Leia recently pointed out a deal at the Macromedia store — until November 15th, they’re offering Fireworks MX 2004 for $199 (whereas it’d normally be $299). This seemed like a good deal and it was rather tempting.
I currently use Jasc’s Paint Shop Pro for my digital photography editing. And, it’s basically fine — I can do color correction, contract correction and the usual adjustments. However, it doesn’t have as much documentation and books as its competitors. And, that's one reason why I’m considering investing in another app such as Photoshop or Fireworks.
I’ve previously talked with several of the other members of the Dallas Camera Club and Photoshop generally seems to be their editor of choice. And, with that kind of endorsement, Photoshop might otherwise be a shoo-in; unfortunately, it also costs at least twice as much as any of its competitors (Fireworks and Paint Shop Pro).
Given that a lack of specialized books is one of my primary reasons for considering a switch from Paint Shop Pro, I decided to check on how many books on digital photography were available for Fireworks. I loaded Best Web Buys — an online price comparison site with an excellent section on book prices — and I searched for the keywords “Fireworks digital” and “Photoshop digital”. The results: 50 books for the former and 2 books for the latter (one of which was only a curriculum guide).
Leia has told me about how much she enjoys using Fireworks for general image slicing and optimization; and, she assures me that it can be used for photo correction as well. But, with this November 15th deadline looming, I’m still unsure about going ahead with the purchase. I'm open to any photography nuts’ opinions on this, either way.
Would Photoshop Elements meet your needs? It’s priced somewhat reasonably: $100 (I wish they’d sell it for $25-50).
Josh: You bring up a good point, but I don’t know the answer to that one :-/. It might do what I need, on paper, but I’m not sure whether it has much more functionality than Paint Shop Pro (which I use now).
I now have photoshop elements–it came with my film scanner that I recently got. You can check it out over Thanksgiving if you want.
Adrian: Yeah, I’d like to check it out :). Would that be version 3.0?