Photoshop vs Fireworks in CS3 Suite

As a web developer you need to have at least some rudimentary skills with a image manipulation software such as Photoshop or Fireworks. These are two of the most common image manipulation programs for web developers. They were developed by Adobe and Macromedia respectively until Adobe purchased Macromedia. This aquisition lead to a CS3 Web Development suite where both Photoshop and Fireworks were offered side by side.

As a web developer I have been very fond of the Macromedia projects since I first started using them with the MX edition. My purchase of Macromedia Studio 8 left me with an even greater appreciation of the product that made my life as a web developer bearable. They had enhanced the PSD file editability so now the nested layers that my graphic designer was using show up in the same manner for me as they do for her. 

With renewed appreciation for Fireworks I decided to test out Photoshop. In the past I had found Photoshop difficult to use and that many of the functions that were somewhat simple in Fireworks were hidden or difficult to find in Photoshop. Of course this is to be expected from someone who has cut their teeth on Fireworks. I decided to open a couple of PSD files in Photoshop and and in Fireworks. One of those files was the layout for this website. When I cropped the images using Fireworks and exported them each image was more pixelated than when I exported them with Photoshop. I soon found out that there are some image manipulation effects in Photoshop that seem to port over well to Fireworks and some that do not.

So what is a web developer to do? I suggest you run both applications, legally. If you want to be successful, pay the money for the CS3 Web Suite and use both when necessary. They both have their strengths and weaknesses. I would never recommend a graphic designer to use Fireworks since it is limited in that realm but Photoshop can be cumbersome to work with and at times does not do what you'd expect it do do as a web developer.