Hi I am a Front-End Web Developer using Photoshop CS6. Can anyone please explain the salient differences between: Photoshop, Fireworks and Illustrator ?? If I use Photoshop, I can't see the point in these other products, surely I can do it all in Photoshop? Are there features in Fireworks and Illustrator that don't exist in Photoshop? Many thanks.
Photoshop - of the three you listed think of photoshop as free form image editing. For your purposes this just edits photos or creates images. Fireworks can be useful but to be honest...if you design front-ends for a living... fireworks is pretty much a toy for you (it can be very useful for someone with NO experience in design though)...however, there is some functions that are quite useful ...you can flatten multiple images together to make sprite sheets and fireworks can generate the css you need for sprite image selection. Aside from a few interesting tools like that...it is really just much easier to open a text editor and get cracking. Illustrator is for vector based image creation. Vector images are exactly as the name describes, images defined by mathematical vectors. When you enlarge an image by zooming in on it or a webpage containing any image it looses it's clarity normally and becomes very tiled...when vector images get larger they remain just as clear (and in my opinion often look better than when they are small) such as this example from wikipedia I can't really explain the method to my madness very easily or shortly but suffice it to say if you want to make images that look good on all resolutions....use vector graphics (you can use illustrator for this), and realistically you will never see me tell anyone not to use photoshop, I use it like it is part of my day along with breathing...I made my avatar for this site in like... less than 2 minutes...what can I say...photoshop is a great tool to have in the toolbox. And if you can get on with illustrator as well...do it...you wont regret it.
Photoshop can do real vectors as well as illustrator. If you have a firm grasp on photoshop it is easily your most powerful tool. The vector features can easily be tested by drawing a shape with the pen tool and exporting the .eps or .psd into illustrator, the only disadvantage is that photoshop vectors do not look as crisp and clear as they do in illustrator but the end result is the same. Fireworks is essentially worthless for you as notepad++ or dreamweaver combined with photoshop will grant you much better results. I hope this has helped.
For most part of entire design industry, the Photoshop is the most famous of those other 2 softwares. Photoshop CS6 is more flexible because of the features that any designer that can imagine. It can go from designing to video editing and that makes it more power software that I ever imagined. But in some point Fireworks can also do the thing that photoshop can do. It's not the most famous software but as I explore it, Fireworks is I think the "Twin" brother of Photoshop. And about Illustrator, it is the most powerful vector based software that I used. It can do the most stunning design and it has 3D features earlier than the Photoshop since Adobe insert 3D feature. But rather than comparing those 3 softwares, it's for the users end if what he/she software that he/she thinks comfortable creating stunning art designs. Nonetheless, let's celebrate for these softwares utilize and help us to make things easier and design beautiful arts.