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Adobe Fireworks
Fireworks CS3 (Beta) on Mac OS X
Developer	Adobe (formerly Macromedia)
Latest release	CS3 (9.0) / March 27, 2007
OS	Mac OS X, Windows
Genre	Graphics editor
License	Proprietary
Website	adobe.com/products/fireworks/

Adobe Fireworks, known as FW for short, is a bitmap and vector graphics editor. It was originally developed by Macromedia, which Adobe acquired in 2005, and aimed at web designers (with features such as: slices, the ability to add hotspots etc.). It is designed to integrate easily with other former Macromedia products, such as the popular Adobe Dreamweaver and Adobe Flash. It is available as a stand-alone product or bundled with CS3. Version 8 was also bundled with Macromedia Studio 8.

The emphasis of Fireworks is on vector editing, similar to Adobe Illustrator, with limited bitmap capabilities. This is opposite to the approach used by Photoshop, which is primarily for bitmap graphics with limited vector editing features. Vector objects in Fireworks can be resized with no loss of quality, just as in Adobe Illustrator. A range of Macromedia FreeHand's vector tools were incorporated into the release of Fireworks 8. Bitmap objects suffer a similar loss in quality whether resized in Fireworks, Adobe ImageReady or Photoshop.

- As with all Macromedia and Adobe releases as of 2004, menus and even some extensions can be docked in the Fireworks environment. Within the docks, menus can be collapsed and expanded to allow a high level of accessibility as well as convenience. This facilitates a cleaner workspace.

The toolbar in Fireworks contains 34 buttons. Some buttons can be held down to reveal a submenu of variations on each tool. For example, as the dodge and burn tools are used to lighten or darken an image and are similar, they can be found within the same submenu. This system of organization saves a lot of space and is very useful to graphic editors trying to save as much space on-screen as possible.

The Pointer Tool contains a submenu of 2 items. It is represented by a black-filled cursor.

• Selection Tool - The Selection tool allows the selection of an entire entity within the canvas, or a group of entities by shift clicking multiple items in succession.
• Select Behind Tool - The Select Behind tool allows the selection of an entity that is below another in the layer order.

The Subselection Tool has two main functions. It is represented by a white arrow with a black outline.

• Objects may be moved by clicking and dragging anywhere in the middle of an object.
• Clicking on a point or selection handle will resize or skew the object.

The Scale Tool contains a submenu of 3 items. It is represented by a box with a diagonal arrow.

• Scale Tool - The scale tool allows you to resize an entity in the X or Y dimensions, and also allows you to keep the image size in the proper ratio by holding SHIFT while scaling. This tool also allows for rotation of an entity.
• Skew Tool - The skew tool allows the skewing of images.
• Distort Tool - The distort tool allows you to twist the image and add perspective.

• Adobe Fireworks