Fireworks tips

There is denying it, Adobe Fireworks is my favorite Adobe App. I have been using it for ages it seems and am still satisfied with it. (I haven’t used CS5 version yet… but I am sure I will not be disappointed with it). For images and projects for the web, it is perfect. Photoshop is mostly overkill. What I especially like about Fireworks is that is a hybrid image program; you can work on pixel level and still use vector tools.

Here are some tricks and tips I use often in Fireworks.

Convert images to Grayscale

Converting images to grayscale can be done by using the Creative menu.

 

Pasting new image

One useful feature of Fireworks is that is monitors your clipboard. If you have copied and image to the clipboard, you can start editing it by pressing Control-N (New) which will open up the new image dialog with the size of the image in the clipboard. After just pressing OK, you can paste it directly.

Fading images

Fading images can be done by using the Commands – Creative – Fade Image menu

You can further customize the fade by clicking on the layer mask, which shows you the gradient controller.

 

Setting layer preview size

I usually do not make any changes in the preview size, however there are some situation where you would to see smaller or bigger previews. This can be easily changed by clicking on the Layer option dropdown – Thumbnail Options item.

 

Useful keyboard shortcuts

Below is a list of keyboard shortcuts which I use most of the time

TAB	Hide/Show panels
Control – Alt – D	Duplicate current selection/layer
Control – Shift – D	Clone selection/layer (similar to duplicate, however duplicate moves the copy)
Control – K	Full display
Control – Numpad +	Zoom in
Control – Numpad -	Zoom out
Control – Mouse scroll	Zoom in and out
Control – G	Group selected
Control – Shift – G	Ungroup (grouped) object
Control – Alt – V	Paste as mask
Control – A	Select All
Control – D	Deselect
Control – Up	Bring Forward
Control – Down	Send Backward
Control – T	Transform
Control – Shift – T	Numeric transform

You can also customize your keyboard shortcuts via the Edit – Keyboard shortcuts menu item.

See also the CS3 manual.