Macromedia Fireworks

Macromedia Fireworks has emerged as a real killer application - its an all-in-one storehouse of web graphic effects - a 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 me through the feedback form.

Playing With Fire, as the very name of the site suggests is about playing around in Fireworks to achieve excellent results. It also spearheads a book of the same name.

Escogitando is an Italian Fireworks site with a great English incarnation as well.

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.

The Fireworks Newsgroup FAQ is a wonderful resource for basic Fireworks stuff.

Massimo's Corner Of The Web has commands and textures for Fireworks available to download.

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.

This list comprises plug-ins which 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.

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

Plugin Manager from I.C.Net allows you to selectively activate your plug-ins and filters.

Adobe Acrobat, 5D PDF Creator 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, Jasc PaintShop Pro and Corel PhotoPaint are notable raster alternatives to Photoshop.

Scan Calculator is a free program that helps you decide your scan resolutions.

The Google Groups archive is a treasure trove of searchable information posted across a huge number of newsgroups.

Macromedia maintains an active Fireworks newsgroup on its servers.

There are also a few Fireworks / Web Design dedicated mailing lists - you can find details though a search at Topica.com.