PhotoShop creates good graphics that can make your web page stand out and be exciting. GOOD graphics, however, take time to create. You don't have to be the world's best artist, but a little imagination and ingenuity will go a long way.

The most important thing to remember about graphics for the web is that they are larger in file size than text, and therefore will take longer to download. There is nothing more annoying than to have to wait for a page to load because someone decided to stick a 150K image on as a background.

A rule of thumb is to keep images below 30K and to remember to save Photographs as .jpg and icons and text as .gif

It's best to have Photoshop open in another window and toggle back and forth.

Fireworks is Macromedia's answer to creating graphics that are designed specifically for the World Wide Web. As every designer knows, Web graphics need to be small in size to transport across narrow bandwidths quickly. In the past, a good designer has had to use several packages to allow an image to have the properties needed, as well as be small. With Fireworks all of that is integrated into one application.

These tutorials assume you have a working knowledge of a paint program such as Photoshop.

Keep in mind that Fireworks has many more features than are covered in these tutorials. Dr. Missy's Fireworks Tutorials are designed to get you familiar with the software, not to make you an expert. The more you practice, the better your understanding.

You will get more from the tutorials if you open Fireworks and toggle back and forth between the tutorial and the application