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I often have to make designs for internet-use. I have had Fireworks for years and it suits my purpose. These are the details I like in it:

  • Good tools for moderate image manipulation (cutting, cropping, color changes, overlaying one image with another, blurring, etc.)
  • Possibilities to draw other objects easily (squares, lines, circles, shapes)
  • Easy options to apply textures, shadows, gradients, and other effects.
  • Preview of JPG / GIF / PNG export, easy quality settings -> useful when exporting for the web.
  • Ease of dragging, resizing, and moving objects (images, shapes, text) around on a canvas
  • Ease of working with vectors and bitmaps at the same time

So I guess those are the main qualities I like a lot in Fireworks. Now that I use Ubuntu I've tried Gimp and Inkscape, and some others, but I can not find all of the aforementioned qualities. Maybe it's me, but Fireworks still rules when it comes to these things, IMHO. So I run it under Wine. But that's really a pain... it's slow and behaves erratically.

Is there anybody who has found a good replacement for Fireworks? Or knows a program that might fit my needs? Thanks!

Zanna
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3 Answers3

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Pencil Project (Download Link)

Despite the similar names this is different from Pencil.

enter image description here

The Pencil Project's unique mission is to build a free and opensource tool for making diagrams and GUI prototyping that everyone can use.

Eliah Kagan
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Lincity
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3

Ok. The software suggestions posted are OK, but none touch Fireworks.

Good news is that Fireworks does work GREAT on Linux and it's easy to install. Literally double clicking the .exe file.

Get and install Macromedia Fireworks 8. I've switched back to Ubuntu Linux full time from Windows and coming from Fireworks CS 6, Macromedia Fireworks 8 has all the things I need.

I even create web browser themes and more with it.

Macromedia Fireworks 8

Enjoy :)

yanike
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3

Pencil (Click to install)

While mainly made for animation purpose it can be used for drawing and supports bitmap and vector graphics .

enter image description here

Pencil is an animation/drawing software for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux. It lets you create traditional hand-drawn animation (cartoon) using both bitmap and vector graphics. Pencil is free and open source.

animuson
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Lincity
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