We see a lot of people taking web design classes at our Adobe authorized training center the Multimedia Resource Group
that are confused. They want to use Dreamweaver to create their websites, a great product and the number one product on the market for creating and managing websites, but it doesn't create graphics. Their confusion: Photoshop or Illustrator...which one should they learn first if they are primarily interested in creating graphics for a web site?
I usually surprise them by saying if they don't yet know either of those two great products (both of which can be used to create graphics for the web) I'd recommend Fireworks... Adobe Fireworks.
Usually this evokes a quizzical expression on the person's face. Chances are they've never heard of Fireworks or perhaps heard of it but don't know much about it. I then go on and explain: Fireworks was a product that Macromedia developed to create graphics for the web. That's all, just graphics for the web. They had bundled it with Dreamweaver. It's a great product that combines aspects of both Photoshop (bitmap/rastor graphic editing) and Illustrator (vector graphic creation). It exports gif, jpeg and png files, all of which can be used on the web.
And, just like Photoshop and Illustrator, Fireworks allows you to "slice" a layout, in other words exporting the pieces of the layout as individual graphics like a jigsaw puzzle, and exporting out the html file, taking those "pieces" (the slices, the exported graphics) and putting them back together for you in a web page (an html file). Which you can then open up in Dreamweaver to continue working.
Photoshop and Illustrator are great products with lots of bells and whistles for creating graphics for print and the web. Fireworks was created specifically to allow you to create and optimize graphics just for the web.
If you just need to create graphics for a web site, and you don't already know Photoshop or Illustrator, you owe it to yourself to check out Macromedia, oops... I mean Adobe Fireworks.
A one-stop solution to your web graphic needs.
