[thelist] Differences in capabilities of design

aardvark roselli at earthlink.net
Sun Jul 29 13:07:26 CDT 2001


> From: Phil <info at webdisplays.com>
[...]
> Fireworks is a newcomer in the "also ran" category. Photoshop is the
> industry standard, state of the art image manipulation tool for the
> print and graphic arts industry, but it has many, many web site
> graphic (vs PSP) deficiencies:
> 
> No support for gif animation (no animation shop, poor gif support) No
> image archive-browsing features (it does not have image thumbnail
> browser) Poor jpeg image compression support (10 steps vs 100) Poor
> painting (drawing) support (no drawing tools)

it is worth noting that this is true for *Photoshop* versions 5 and 
less... ImageReady picks up the slack in the web category 
(allowing for animation, strong .gif and .jpg support)...  Photoshop 
5.5 bundles IR with it (which sucks, cuz you can't buy IR as a 
stand-alone anymore), and Photoshop also has good optimization 
tools built right in (so you don't have to switch out of PS to IR all 
the time)...  Photoshop 6 has better drawing tools as well (even 
though older versions had some of that capability), supporting 
vector tools and offering much better type support... keep in mind, 
however, that it is a *raster* package, so if you want strong drawing 
tools, you're better off with Freehand/Illustrator/CorelDraw... and 
while Photoshop doesn't have a thumbnail browser, it has a few 
other features that help account for it -- it uses thumbnails for the 
icons on Windows machines now, it also has a Contact Sheet and 
Web Photo Gallery set of features that makes it easy to create a 
reference sheet/doc for tracking images...

now, if you don't need the print support, and price point is an issue, 
then yes, FireWorks is the way to go... if you want some of btoh 
worlds, and price is *really* an issue, PaintShop Pro is a great 
package...

[...] 
> IMHO Both are equally easy to use, but Photoshop is inferior, solely
> due to it's bloat, lack of essential features, and price. If you are
> not doing print work, it is plainly inadequate as a PC image
> management solution.

of course it is, because it isn't an image management solution, and 
never has been... it's features are also geared for the print world, 
but thanks to IR and features introduced starting at 5.0, PS is a 
much better web package than i think you give it credit for being...





More information about the thelist mailing list