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Creating Panoramas in Fireworks

Panoramic photographs are not new - they've been around since the earliest days of photography.  Recently they've come back into vogue, with computer photo manipulation and digital photography.  There are an increasing number of applications for viewing and displaying panoramas, including a forthcoming viewer from the DMX Zone.  (See references at end). 

The websites about panoramas show examples of dazzling vistas of mountains or exotic beaches.  Really impressive.  But making one of your own can be a frustrating business.  This article is about how to create your own panorama, using Macromedia Fireworks (MX2004).  It applies also to Photoshop, but Photoshop(CS) has additional tools not available in Fireworks, so we'll take the "manual" approach here, and you'll learn more about the nuts and bolts of panorama making.

The exercise doesn't require high level expertise in FW, just the basics of selecting areas, doing a bit of Curves correction work, cropping, and a little bit of gradient masking.  It does, however, require care and attention to detail if you want to create a first class panorama.

A Journey with Fireworks 8

The End

We’ll start our journey with Fireworks by covering the new features and highlights of the recent Fireworks 8 release. Equipped with this knowledge we will delve into more specific topics and techniques.

I have been a Fireworks user since its very first release and I have contributed articles and chapters in various Fireworks publications. You may also have used some of the extensions I’ve written for Fireworks either explicitly by downloading them from my site at www.projectfireworks.com or implicitly since some of them ship with Fireworks. Also, I was the technical editor of the last of the “Fireworks Bible” series by Joe Lowery, but this is the first time that I sit down to share the knowledge and experience I’ve gained through the users of use of this fine application.

By the end of this series, I hope I will be able to transfer my knowledge to you so you can feel as confident as I am that you will be able to tackle just about any graphics-related tasks with Fireworks successfully.

Making friends with Bezier curves

If you've come to Fireworks from a bitmap graphics application, you may at first glance find vector graphics counter-intuitive.  One of the more confusing aspects of vector objects are Bézier curves. These allow you to create curved vector objects and are an essential tool in all vector work.  This article is about how to control Bézier curves in Fireworks, how to create the controlling handles for the curves, and how to switch between the different types of handle.  When you master these, you'll have complete control over creating vector shapes in Fireworks.

If you're familiar with Freehand or Illustrator, vector objects will be old friends, though you may wish to follow through this article as a guide to Fireworks-specific controls.

Fireworks MX & MX2004: Fun with Productivity Part 2

Web graphics need to be sliced, diced, optimized, and put back together. In the first article we talked about before the design phase - abusing our Properties panel, and preparing designs using safe sizes. This article covers productivity tips for during and after our design phase, with awesome time-saving shortcuts that work in both Fireworks MX & MX2004, and most likely Fireworks 8. Speaking of Fireworks 8, you may not need that new Image Editing panel after I show how to do all those shortcuts. Cutting down production time may make production a bit more fun, just don't tell your clients!

Text Removal from Images

There will come a time in your design career where you will be presented with an image and asked if you can alter it to remove the text. It's happened many times in mine, and not always from a business point of view, sometimes it's a friend who wants a poster making, but the image he's found has loads of text on it etc.. DVD covers, CD's and so on all fall into this category.

So it's handy to know how to take this image and transform it into something resembling its original state.

The image I will be working on in this article is from the soundtrack cover of 'The Merchant of Venice' starring Al Pacino. It's a nice image, with lots of colour blends, so we have our work cut out for us. But with a little patience and using a lot of CTRL+Z (to go back in history when you make a mistake), you should get this edited and looking great in around 30 minutes or so.

Free! - Batch processing images

This video tutorial is all about Fireworks and images, click this link to start the video.

Joyce is the primary Web Designer/Developer at Idea Design (www.je-ideadesign.com) and she runs and maintains her author site at www.JoyceJEvans.com. Upcoming projects include CD training courses and teleconferences. To be added to the mailing list for product and course availability, write Joyce@joycejevans.com. Joyce is also available for corporate and group training sessions.

Fireworks: Navigation graphics

This video tutorial is all about Fireworks and images, click this link to start the video.

Joyce is the primary Web Designer/Developer at Idea Design (www.je-ideadesign.com) and she runs and maintains her author site at www.JoyceJEvans.com. Upcoming projects include CD training courses and teleconferences. To be added to the mailing list for product and course availability, write Joyce@joycejevans.com. Joyce is also available for corporate and group training sessions.

Free! - Remote rollovers using Fireworks part 3

This video tutorial is all about Fireworks and images, click this link to start the video.

Check out part 1 and part 2 first before viewing this tutorial

This tutorial was written by Joyce Evans;

Joyce J. Evans Joyce is a training veteran with over 10 years of experience in educational teaching, tutorial development, and Web design. She has spoken at conferences such as Macromedia MAX , TODCON and Seybold. Joyce has authored and co-authored over 15 books including Macromedia Studio MX 2004 Bible, Dreamweaver MX 2004 Complete Course, Web Design Complete Course.

Fireworks MX 2004: Zero to Hero and Dreamweaver in 10 simple steps or less.

Free! - Remote rollovers using Fireworks part 2

This video tutorial is all about Fireworks and images, click this link to start the video.

If you've missed part one, check it out over here or go to the next part.

This tutorial was written by Joyce Evans;

Joyce J. Evans Joyce is a training veteran with over 10 years of experience in educational teaching, tutorial development, and Web design. She has spoken at conferences such as Macromedia MAX , TODCON and Seybold. Joyce has authored and co-authored over 15 books including Macromedia Studio MX 2004 Bible, Dreamweaver MX 2004 Complete Course, Web Design Complete Course.

Fireworks MX 2004: Zero to Hero and Dreamweaver in 10 simple steps or less.

Free! - Remote rollovers using Fireworks part 1

This video tutorial is all about Fireworks and images, click this link to start the video. If you've finished part 1, please check out part 2. 

This tutorial was written by Joyce Evans;

Joyce J. Evans Joyce is a training veteran with over 10 years of experience in educational teaching, tutorial development, and Web design. She has spoken at conferences such as Macromedia MAX , TODCON and Seybold. Joyce has authored and co-authored over 15 books including Macromedia Studio MX 2004 Bible, Dreamweaver MX 2004 Complete Course, Web Design Complete Course.

Fireworks MX 2004: Zero to Hero and Dreamweaver in 10 simple steps or less.

Fireworks MX & MX2004: Fun with Productivity - Part 1

It's no secret, when designing a site, your graphics need to be sliced, diced, optimized, and even put back together in our (X)HTML pages. In a previous article, Things you should know about FW (part 1), I covered basics of features like Symbols and Styles, perfect for during the production process. Now, I'm going to show how we can chop down more grunt work areas before and after we draw any of our cool ideas; we'll be more productive thanks to Fireworks. This article shows productivity tips that work in both Fireworks MX & MX2004.

• Learn where and what shortcuts (not keystrokes) provide you less mouse strain.
• Learn “safe sizes” for designing web-pages, making sure they fit in each popular browser nicely.
• Take “safe sizes” to another level of productivity, utilizing a free FW extension.
• Learn to batch process like a pro.

Things you should know about Fireworks MX & MX2004 - Part 2

This article is the second in a series for Macromedia Fireworks MX/MX2004 showing how the other half of your Studio MX/MX2004  works! Features of both MX/MX2004 versions of Fireworks (FW) are covered, ranging from beginner to intermediate tools. This series can also be considered a “what's new” in FW MX2004.

This article assumes you have little knowledge of Fireworks, and that you are at least familiar with general web graphics. The first article covered the first-half of most tools in FW, this article covers more bitmap and vector tools and features in MX (Find & Replace, Textures & Patterns, Layers & Vector Masks, Automation), and new features in MX2004 (Custom hand-code & Server-Side code support, FTP & Check-In/Check-Out, and more).