Macromedia Fireworks

A professional tool from Macromedia, designed primarily for editing bitmap graphics and ideal for creating graphics for the web. Fireworks includes, among other things, special tools for creating short animations, buttons or navigation bars for web pages.

Overview of main features and tools:

• Bitmap editing - all basic tools like brush, pencil, lasso, magic wand, eraser, ... Unlike Photoshop for example, it works on an object system - each part of the image is one object. In addition, it supports layers.
• lots of predefined brushes, gradients, transitions, textures, and effects
• retouching tools for detailed editing of bitmap images
• vector object drawings specified parametrically
• wide options for deforming graphic objects
• library for storing frequently used objects
• vector graphics - ideal for creating logos and other symbols that you need to enlarge without losing quality. In addition, it supports import from FireHand and Illustrator
• large number of non-destructive graphic effects
• application of unlimited number of effects per object
• contour gradients around vector shapes
• working with text - of course, you can enter text in any font, size, color, etc. There is a preview of each font before you select it
• add?converting text to curves
• different text smoothing options
• preserving editable text for files imported from Adobe Photoshop (psd)
• applying effects to text objects
• animating objects - directly in the program you can create simple animations of objects by moving and changing parameters
• buttons for web - easy creation of buttons, that change on mouseover
• optimization - when saving images, you can specify the exact quality of the output - preview and file size information is available.

Additional features and benefits:

• import/Export WBMP format
• export to Flash
• custom keyboard shortcuts
• history panel - multiple undo
• create custom functions using JavaScript
• remove red-eye effect
• Replace Color Tool for professional color swapping motion blur in animations
• non-destructive Noise effect
• preview in four different formats and compressions
• selective compression settings for JPEG files
• saving animations to animated GIF or SWF format
• importing graphics in all standard formats
• direct integration with Macromedia FreeHand programs, Flash and Dreamweaver
• exchange HTML and JavaScript code with Dreamweaver
• import and export to Adobe Photoshop (psd) and Illustrator 7 formats including layers, masks and text properties
• option to extend program features with add-ons
• direct use of Photoshop plugins
• automated creation of graphics files based on XML data