Design Your Own Custom CMX Fireworks Course ![[Registration never required for free content]](/images/free.gif)
By: Jim Babbage on Friday, February 9, 2007
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Note: This article has been updated on 3/10/2009. Check out the updated article
The Basics
You gotta walk before you can run, as they say. The articles in this section go over the basics of the Fireworks interface and standard workflow/best practices concepts. These articles should help you get comfortable working with the program if you're new to it, or may remind you of features you'd forgotten about if you are an expereienced user.
Production and Workflow
Batch processing, Symbols and Instances, advanced articles on slicing, optimizing and exporting, Fireworks extensions
Design and Layout
Articles on creating layouts within FW, or graphics for use in web page designs,
Retouching and Photo Manipulation
Fireworks has a pretty solid set of bitmap tools. While not as extensive as Photoshop's tool set, these creative and corrective tools can do quite a lot and may be all you need for screen based graphics.
Vectors
Vectors are one of Fireworks key strengths. articles on creating and editing vector paths and shapes will be in this section
Masking
Vector and bitmap masking are two other major strengths of Fireworks. Both types of masking give you the flexibility to show or hide parts of your image or design, without permanently damaging anything.
Projects
Image collages, conceptual pieces and just plain old fun things to do in Fireworks, from creating an e-card deisgn for your Mom, to desigining holiday ornaments and bringing scary monsters to sceen life.
Fireworks Related
Many of our JumpStart articles include some Fireworks related tips and techniques. Flash and Fireworks also integrate well. Photoshop and Fireworks also talk to each other fairly well (although some things are lost in the translation). In this section, look for articles where Fireworks ties in with other software or where Fireworks techniques are covered as part of a larger article.
You can bookmark the page on CMX making it easy to use this article as a Fireworks reference. And by the way: if you're not a CMX subscriber, you can still glean a lot from our free (80 and counting in the Fireworks category) articles. Those are identified so that you'll be able to easily access them.
