alanwallace4;
The answer depends entirely on the type of work and other factors.
Photoshop is arguably the leading image editor in terms of a offering a
complete package for print and screen, however you will not need a lot of
it's features for screen only work. There are other less expensive "pixel
pushers" that may be more than adequate--including open source applications
such as gimp, to fairly full featured editors like paint shop pro (offers
most of what Photoshop has at much less cost). If you purchased the
Macromedia studio, you already own IMO one of the best image tools for
web/screen work--Fireworks.
Fwiw flash's native tools are vector, and given the file size and
resolution advantages, it's usually best to work with vectors--but again it
depends on the type of work... -Tom Unger

Hi,
I realise this question will have many answers but.......
As far as desingning full flash sites is concerned, is photoshop a useful
tool, and is it worth reaching into my
pockets or not?
Cheers
Alan

JohnJ;
I guess I would have to think twice about buying fireworks at this point
given the coming merger, but as I pointed out the op may already own
fireworks since it comes with the mm studio and it is fairly inexpensive
compared to photoshop as well. I do not really consider fireworks to be a
competitor to photoshop. It is a completely different sort of image editor
given it's vector editable approach to image creation (which I prefer very
much for web page development) and IMO better slicing tools etc for web page
work. On the other hand it's lack of print features and slightly more
limited image editing tool set does not allow me to use it as a photoshop
replacement for these sorts of things. I currently own and use both and I
really hope fireworks survives the merger. If not I'll probably continue to
use fw so long as I can keep it working under future os releases... -Tom
Unger

JohnJ;
It occurs to me that Adobe would be better served to remove image ready
and the other web features they half heartedly cobbled into photoshop over
the past few years and bundle it with fireworks instead... -Tom Unger

[quoted text, click to view]

Hi there Alan
Personally don't find myself using Photoshop allot when comes to Flash work
except there is a project involving large number of raster images, different case than.
But in general, Photoshop is an extremely powerful tool and knowing it when you work
on web is more than useful.
Take for instance http://www.24-7media.de/ check the Portfolio section. They do
all their work in Photoshop. I joined their forum and from time to time they
explain in steps how some of the effect has been achieved. Now imagine having skills like that
and knowing flash - really crazy combo and so much to offer to potential customers.



--
Regards

Urami

--


<urami>
http://www.Flashfugitive.com
</urami>

<web junk free>
http://www.firefox.com

I always use Photoshop for everything but Flash. I love fireworks because I can
draw lines and they have some good background effects. Mayby they are in
photoshop also and I've yet to find how to do it as easy as fireworks.

But consider this.... Fireworks and Photoshop are competitors. It's a no
brainer that Photoshop will survive the merge. So do you buy a full license now
to Photoshop or wait for it to get bundled with Studio down the road?

Hi,

there is one other thing to consider: Photoshop is the de facto standard of
the professional graphics wolrd. So whenever you will have to deal with other
Pros for exchanging Bitmapdata, for example to make a Layout from a
graphics-studios design into a Flash app, you will (if your're luck that is)
get PSD-files, with layer and effects and so on.
Having to rebuild from a flattened pic is often very time consuming. And there
were cases, where seeing the layer-structur helped me understanding the ideas
behind a design...

So it's true, if you compare price and functions to other apps (especially the
free ones) it is too costly, but if you're really going to work with it, the
knowledge you'll gain will be woth a lot more than with competitive products.

I'm not saying that I like that fact, I'm simply stating it.

2m;
As with text editors which need to offer ms word import, image apps tend
offer pretty good psd file import, although it may be a version or two
behind. I even prefer a fireworks file to a photoshop file for flash import,
since there is even more chance that everything including masking in the
original file is still editable in fireworks, and flash offers options for
importing vector and/or bitmap data along with editable text with a
fireworks png.
-Tom Unger