Editing layered Fireworks pngs in Photoshop
It’s been over four years now since Adobe bought Macromedia and all of their flagship products like Dreamweaver, Flash and Fireworks. We have seen two new versions of the Adobe Creative Suite since then. The first one did some basic integration between the programs, the second release of CS more tightly integrated all of the software. So why in the heck can’t the almighty Photoshop open up layered .png files that were originally created in Fireworks?
I love Fireworks, for more than ‘Rapid Prototyping’
That is how Adobe has rebranded Fireworks since they’ve bought it. Fireworks is ‘The’ tool to quickly mock up some interactive rough websites, and then as a designer you should use Photoshop to make that layout.
I happen to love Fireworks, from day one it was designed for the web graphic workflow, where Photoshop incorporate the features for saving out web graphics and it has always seemed like an afterthought for that reason. Photoshop, hands down the best raster editing software, Fireworks can’t touch it. But for speed of savings out graphics and keep files organized and manuverability, Fireworks beats Photoshop.
So, I still use Fireworks at the risk that it might disappear one day. But my question is still, Photoshop is the industry leading graphics software, it should be able to opened layered Fireworks files with the layers. Instead, Photoshop flattens the layers.
Save As Work-around
This seems like it would be so easy to implement. I did find out a work around. If you need to open a layered Fireworks .png in Photoshop, just save it out of Fireworks as a .psd;
This worked for the one application I needed, but I do venture this guess. Fireworks can open .psd’s, it does a so so job, but the files are layered. If you have some sort of complex graphical layout that if you save it out as a Photoshop file, it won’t be ‘just right’ when you open it in Photoshop.
Anyone have extensive experience with this? Care to comment? Rant over.
Here are some similar arcade posts
- Save time exporting web images using Fireworks
- How do I save my action files? How do I bring / import my actions into a newer version of Photoshop?
- Adobe buys Macromedia.
- Saving a corrupted Illustrator file!
- Photoshop tutorial for punching text ‘effect’ out of an image
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Comments
It kills me that Adobe brands it as a rapid prototyping tool only. I know the reason, and it is good for that….I can only dream that they will make layered png files editable in Photoshop….
Seriously though, how much easier are pages and frames than layers with groups. And making multiple pages, it just a really streamlined specific program…
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February 9, 2010
Totally agree on this. Photoshop is simply too heavy for many web design tasks.
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The main powers that Fireworks holds over Photoshop’s head are:
- Super easy jumping from VECTOR to RASTER, both editing and selection of objects directly on the canvas rather than via layers
- multi-state button export with automatic naming
- symbols
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I love Photoshop, but Fireworks is just quicker for most web work. Occasionally I need PS access to do specific editing/design effects, but web production is much easier via FW.