IDUX

Adobe Fireworks has many powerful features, but some of them are not very well-known. This is the first in a series of posts that will reveal some of these features and briefly explain how to use them. Special thanks to Matt, Mikko, SiamJai, Aaron, John, Trevor, and the many users of Fireworks who have contributed to these feature lists.

Today we focus on: Color.

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Creating web designs involves creating static comps of what the future web page could look like, so it can be very important to make sure that the comp represents images, icons, colors, and text in exactly (or nearly exactly) the same way that browsers will render it.

One of the most challenging design elements to represent is text, because different browsers, different operating systems, and even different monitors will render the text differently. Most operating systems offer sub-pixel text rendering on LCD monitors to improve the legibility of text, but most graphics programs do not have text settings to simulate this appearance. They offer anti-aliasing options, which is also a method to improve the legibility of text rendered as pixels, but it is not the same as sub-pixel rendering.

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My latest series of videos for Adobe Fireworks CS4 is now available over at Adobe TV.  Check them out!

Export CSS and Images Part 1: Creating the page structure and placing key content elements.

Export CSS and Images Part 2: Using HTML component symbols and slices

Export CSS and Images Part 3: Inserting placeholders for dynamic content

I’ll also be presenting a session on using Fireworks for wireframing and prototyping and conducting two “Bring Your Own Laptop” labs on exporting CSS and Images from Fireworks CS4 at Adobe MAX 2009 in Los Angeles. If you’re attending, look me up.

The fine community over at Fireworks Guru Forum help each other out on a daily basis.  One of the members posted links to a few of their own tutorials today, and they show some really good techniques.

Here’s a great tutorial on drawing flowers using the Star autoshape, and here’s another for creating flames using the wave gradient and a few curves filters. Here’s what I drew using these tutorials:

Flower drawn with Adobe Fireworks Autoshape

Flames drawn with Adobe Fireworks