Perhaps the most significant changes to Fireworks MX 2004 are the ones under the hood. The new program is noticeably faster than its predecessors that had a tendency to operate like molasses on a cold winter day. Macromedia claims that large image manipulations and other processor- intensive tasks can now be handled up to 85% faster ”and they appear to be right.
Batch processing is where the performance improvements are most noticeable. Resizing multiple images, for instance, as a batch process is definitely a much faster operation.
Transform Tool Enhanced
Macromedia has also enhanced the Transform tool (see Figure 24.1) to resize, stretch, and rotate objects with greater precision and speed. You can also scale text in point sizes.
Figure 24.1. Improved performance means increased speed and precision with the Transform tool.
In previous versions, you had to jump through a few hoops if you wanted to edit a JPEG and save the file in its original format. Before MX 2004, you had to save the image as a PNG, and then export it to JPEG. Fireworks MX 2004 now gives you the option to save a file in its native JPEG or GIF format.
