Adobe Fireworks has a few more control settings than Photoshop when it comes to certain things, and gradients are one of them. In Photoshop, you have your typical Radial gradients, linear, angle, reflected and diamond. You can also create transparent gradients, but in Fireworks, you can do all of that, as well a a few other options.
Go into the Properties panel and choose the tab that allows you to change the fill. You can fill an object with nothing, a solid color, patterns, a gradient, or you can select more options. Here you can choose from a bunch of different gradient options, such as folds, ripples, etc. You can also choose from a bunch of different color presets, like you can in Photoshop, but here you can also feather the gradient, and preview it live, and you can add a texture to it as well, adding another element of depth to you work. You can also determine the exact percentage of texture or grain that you want to add to the gradient. This gives you another degree of flexibility in your gradients that you just can’t obtain with Photoshop.
What I like about these extra settings is that you can also apply the textures to solid fills, patterns and web dithers. You can also make it so that there is transparency as well. This gives you a tremendous amount of control. You can also use the control handle on the screen to control the shape, rotation and thickness of the gradient, pattern, and/or texture.
