Sometimes I hear “Adobe Fireworks? What it is for?” or “Why should I use Fireworks, if I use Photoshop/Illustrator?”.

Instead of answering that question, I’d like to show you the following illustration:

— this vector illustration was created with Fireworks in 2005, by Fred Michel (unfortunately, I couldn’t find more information about its author) [download PNG editable file].

Or:

— this illustration is by David Hogue, it was created a couple of days ago as a try to use similar technique as in an Illustrator tutorial [download PNG editable file].

Not bad results, eh? Especially for a program that is looked upon (by some) as an inferior alternative to Ai/Ps;-)

With Fireworks you can create some magical things or simple color effects. This is the ideal program for graphics for Web/screen — it combines the best of the bitmap and vector world. Fireworks is easier to use than Illustrator, it is even more easier than Photoshop. No, it is not free, but it is not expensive, either (it’s approximately 3 times less expensive than Photoshop, if I must be exact).

Some prefer GIMP. Others — Inkscape. Some creative professionals use only Illustrator and Photoshop. I remain a true fan of Fireworks and I would be happy, if Adobe will continue with its successful development…

My personal opinion is that for Web graphics and all graphic design tasks intended for use on screen (RGB/RGBa), Fireworks is the perfect tool! :-)

UPDATE (2009/Sep/23):

— I also forgot to show this excellent illustration by Ryan Hicks [download PNG editable file] (thanks, Jim!:-).
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*Why Fireworks?
— a popular article by designer Stéphane Bergeron, published in Adobe Devnet.

Is it easy to color only some parts of an image/photograph?

Yes.

Is it easy in Adobe Fireworks?

It’s even easier than you may think! :-)

(original photo by Ani, CC)

The image above was edited by me in less than 5 minutes, and yet, the final effect is quite impressive!

How it is done?

There are probably more than five ways to achieve a similar effect, but here’s how I proceeded:

1) Open a digital photograph in Fireworks;
2) ctrl+shift+D (cmd+shift+D on a Mac) to clone the layer with the photo;
3) In the Layers panel you now have 2 identical layers, both of them in color;
4) Select the lower layer, “lock” it in the Layers panel;
5) Select the upper layer, use menu Commands > Creative > Convert to Grayscale to convert it to black & white;
6) Now you have a b&w layer above a color layer;
7) From now on, it is easy: simply delete (use Marquee Tool, Eraser Tool, or a combination of both) parts of the upper, b&w layer, and the color parts will start to show through! Done! :-)

This technique can be quite effective, if applied to the right kind of image. In this case the original is very good for this purpose, as color is almost missing from it.

You can try to play with colors in GIMP, Fireworks, Photoshop — I don’t think there will be much difference in any contemporary graphics pogram:)

Finally, thanks to Geri, who inspired me to try this effect in Fireworks! ;-)

While me and Ani take some short rest on the sea — just a couple of days around the Spirit of Burgas music festival, Faith No More, and our travel to Bourgas and Byala — my first ever tutorial went live at Adobe Developer Connection.

The ones who know, know, what is Adobe Devnet, and for those who don’t I’ll quickly mention that it’s a big honour for me that my modest work about Adobe Fireworks CS4 and its CSS Export options are now in the section Adobe > Devnet > Fireworks! :-)

Of course, the whole extended tutorial is far from being perfect — a lot of things I could have said in a better and shorter way; a lot of other things I forget to mention at all, and probably, I have some mistakes here and there, but I would be glad if the fruits of my 100+ h work could be useful to more than one Web/graphic designer…

That’s it, for now — my style is a bit telegraphic, but I have a whole day of swimming and lying on the beach tomorrow, so I better get some sleep now! :-)

PS And that’s the direct link to my Fireworks tutorial:)