I’ve been developing websites for more than 4 years. No one really used image editing programs back then.
When it came time to start using a program to make web graphics, I chose Fireworks because it’s made specifically for web graphics.
Photoshop’s steep learning and often clumsy UI has always been a problem for me. Most of the features are things I would never use for a website.
Fireworks, on the other hand, is what I’ve used since it came out, and that’s only because I used Dreamweaver, which is really what introduced me to it.
As you said in the article, Photoshop is for, well, photos. It’s a full-blown image editor. Fireworks, while it does have the ability to edit images, is all about the web.
My vote goes to Fireworks, hands down.
Comparing Photoshop with Fireworks is a little like comparing apples and oranges. Both are delicious but are different in a number of ways.
Photoshop is the bitmap editor, and was designed for artists working on images for print. Fireworks is the top of the line, software for creating images for the Web.
Fireworks is vector based, so it actually has more in common with Illustrator than Photoshop. If you are comfortable with vectors, you'll love it.
Cheers!
