Fireworks Explosion! | Creative Masking Techniques | Early Bird Over Today | Contest Time

CATEGORIES: Living In Layers | RC | February 29, 2008

Yesterday, I sat in the Fireworks Jam Session hosted by Alan Musselman. I have to say that his use of Adobe Connect to get in touch with users and share/learn/rant is very personal, productive, and informative. I really didn’t go into it with specific ideas, and after seeing the forum, I really kicked myself for not preparing better. I’ll tell you more about that in a bit…

Keep in mind everyone, today is the LAST DAY for Photoshop World early bird specials. If want to come and experience what is a love-fest of Photoshop (and other programs) with some of the best in the industry, and several thousand friends, this is the place to do it. Click on the Register Me link here to go to the page and save 100 dollars off the ticket by registering today!

Contest time, Great Links and Tutorials, all after the jump.

Fireworks Jam Session, and Other Info
I (and our editors) get a fair bit of questions on two specific topics: How do I incorporate Fireworks and Photoshop into web design? Which tool is best for web development?

Personally, I’ve always loved Fireworks’ ability to get a web layout done quickly. Any pining I did over missing Photoshop was replaced by the excitement I had with the vector control I had in the images. That said, I think that it’s a very important discussion, and one that Alan is more than happy to chime in on as well.

The Jam Session is going to be a great place for you to come in contact with other Fireworks users and share creative ideas. However, Alan dropped a bunch of links for me to keep myself incredibly busy over the weekend:

http://geniantsandbox.com/2008/01/08/enterprise-fire-flow- Nathan Smith drops science on why you should be looking into Fireworks to begin with. Crisp, to the point. If you don’t fire up Fireworks after this.. you probably don’t own it.

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/fireworks/articles/guides_panel.htmlEugene M. Jude at Adobe has created a cool Guides Panel for Fireworks CS3 that is definitely worth a look.

http://activata.co.uk/smart-css/ I am SUPER EXCITED about this one. It’s simple: a plugin that lets you design in Fireworks, and produces clean, production-ready CSS coding for use in Dreamweaver. If this actually works as they say it does (and I don’t see why not), this is going to be awesome..

Finally, http://www.fireworksguruforum.com/ – The place where everyone that is cool in the world of Fireworks hangs out.

Corey Barker Illustrator Masking Tutorial

Corey Barker knocks one out of the park for us, talking about the differences in masking in Illustrator CS3. It almost reminds me of an Illustrator answer to Terry White’s InDesign tutorial on transparency.

Click Here for Corey’s tutorial

Click here for Terry’s Indesign Tutorial

Contest Time
OK. This is a quick contest, and related to Dreamweaver. There are two tabs at the top of the dialog used to define a website in Dreamweaver CS3. Go to the Contact page. Click on the Send To drop-down and select “Layers TV”. In the form you can type your answer (”The Fireworks Explosion Contest answer is: ” ). This is also a good way to send us feedback.

Deadline is Monday, 5PM. Winner will be announced on Tuesday.

Oh yeah.. what are we going to win:

The onOne Software Plug-In Suite 3! Think about it: Genuine Fractals, Mask Pro, PhotoFrame and Intellihance – all in one spot. I’m going to try to enter for myself. Wait. I can’t.

Special thanks to our buddies at onOne Software for the deal. Make sure you check them out!

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