I spend too much time talking about bad software. It's easy to point out the wrong way to do things, but that's not very useful unless I also give examples of the right ways. With that in mind, I'm going to try to periodically post about software that I really like. These posts will be a blend between concepts (what makes good software) and practice (you should use this specific software for this reason). Today, I'm talking about my favorite image editor.
Most people think that there are basically two options for photo editing: Microsoft Paint (or something equally basic and useless) or Adobe Photoshop. Photoshop can do just about anything, but it's too complicated for most people (including me). If you want to use Photoshop, you basically need to take a class or spend countless hours banging your head against the wall as you experiment.
In addition to complexity issues, Photoshop has a glaring weakness: vector graphics. In case you don't know, vector graphics are like normal images, except everything has been drawn (on by the computer) and the source of the image can be edited. For example, if you draw a tree in MS Paint, it's a flat image and the only way to change it is to draw different things on top of it. A vector file would actually store how you drew the tree so that you could go back and change the thickness of lines, colors, and anything else about the image.
For some reason which I can't begin to understand, Adobe decided that normal images (or bitmaps) and vector graphics shouldn't both be well-supported in one program. They have Photoshop for images, and Adobe Illustrator for vectors. Sure, Photoshop can do basic vector editing, but it's really bad.
So if I don't like Photoshop, what do I like? Without a doubt, I think the best image editor is Adobe Fireworks. I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "but Tyler, Adobe is incapable of making decent software. Even their PDF reader is a horrible embarrassing mess. They are in the running with Intuit for 'Most Annoying Software Company Ever'" Well, you're right about that, but Fireworks was originally made by Macromedia and then Adobe bought Macromedia. Despite having several years to mess it up, Adobe has refrained from making any major changes to the software so far.
So what's good about Fireworks? The main thing is that they didn't let complexity get in the way of basic functionality. Sure there are super-complicated tools that no one could figure out on their own, but everything you know from MS Paint works the exact same way in Fireworks. Someone who has never used it could easily figure out how to draw a basic picture, add text, cut and paste. The Fireworks designers clearly realize that you can have powerful features without ruining the simple ones.
Also, Fireworks seamlessly switches between vectors and bitmaps. If you draw a square, it stores that as a vector so that you can edit it later. If you paste in a picture you took with your camera, that's a bitmap. Vectors and bitmaps live together in perfect harmony.
Finally, one of the coolest things about Fireworks is how it stores the images. Most image editors like Photoshop have proprietary file formats that can only be opened by other people with the same expensive application. Fireworks files are actually just normal .PNG files which is a standard image format that anyone can view. All the fancy Fireworks data is stored with the image, but it is hidden. That way, if you send the file to someone without Fireworks, they just see a normal image. If you send it to someone with Fireworks, the have access to all your wonderful vector information. This makes collaboration much easier.
There are a lot of other reasons that I think Fireworks is way better than any other image editor I've used, but this is already about five times longer than it should be. The point is, if you're looking for great software, try out Fireworks.
