is Photoshop. Fireworks is an awesome program that has not gone away as I thought it would when Adobe bought Macromedia and for that I thank Adobe. Fireworks also has way more advanced tools for editing vector based raster images and type.

Applying effects and filters to these objects are way more editable and the pen tool is more like illustrator.

Not sure where Adobe is heading with this application but I will continue to recommend Fireworks over PhotoShop for any Web based environment. Obviously the same does not hold true for print, in that case I would def. Now i make the most web design in PS but i am missing the simple and streight workflow of FW … did someone else noticed the difference in rendering antialiasing between PS and FW???

Does it really affect your load time noticeably? I get it, on your end, a little savings for every access is a big deal, but a page load only accesses each resource once, so that 20kB savings might be like ms faster for me, probably less. Am I missing something? Creating vectors, managing colors, and slicing up an image is just really simple in Fireworks, and I can get it all done much faster than in Photoshop. Hi, Michael E I also work in a web development environment and I am a fan of fireworks for all the reasons you posted.

It in many ways is superior to photoshop for web development. IMO…FW is much more intuitive and quicker to get web related items done. That being said…PS is a much more robust program with many more options for manipulating photos.

I definitely need both. I never knew how to use PhotoShop very well. I could do basic things but not more advanced functions. I started a Web Design re certification program at a local technical school.

The teacher taught us FireWorks. As I became more comfortable with FW, I saw the benefits of the program. I have always used fireworks to make web designs. I am trying to go to photoshop but I find the use too complicated. Photoshop is more for graphic designers than for web designers. What a brilliant post! Wow, thanks for the tip. I have both and have mostly used Photoshop for the majority of my web design work while reserving Fireworks for creating UI and quick slice slice and dice jobs.

I will be changing that routine. I have been using Fireworks for a long time. I think that this is why Firework handle compression better than Photoshop! Because it was created with that goal in mind. Fireworks was designed for the web and very easy to use. While photoshop was designed for photo editing superb.

The web capabilities of photoshop started getting better after the acquisition of Macromedia by Adobe but presently no matter how good photoshop is in web, fireworks still rules. I usually use PhotoShop for all my designing but always save from PS and open and export from Fireworks, only for the optimization! I used Photoshop for anything. Very interesting findings. I start to use Fireworks to store images for my blog.

Thanks for the article! Thanks for posting these findings I use fireworks for their new css feature, but never thought that the image optimization would have been such a great benefit, But I am convinced that this is now the best way to go.

Use PNG Optimizer. To reduce jpeg weight use JPEG cleaner. Photoshop add a lot unnecessary information into image. Unless you use one or the other. Use lazy load, and after the first load people will have every cached anyways. I use Fireworks and form day one and I like it simplicity in making small graphic elements like buttons, headers and even logo design. Fireworks made for simple web graphic. I am not so sure about Photoshop but it looks complicated to me.

I fireworks one can have different pages in one file and one can have rapid prototyping to show the work to client before the coding begins. I keep trying to like Fireworks but the app UI is just so counter-intuitive.

Small caps? You need to do that yourself. I guess it comes down to what Fireworks is. I use ImageOptim which compresses to a degree that is equal or superior to Fireworks. Completely agree with debugr, read my blog post on the subject if you have a few minutes spare.

Never assume anything! I started using Photoshop at around version 5 and really only started to take notice of Fireworks around CS3. In addition the work-flow for adding image export profiles is again unnecessarily awkward and convoluted. I think for me its the combination of PS and FW that makes for a killer combo. For me the 8 macromedia version is the best.

You can easy create any type of web site in FW. Export to PSD or easy create compressed animated gif. The best ever. PS, as for me, is better for cool photo editing and digital painters. This is only my thoughts. Yeah, what he said.

I was just going to add a comment about punypng, when I saw Ricardo had beaten me to it. This is really strange. So I assumed the performance would be the same. Really useful article, I found both Photoshop and Fireworks easy to use but our students mostly want to learn Photoshop, hence we go with PS.

Actually image compression is the only reason why i use fireworks. I dont like the interface at all, but the compression rates and quality are quite impressing. I already remarked that some years ago using the Macromedia Studio 8! Since then i always prefer Fireworks for slicing and final preparations for web. I also recognized the difference between the two tools and now I also slice my design with fireworks.

Fireworks designers darling …where as…Photoshop photographers babe : …so choose ur role! Photoshop is what I learnt to use first and I loved it. When I started work experience early this year in a web design office I was made use Fireworks as that was all the boss knew in the office and he was always against change.

I hated it at first because I was so use to PS but after a while I got to know it well enough but it still held me back in terms of the finished design as I was limited to what I could do. I prefer Fireworks for slicing as it is much quicker and simpler in my opinion. I never tested the files sizes compared to PS though, some good savings in this example.

Nice article. Although, I think the size difference of web ready output is important, it is just icing on the cake. Fireworks is under appreciated and is SO much better than Photoshop for web design work. FireWorks came Highly-Recommended by other web-designers and when I switched, I was hooked and never-looked-back! The interface is very intuitive and the exporting tool is a God-Send! Yeah I was at the Adobe Roadshow conference.

The speaker made this a major point of discussion. Telling everyone to stop using Photoshop to export web graphics and start using Fireworks. Funny, I just started to try and force myself to use Fireworks instead of Photoshop last week for other reasons, but this might be enough to do it permanently.

I think the morale of the story is: Buying Macromedia was the best decision Adobe could ever make. Got to respect that! I know that you have posted tutorials on PS and AI.. You can also reduce the size by using smushit or punypng, on this very page smushit says you can reduce the size by another 25kB, including 7kB in the main-bg image… so much for fireworks compression.

Photoshop adds all sorts of META data when exporting, and many more unnecessary data not required in web production. It is very simple.

Photoshop was built for image editing and retouching. Later on, they bolted on all kinds of web functions. But in essence, it is still a photo editor. Fireworks is set up as a design tool though, and is much better at that. Fireworks is so much better with vector objects and editing, which is a laugh in Photoshop. Everyone who also likes to use Illustrator will probably agree.

I opened up Fireworks but it gives me about the same size, 76 KB… With transparency, of course. All but one purchased it after seeing what could be done. The feature is called Photoshop Live Effects.

If you have both apps installed, select an object in Fireworks, then in the properties window click the plus sign next to Filters. Selecting it will give you a list of effects you can use in any combination, just like the layer effects in Photoshop. Personally I find wireframing and doing mockups to be far easier and faster than with Photoshop.

I love Fireworks and find it much easier to use than Photoshop, having come from a vector-based background. I also appreciate Fireworks unique ability to make PNG-8 files with alpha transparency — something that Photoshop cannot do at all at least the version I have, CS3 cannot do it. Definitely going to have to check this out…the more you can optimize for your site the better..

I have only recently gone back to fireworks as I had ben happily using imageready for all animated gifs that I needed to generate. Now with imageready totally gone after my latest jump to CS4 from CS1, I am learning the new fireworks and I honestly would of preferred to have the imageready program built into photoshop. I do almost all my work in photoshop, and I am much more comfortable with it, and faster with it and prefer the filter, script and plugin options I have with photoshop.

I am normally very fussy about my filesizes and push the software as much as I can to get the best result. Ok, aside from image compression, can you tell me why as a web designer you would want to use an application with a smaller limited set of features?

IMHO, Fireworks does less, and therefore can potentially limit your creative options during an explorative design process. As it stands now, design in PS, and if you are working on a site where an extra 4kb in size on your images will affect overall bandwidth, optimize with FW. Just drag and drop your image jpg, gif, png.. Fireworks is for rapid development of websites. Exporting and slicing is also much easier and quicker.

I use both. I had no idea that FW compressed better than Photoshop! Thanks for the side-by-side comparisons; they were great! The idea is to set up the layout in Fireworks, and the put in the finishing touches in Photoshop. Photoshop is far superior interms of laying out graphics and editing.

Yet Fireworks has the better compression and Alpha Channels. Really interesting test! I was wondering if it wwas possible to get the original files used for the comparison, so we can run more tests on our own I was thinking using Paint Shop Pro as well. Have you compared with optimization in Illustrator? Illustrator is also nice for web graphics. You can actually use the crop tool to optimize as well in Illustrator. Please, please Adobe, will you just put the gradient transform tool, styles, and the web image compression engine into Photoshop.

Because those are the only cool things Fireworks has. Why all the different software.. Hey that was a really nice post… I work in a website designing company and appreciate it a lot….

Was completely amazed at first until I start looking closer. All the side by side comparisons above reveal that the fireworks images are blurred. Photoshop quality being better in terms of sharpness in every comparison. It has an impact on file size. Hey Thanks, I love this article because I am a loyal fireworks user ever since I started my career as a web designer.

Fireworks surely does not have as much exposure as photoshop does not that I am biased, I love photoshop too. Excellent post and excellent blog. Good information and looks really good.

As far as Fireworks and Photoshop compression I think I am convinced. I had been told the reason of why at an adobe seminar once… but I have forgotten now, which sort of makes this comment useless, but I do use fireworks, even for my designs, as I find it quicker to mock up layouts, apply gradients, partterns etc….

If i need a highly custom graphic I normally take that into photoshop, play around with it there and then bring it back into fireworks…. Awesome as usual. I know that every kilobyte counts for your sites so this is a great thing to find out.

I like how everyone is jumping on FW now a well know designer mentions something good about it, maybe you should explore further Nick and report your findings to the rest of the PS die-hards. FW is a fantastic program, as I said before, web graphics can be made just as well in FW and your work flow will be improved. This is a nice article and highlights the strength of Adobe Fireworks. It is such kind of information people are looking for as it affects their daily working style and end results!

This comes as a no-surprise. Back in the day of dial connections every single bit counted. We had to work with a 20kb limit for animated GIFs pixels width or height and usually 3 frames! Fireworks is my software of choice for web graphics and prototyping. Take frame masking, hotspots, slicing and image mapping, for example. I use Fireworks for my web page mock ups but never really thought about using it for slicing up my PSD layout for a full website.

You made a believer out of me. Thanks once again for your wonderful info. Fireworks is the best for web design. It is faster for create mock-ups. Just love this! Me like a lot