Help making Clothes In Macromedia Fireworks

Hi! I'm a brand new user. both of Second Life and Fireworks and I have been going nuts trying to design clothes and hopefully later a decent looking skin to wear. I got the templates but I can't figure out how to use it and what layers I need and how to change things. Can someone help? Oh I do know I can't make TARGAs but can make .jpgs. also Fireworks is what I have at my disposal.

Thanks. Really looking forward to learning how to make my own things.

Welcome to Sl, Maunako.

I know you're not gonna like hearing this, but don't use Fireworks. It's a fine program for web graphics, but it's not really up to the task of texturing for SL. Its biggest shortcoming is, as you point out, it can't export TGA files. Now, at first glance, that doesn't seem like much of a problem since SL can import jpeg. Sorry to have to tell you this, but jpeg is the worst possible format you could use, especially for clothing. Even if you forget about the attrociously poor image quality of jpeg, you cannot get around the fact that it doesn't support transparency. That means it simply won't work for things like underwear, bathing suits, tattoos, anything with straps, backless shirts, ripped jeans, etc. About all you'll be able to make will be full body suits.

If you've got the money, do yourself the biggest favor of your digital career and get Photoshop. If you can't afford Photoshop, then get GIMP. It's almost as good, and it's totally free. If you go the GIMP route, make sure to also get the GIMPshop plugin, which will make it look and feel like Photoshop. After that, all the hundreds of tutorials on this site (and the thousands more across the internet) will work for you.

As for what to do with the templates, I'd recommend reading the Fashion Guide on the downloads section of this site to get started. After that, come back with any specific questions you might have.

Erf. Ok thanks.. I'll start downloading it now.

I am an avid Fireworks user, and have used it for many clothing designs...
see my works posted on:
http://slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&MerchantID=6805
or
http://www.slboutique.com/index.php?p=buy&user_avatar_id=3019

for transparency, yes it is an extra step, but I found a great free-use program to export the png's to tga's for use.

Obviously Im not argueing for people to move from Photoshop to Fireworks... Photoshop is clearly more suited to designing here... but if you're used to Fireworks, it makes more sense to use what you know, then export for use...

here's the link to that batch conversion util I use:
http://www.batchconverter.com/image-converter.html

hope it helps you fellow Fireworks designers out there.

Thank you

When Itold my friend about what was said that you can't use Fireworks he imediatly went out to see me wrong.. to the point that he made a really decent T-shirt for me to display.. It really is a nice shirt too save for the fact that it's a bit more transparent then we like but we're working on it

thanks to everyone for their help

I currently use Macromedia Fireworks to design my clothing.

It's not ALL bad.

I had to use this because I didn't have PSP or Photoshop, being that they were too expensive. Now that I HAVE PSCS, I still prefer to use Fireworks, because of the alphas in CS. They are a pain. I will admit that I need a better more updated version of Photoshop.

That being said...
I still use fireworks. My program only lets me make .png files, so I got THE GIMP. Which is free to save my images as .tga files.
Sure it's an extra step, but worth it in the long run if you are not proficient in, or cannot afford PSP or Photoshop.

Just my 2 cents, now can I have it back? I am broke

Lilly