John Nack has a quick but good post on migrating from ImageReady, now that it has been discontinued. It’s sad to see ImageReady go (I was a big fan of it when it was still in its first beta). But to be honest with myself, it never really got all the way there for me. In the past couple of years, I found myself just saving out of Photoshop.
I know some of you don’t like the idea of moving to Fireworks. Until recently I never really gave Fireworks the time of day. Mainly because I never was fond of Macromedia’s UIs. Although there’s a few things I really don’t like in Fireworks CS3, I have to tell you it’s a much more capable application for Web graphics design and optimization than ImageReady ever was. Not only can you save multiple pages out, but you can save multiple slice sets out. Something I always wanted ImageReady to do. It may have had this capability but it wasn’t evident at all if it did.
Fireworks creation tools are much more accessible than Photoshop or ImageReady’s were. You can quickly apply a variety of Live Filters on objects, regardless if they’re vector or bitmap. Something that’s still a pain to do in Photoshop since you have to pop open a modal dialog. Creating button symbols with rollovers is a cinch. Fireworks always felt snappy to me when loading up and working with it. And the new Universal version follows in this trend even more so.
My two biggest beefs with Fireworks is its anti-aliasing engine and its user interface. The anti-aliasing doesn’t seem quite as sophisticated as Photoshop’s at times. This includes its type rendering. Fireworks does a good job at trying to land on a whole pixel for clarity but sometimes I don’t actually want this. But good luck trying to get Fireworks to let you set artwork between a pixel. It’s a fun game to say the least. Now as for the user interface. I know Adobe had a lot going on with the CS3 release but given that this is a tool for rapidly building out UIs and many heavy Adobe ImageReady users are being forced to switch to Fireworks, you would think they would have updated the UI as they did in Flash. Dreamweaver didn’t get a UI update either, which I really couldn’t care too much about seeing how it hardly got any new features either. But with Fireworks, I really want to use it and the UI feels cluttered and clumsy. I just hope we don’t have to wait another three years just to get a user interface update to bring it into form with the rest of the Creative Suite components.
So aside from my two big problems with Fireworks, I’m pretty happy to have added it into my toolbox. I’m sure there will be times where I’ll still reach for Photoshop but I also think there will be times I’ll now start to reach for Fireworks.
R.I.P. ImageReady, you sliced and diced the good fight.
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Very sad indeed.
I am still using PS7 and ImageReady and it is like an extension to my hand!! I can’t imagine moving away from it.
Fireworks, head-to-head with PS/IR, always rendered out uglier images. I have had clients tell the difference between the art I generated in ImageReady and that created by colleagues in Fireworks…
I assumed it was just that I am better than them… but could it have been the rendering/anti-aliasing shortcomings of Fireworks?
Just some thoughts.
Either way, RIP
-Alister
Thanks for the comment Alister. I have many of the same reservations you have with the optimization and anti-aliasing in Fireworks vs. PS/IR. I found a lot of feedback on this very thing on one of the Adobe forums. Some longtime Fireworks users would argue that the optimization is superior to PS/IR while others would argue the opposite. And the fact that the Adobe type engine hasn’t made it over to Fireworks yet, is another concern.
But yeah, if you want to give Fireworks a try, it does have some nifty features ImageReady never seemed to get around to having. I find myself using Photoshop for some things and Fireworks for others. The multipage feature in Fireworks is definitely a nice thing to have for certain applications.
Can CS3 Photoshop switch between it and Fireworks similar to the CS2 Photoshop / ImageReady?
Good question John. Although I wouldn’t say the interchange from Photoshop to Fireworks is seamless, it does provide a fair bit of integration. I’ve brought a number of Photoshop comps over to Fireworks for further editing and final optimization and have taken a few Fireworks files into Photoshop. But I would say it feels like the Adobe team worked more on making the Photoshop to Fireworks interchange work better than the other way around. I can say that blend modes, layer effects, and type come over from Photoshop to Fireworks for the most part intact and editable. Fireworks to Photoshop tended to flatten a bunch of stuff.
Now ImageReady was built from the Photoshop engine so you would expect it to have tighter integration. And for the most part, I’d say it did. But the past couple of version of ImageReady seem to lose out on Photoshop features as well. Such as being able to handle Smart Objects or a moderately sized layered files.
Fireworks CS3 doesn’t handle Smart Objects either but it does seem to take large, layered files in stride. In fact, it feels overly spry compared to Photoshop. I just wish it would get a UI overhaul and brought some of the good stuff from ImageReady over to it. I’m still not sure I like the optimization presets as much as PS/ImageReady and I know I miss the Photoshop type rendering engine sometimes.
I wouldn’t consider bouncing back and forth between Fireworks and Photoshop like you could do with relatively good fidelity with ImageReady. Maybe if your Photoshop files are pretty simple and aren’t employing any Photoshop-centric features. I’d say consider Fireworks as more of an end-of-the-line web graphics processor.
I’m finding Fireworks killer feature for me is pages of any size. I can have one file that contains the comp and broken out image assets for a page. It’s really great. It’s worth downloading the trial version and checking it out.
The Photoshop to Fireworks and back again process is slow and unpredictable compared to Photoshop CS2 to ImageReady CS2.
I’ve have Photoshop CS3 and ImageReady CS2 working together reasonably, well except for the need to manually load the file into each program instead of simply clicking on the program’s toolbar.
Too bad MOST web developers never discovered just how awesome ImageReady really was compared to any other process.
Here are two of my most recent website designed ENTIRELY in ImageReady; I have not found a Firework solution which can achieve the same results as quickly or as graphically intense, especially the rollovers.
I could list dozens more of my websites that I could not have produced as quickly by any other process - really sad, sick world! John Silver 305 884-8855
http://www.lifebulb.com
http://www.aeroservice.com
Hi,
I am really sad that Adobe hasn’t put IR in CS3. I used to use these programs to build websites in no time (PS2 / IR2 and DW). The tool I used the most in IR CS2 is Auto slicing…. really handy and saves lots of time…
I simply cannot find this option in FW CS3?
And indeed the UI of FW sucks… that’s what made me stuck with IR for all these years..
IR rest in peace…
Bye,
Marco
Marco, thanks for the comments. As John Nack pointed out, you can still continue to use ImageReady if you want, but yeah, sadly a Universal version will never be available.
Can you describe the Auto Slice feature in ImageReady? Is it similar to the Auto Slice to Layer feature found in Photoshop? Meaning that it is bound to the layer’s contents and adjusts the slice when the content changes dimensions.
I’ll poke around in Fireworks CS3 and see if I can find anything.
Hi George,
Thanks for your reply. Actually in IR it’s called ‘create slices from guids’. I show it in 4 examples. It’s really peanuts with IR and the results are amazing.
http://www.adams.nl/example1.jpg
http://www.adams.nl/example2.jpg
http://www.adams.nl/example3.jpg
http://www.adams.nl/example4.jpg
The example is a new splashpage design that I am doing for Adams Musical Instruments. The design (1) I will do in PS after that I put guidlines (2) where I want the image to be sliced. Then choose ‘create slices from guides’ (3). Now it’s really easy to put the rollover state by selecting the layers you want to show in the rollover….
In IR it’s 10 minutes work….
In FW I cannot figure it out…. after 1 hour
Hello Marco,
So I don’t blame you, I swore I’ve seen this feature in Fireworks but it took me some time to unearth it as well. The trick is that it’s not a top-level menu command, but rather something you select when you export out. That’s why we couldn’t find it. So select File > Export and then in the Slices drop-down menu, select Slice Along Guides. The upside I can see about doing it this way is you can easily switch between slicing along guides or using slices. Granted it’s a bit hidden but it does seem a bit more flexible.
Check out the screenshot for more:
http://www.creative-toolbox.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/07/slice-along-guides.png
I found this
http://www.scribd.com/doc/208522/Create-an-Animated-GIF-in-Adobe-Photoshop-CS3
Actually, I’m glad that IR died…. now slicing is incorporated directly into PS CS3. Just select the “Slice tool” and you have a tool menu above that has everything you need to slice and dice. To combine slices control-click/right-click and choose it from the context menu.
@ Michael Gregoire:
Sure, BUT what about roll-over FX? That is lost in CS3 and cannot be done! So, having a slice is one thing, but having a slice AND the according and appropriate roll-over states for the very same slice is a world difference.
Well I have to say that after working with Fireworks for about a year, there are things that just leave me in a weird place. I think having multiple pages (and therefor multiple layer slices) is totally handy. But its optimization scheme, type rendering engine, horrible Flash import capabilities, and a UI stuck in the 90’s has left me high and dry a bunch of times. On several occasions I had to import Fireworks files back into Photoshop just to get a decent web-optimized image out of the source artwork. And I can’t get over how poorly Fireworks CS3 imports into Flash CS3. In fact, Illustrator CS3 now imports better into Flash. I’ve even gone as far as digging out my old copy of Adobe CS2 and reinstalling ImageReady just to have another option for saving out sliced artwork. ImageReady supports slice sets while Photoshop does not. And I miss the cool droplet feature in ImageReady. And strangely, IR still wins on the UI even though it’s been killed off. I guess it’s just a shame that Fireworks is the only web graphics creation application that supports multiple pages and yet it’s one of the few apps that never got a much-needed UI refresh or engine (type, optimization, import) updates.
Ideally I’d like to see the user interface and complete feature set of IR with any additional functionality that Fireworks brngs to the table added on. Call the end product ImageWorks or something and you’ve solved every problem that I and many others that have been hit in our bank accounts by the discontinuation of ImageReady are having.
Yes, I’m really hoping Adobe follows the trend they took with Illustrator. They incorporated yet modernized features from discontinued products like Streamline and Dimensions. Having these kind of features rolled into Illustrator make sense. Lets just hope they don’t take three to four full versions to do the same with Fireworks as they did with Illustrator.
i miss ir so much i m very new to cs 3 and some of you metioned that you were able to uninstall ps without uninstalling imageready, how did you do that, if i may ask? its a good resource and id really like to keep it, im working in windows vista if that makes a difference
I cry myself to sleep many nights thinking about IR… It was so simple. Most days I didn’t even open PS (of course I’m not a graphic artist either). The slicing set capabilities destroy FW hands down. I could create multiple page slices without any effort at all…
I’ll tell you. I was a FW fan before I started using IR and I converted quickly. Now to be forced to use something that is sub-par is disheartening to say the least.
I honestly didn’t ever get around to playing around with Slice Sets in ImageReady but I always wondered if they would help me out.
Have you had a chance to try out the Fireworks CS4 beta? Does it seem any better to you? I agree the ImageReady UI and toolset was simple and clean. If I had my wish, I would have had Adobe start from ImageReady and build it out into what Fireworks has become. Maybe even rebrand it Fireworks.
I do feel like ImageReady feels like a post processing tool to work with Photoshop while Fireworks feels more like a standalone do-it-all tool. Makes sense since they were both designed in this manner.