[honeydew]

Hi. First time post in Graphics/Illustration!

I used to do quite a bit of web design/authoring a few years ago. Back then my tools were BBEdit Lite, Photoshop 3.0, and a PowerMac 7500. I was happy with the end results, but using Photoshop for web design was a little, eh.. tedious.

So now, after a brief profession writing software, I'm thinking about returning to web design. What are the preferred tools these days? I'm pretty sure I'll stick with something like BBEdit on the code side, but what about graphics? Fireworks? Photoshop? If I go with Photoshop, would Elements be good enough for my web needs, or do I need the full blown package?

Also, do all these applications run fine under Classic? Any OS X native solutions? I've been using OS X full time for the last 6 months and I don't want to return to the dark ages.

[Cipher13]

Code: BBEdit, without competition. I use SimpleText a lot too.

Graphics: Photoshop 5.5/6.

There is still nothing that compares.

There is a native OSX app thats free that people say is very good, a PhotoShop competitor... what is it again?
Anyone?

[honeydew]

Originally posted by Cipher13:
<STRONG>Graphics: Photoshop 5.5/6.
There is still nothing that compares.</STRONG>

What about vector illustration? For logos and icons I think that vector art would be very useful. Does Photoshop come with decent vector tools? And what is ImageReady?

Thanks!

[VRL]

Adobe Illustrator is good for graphics. Heck, I did some simple ones with AppleWorks as well

Cipher13 - are you thinking of the Gimp??
http://www.gimp.org/

[shmerek]

Has anyone had a gander at Photoshop elements yet?

[- - e r i k - -]

Graphics: Photoshop 6 / ImageReady 3

ImageReady is Adobe's specialized app for web graphics, it comes with Photoshop and is semi-integrated.

Code: Macromedia Dreamweaver 4 coupled with BBEdit.

[neophilia]

Photoshop 6 by far for graphics. It covers pretty much all the bases now (particularly type-setting) but if you're into vector graphics (aka a pen tool pro), Illustrator is still the best for that. Also, hardcore typsetting is easier and usually better to do in Illustrator and bring in to Photoshop.. Things get sluggish when dealing with big paragraphs of text in PS6. Elements could actually do.. Most of the stuff in PS is a bit pointless for most web graphics and there is a lot more overhead.. I'd say try both out if you can before you make your purchase.

For code, BBEdit. No ifs, ands or buts. As for image compression, I used to use Fireworks a lot but PS6 works even better IMO, and it's way more streamlined. Imageready is sort of pointless with PS's built-in export for web thing.. This may be a plus over Elements. Not sure how it compares to PS6's compression/exporting features..

One thing you might want to look into as well is Flash 5. If you're a drawer, you might find the tools in Flash to be better suited for some illustrative work.. You can always grab the 30 day demo from www.macromedia.com and try it out.

-peter, http://peter.neophiliadesign.com/