It has been a while since the merger/aquisition of Macromedia by Adobe and at least from my small place in the world, things seem to be working out rather smoothly. Fireworks lives on, ImageReady has been booted into the dumpster (Boo-yah). Now Adobe can concentrate more on improving Photoshop without resources being siphoned into ImageReady. I may be naive in that regard, but a guy can hope.

Dreamweaver and Flash seem secure in their existence. I don't have a crystal ball (or inside info, either) so it's hard to say how things will change over the next few development cycles, but for now I am content.

I am well aware that CMX subscribers and many other graphics professionals still use both apps, or more. With some, the strength is Fireworks; with others, it is Photoshop and quite likely Illustrator. I really don't think this scenario will change a lot. After all, you use the tools that you are most comfortable with and that do the job in the most efficient manner.

Where I do see a shift is specifically with those web graphics people who were (or are) using Photoshop/ImageReady for graphics work. I can see them leaning - or being led - to the Fireworks side of things.

In the meantime, I have seen the odd post from a subscriber wishing/hoping that our CMX JumpStarts had PSD versions for the graphics.

The creation of a JumpStart is a long, detailed process which goes through multiple edits and revisions to ensure the design and the CSS/html work as efficiently and are as clean as possible. These puppies aren't built overnight, believe me. And at this time, there are many hurdles and acrobatics and workarounds involved in converting a fully editable FW PNG file to a fully editable PS PSD or AI file. Even then, there may still be some slight differences.

Well, hopeful Photoshop users, I have taken it upon myself to make PSD (or where more appropriate, AI) conversions of some of our CMX JumpStarts. In late June, Fireworks to Photoshop - Rebuilding the CMX Vienna JumpStart PNG as a PSD file became available. I've recently completed two others which will be online within the next couple weeks.

This process is hit and miss; I don't know if I will be able to convert all of them. But as the months progress, you will see more of these conversions made available. Each article included the editable PSD or Ai file and covers any pesky little conversion soluitons I had to go through. I don't repeat information that was dealt with in previous articles, but I try to mention where you would find the information in my other articles.

Keep in mind, these are NOT complete JumpStarts; they are only the main PNG file. If you want all bundled articles and CSS information, you would need to purchase/download the original JumpStart.

I hope that you find these articles interesting and useful. I'm certainly learning a thing or two as I go.