»»» Photoshop, Fireworks, Paintshop Pro, when I mention these graphic tools which is the ultimate tool that spans all instances of graphic design for you?

I am sure there are a million different answers that you could offer, but each program does have it's pros and cons. There are hardcore pixel pushers whom say " Photoshop is the only tool on the market that can give an artist the canvas they need to paint a piccasso. "

There are macromedia users whom would rather eat a shoe then use photoshop ( i'd love to see this )..

Wait then there are paintshop pro users whom say " We can make anything we want with paintshop pro! ".


I guess I'll start with fireworks, fireworks works quite well to integrate with Dreamweaver and Flash MX and the macromedia suite of excellent tools. Fireworks MX is a great way to create, optimise, and export interactive graphics in a single application.

Paintshop Pro on the other hand is a silent competitor to them both. I am not ashamed to say PSP was my 1st learning application into the graphic world. I learned everything I know today - layers, text, and color by using PSP. Although I feel that PSP is lacking in some areas such as optimization & compression, web exporting and sometimes it's a bit cumbersome to make some pixels do what you want them to do. ( tubes are pretty cool )

Today I use Photoshop for 85% of my pre web work, graphics and fireworks mx for the rest. I like both applications and am not limiting myself to either as I feel both have their fine points. I can make a fantastic html layout in photoshop and slice it up ( I still do it manually ) and reassemble it in dreamweaver mx or ultradev. Sometimes using fireworks I can do it all and only export to HTML, which is a great boon to design.

PSP has taken a back seat in my professional occupation, but is not forgotten.

Photoshop has so many plugins or 3rd party effects that can make working in photoshop alot of fun. I find myself using very few of them because adobe has implemented an excellent filter set that does alot of what I need. Plus there are excellent resource websites such as flashgimp.com where you can pick up new ideas, and learn from tutorials.

Fireworks MX on the other hand has very few 3rd party plugins or filters. It does have a great set of native filters which should suffice for most projects. Alien Skin and some others have made filters for Fireworks MX.

But there are filters out there that are amazing such as : eye candy, KPT 1,3,5,6,7, Auto FX, Andromeda, Flaming Pear, and so many more. Most of these are for Photoshop.

So in my work I guess you can see where I lean - photoshop is 85% of my work and fireworks mx is the other 15% paintshop pro just doesn't do what I need but still has a place in my heart.

So folks... are you an adobe or macromedia person, I'm happy with them both! Long live the pixel...

Until next time.. Have fun

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Written by Yury Rush Copyright (©) 2002 motionrush media labs (link)

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