Fireworks or Photoshop?
 

I would like to learn either one of the software to build experience.
Looking at the education price for each license, Fireworks is much lower compared to Photoshops...which is a PLUS.

I understand Photoshop is the leader in image editing but Fireworks can do what Photoshop does, right? :confused:
Which would you personally recommend out of the two? And why?
I doubt I have time to learn both program and once I start, I would like to remain with that program.

Well if you're designing simple yet stylish layouts then fireworks is just about capable providing you know how to use its tools. But overall i'd say in the long-run it's best to go with Photoshop :)

Absolutely not can Fireworks even be compared to Photoshop. It gets crushed in terms of power. Remember you get what you pay for. You can look on eBay for copies of Photoshop--just make sure that it explicitly says shrink-wrapped and sealed, is PS CS, and not a restricted license that you could not use.

what filburt said, photoshop > *

yeah no contest really its photoshop u need mate :p

It is also considered rude to post in multiple forums with the exact same question (a la vB.com's thread). Please don't do this in the future.

Why? They're different forums...

I use fireworks myself. Call me strange.

I opted for Studio MX 2004. Thanks for the input.

I use both. I learned how to design sites using Dreamweaver way back when it first came out so now I have Macromedia Studio MX. It came with fireworks so I have learned how to use it due to how closely it intergrates with Dreamweaver and Flash MX. However filburt is right, it can't compare with Photoshop in terms of shear power. And of course power comes with a price, a big one when it comes to Adobe. I love my Photoshop CS but sometimes I wonder if I really need it. Most things I can do in Fireworks., though there are times when I hit a wall in a project and know I can turn to PS to get it done. Really I'd say it all depends on your needs vs. how much $ you want to invest. Oh and if it's just a learning thing, learn PS, once you master that every other Graphics program is easy. Only issue I had learning Fireworks after PS was just finding where everything was in the interface.

/me loves Photoshop very much

Fireworks isn't *designed* to replace photoshop. It's a web graphics program where photoshop is a print graphics program. While photoshop has the upper hand in most areas, Fireworks kicks its tail when it comes to preparing graphics for the web and doing such things as slicing images for rollovers. Also, last time I checked (version 6 of photoshop) Photoshop can't do animation - Fireworks can. Even if Photoshop *could* do animated graphics it would be Adobe's way. Fireworks MX is reasonably close to Flash MX in the way it builds animations (reasonably - there are still a lot of differences). Also, Fireworks in general handles vector graphics better than photoshop - though that might have changed with the new release - historically Photoshop's vector graphic handling has been rudimentary at best since Adobe wants you to buy Illustrator for that purpose.

Fireworks also works seemlessly with Dreamweaver, the best WYSIWYG HTML editor out there, hands down.

I run Fireworks MX, Photoshop 6.0, and Illustrator 9.0 for most of my graphic prep.

Quick postscript to my earlier post - if you're just starting out on graphics use Fireworks. While there are differences between it and photoshop, they aren't anything that you'll be pulling your hair out trying to figure out.

To use an analogy - learning how to drive on a Ford Taurus doesn't make it any harder to drive a Mercedes once you can afford one - yes the bells and whistles are in different spots but the important things (pedals, steering wheel) are in the same place.

Photoshop 7 + CS comes with imageready 7 + CS and imageready does nice animation although unless i'm looking over something - you have to do it frame by frame.

It can do basic motion tweening.