Adobe Fireworks

Techniques And Tutorials
Plug-ins/Filters
Companion Programs
Newsgroups

Adobe Fireworks has emerged as a real killer application. It’s an all-in-one storehouse of web graphic effects, sort of a graphic production factory.

The following lists of links are more representative than exhaustive. If you want to recommend a link not listed here, please contact us through the feedback form.

Adobe Fireworks Homepage

Techniques And Tutorials

Macromedia has a great section on Fireworks tips and tricks for Photoshop users at their site.

About.com maintains a list of Fireworks related resources available online.

Lynda.com has excellent tips as well as tutorials in QuickTime streaming format available, as also links to buy books published by them.

Fireworks Fast & Easy is also the homepage of the book of the same name, and is supplemented by extra onsite tutorials.

FWZone is a Fireworks community site, patterned on other community sites set up for other Macromedia products.

Plug-ins/Filters

This list comprises plug-ins that adhere to the Adobe Photoshop plug-in standard. Most of these should work with Fireworks as well, although only a few of them can be used as Live Effects within Fireworks:

Corel makes the highly popular KPT range - their Designer.com site has more information in the form of tips and tutorials.

Extensis has a range of productive plug-ins including Photo Tools, MaskPro, Intellihance, PhotoFrame, etc.

Alien Skin is the creator of the popular EyeCandy and Xenofex plug-ins.

Ulead has an interesting range of Photoshop plug-ins including Gif-X, SmartSaver Pro, and FX Razor.

Xaos Tools creates a range of plug-ins including Paint Alchemy, Terrazzo, TypeCaster, and Segmation.

Flaming Pear has a comprehensive range of plug-ins including the Super BladePro, Flood, and Lunar Cell.

ChromaGraphics creates Chromatica, MagicMask, and EdgeWizard.

Andromeda offers various plug-ins including Cutline, Velocipraptor, LensDoc and their Photography, Screens, and 3D filters.

AutoFX creates Typographic Edges, Photographic Edges, AutoEye, Patterns, Frames, Webvise Totality, and more.

BoxTop offers a range of web plug-ins including PhotoGIF, ImageVice, ColorSafe, GIFmation, ProJPEG, and SuperGIF.

Right Hemisphere creates Deep Paint - natural media artistic effects within Photoshop.

From the Human Software stable come Squizz, OttoPaths, Testissimo, AutoMask, etc.

PC Resources for Photoshop is home to the excellent freeware Photoshop filter collections - Filter Factories and Andrews

There are many more plug-ins available. In fact, we've just scratched the tip of the surface. Other plug-ins include Plugin Galaxy.

Read comprehensive reviews of many Photoshop plug-ins at the Plugin Host site.

Companion Programs

Adobe's web design trio also comprises of Dreamweaver and Flash, apart from Fireworks itself.

Adobe Acrobat and FreePDF let you print your Fireworks files into Adobe's PDF format.

CorelDRAW, Macromedia Freehand, and Adobe Illustrator allow far more vector editing control than within Fireworks.

Corel Painter, Corel PaintShop Pro, and Corel Photo-Paint are notable raster alternatives to Photoshop.