Fireworks stopped working after upgrading to Mac OS 10.15 Catalina

[TBecx]

Dear all,

I am a proud Fireworks user and have been for years. 

Yesterday my Mac asked me to upgrade to the new 10.15 Catalina. 

But eversince I cannot open Adobe Fireworks anymore. It even has a stop sign over its icon. 

I expect it has something to do with the fact that Catalina does not support 32bit apps anymore. 

Which I did not realise before upgrading. 

Is there any workaround?

Otherwise I won't be able to alter all my Fireworks PNG files anymore...

Any help is appreciated!

Kind regards,

Tom 

[Paul-M]

Fireworks won't work on Catalina as its 32 bit - Adobe stopped updating/supporting Fireworks a long time ago (a terrible decision in my humble opinion), so there won't be a 64 bit version (I'd be very surprised anyway). Options are limited; rollback to Mojave, set up a dual boot or switch to Windows.

[Timmee]

@Paul-M would you know if a repurchase of a licence would be required if I were to move to windows? Does FW CS6 run on 64 bit windows?

[Test Screen Name]

Repurchase is not available. Most CS licenses could NOT be moved between platform. If you DO manage to run it on Windows you may face worsening issues with the great age of your software, but 32-bit apps are fine in Windows.

[Paul-M]

Hi - Fireworks CS6 works perfectly for me on Windows 10 64 bit - I don't think the license for Fireworks will be crioss-platform see here an article: https://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/policy-pricing/exchange-product-language-os.html but as Adobe have pretty much abandoned Fireworks and act like it doesn't exist anymore you probably wouldn't get any help from Adobe support.

[Paul-M]

Do you have access to a PC and a Fireworks CS6 installer - why don't you test your serial to see if it works on Windows?

[Timmee]

I have tried it, it does not accept the Mac licence on the PC. I rolled back to Mojave.

[anissa_thompson]

It runs beautifully on my Win 10 64bit setup. I haven't upgraded to Catalina on my older MBP, so Fireworks hasn't had any issues on it for me [yet]. I still use Fireworks almost daily.

[rain_maker]

Anybody knows if it works running Parallels (with Win 10) on Catalina?

[estherwarda]

When I updated to Mojave, the same thing happened and all I had to do (after a LONG time of troubleshooting) was to reinstall Adobe Application Manager.  Now, I can't even seem to do that.  I wouldn't mind looking for a new program, as I'm sick to death of dealing with this with every update, but I have 1000s of layered PNG files that ONLY fireworks open.  Totally STRESSING!!!  😞  

[glennweb]

Trust me, I tried my sabatical away from Fireworks. And now find myself back here. Tried Affinity Designer and its does not have basic things like Free Transform. I have settled on using Fireworks with Adobe XD, which is turning into a fairly productive workflow to deliver prototypes and design specs. Perhaps one day Affinity will be there. I have tried Adobe Illistrator and not having photo tools built is is a major stumbling block to my workflow. I mean, if you just produce artwork in the flat design style it works, but when you want to do more realistic design it falls flat. I am still hoping that in the next few years a true replacement will be found. 

[ALBATROSS]

It would not be so bad if we didn't have hundreds of .fw ong files that can't be edited. The least Adobe should have done was create an extension for Photoshop so that we can edit them

[estherwarda]

That's a great idear!!!

[williamh28333347]

This is the part that makes me furious. This was a professional design tool, and a CRITICAL one for over a decade for many of us, with proprietary editable layer files, and now Adobe pretends like it never existed and no plans to support .fw layers in any other software they make. It's malpractice. It's why I've completely broken my Adobe video editing habits, why Dreamweaver now just gathers dust. I KNOW Adobe will abandon critical tools and leave their subscribers hanging again in the future. </rant>

[uxgrrl]

I SO agree with this! I tried Affinity too, Adobe XD and a bunch of things and I have YEARS of work in layered PNGs that I can't open.  So annoying.  I will NEVER buy Creative Cloud or ANY other Adobe product simply because this is extremely rude to the professional design community.  My 2 cents.  

[estherwarda]

Hi there... I have the same issue.  All those FW pngs files that can never be in layers again.  😞  During this COVID time, I have been learning photoshop but it still won't solve the issue of the old PNG files.  I'm hanging on to the Mojavie as long as I can. 

[Paul-M]

The best solution available is a batch FW PNG TO PSD command for Fireworks.

[annehm]

That's about as useful as saying, "the best way to bake brownies is in the kitchen!"

A few more details would be helpful.

LIke, where would someone find information about this command? 

Is there a page that explains it? If so, what's the URL?

If not, then maybe a little more information here -- do you simply open a terminal window and enter FW PNG TO PSD? (didn't work)

Are you in the folder with the photos?  (nope, that didn't work)

Or the Fireworks application folder?  (couldn't get there).

Please provide some more details.

[Paul-M]

Try searching the forums, and remember this is a user to user form. If you're angry with Adobe, take it up wth them. This platform is for users to help each other.

[martinvidic]

Fireworks is the ONLY reason why I pay for CC. You can't create design and icons that fast in photoshop and illustrator. Fireworks always saved me a lot of time! Bring it back already adobe 😞

[Daniel Kramer]

You need an older OS to still run it

[uxgrrl]

How do you have FW installed with Creatibe Cloud License? 

[L e n a]

How do you have FW installed with Creatibe Cloud License? 

By @uxgrrl

First of all, as the original subject is about MacOS, are you a Mac user too, or are you a Windows user... otherwise, on this forum, there are several threads that address and detail this subject. As I don't have them to hand at the moment, I invite you to take a closer look at this article, https://www.puce-et-media.com/fireworks-chaud-devant/, with the help of google translate if necessary, where I've put together a whole series of useful links.

[ALBATROSS]

https://www.photopea.com/

I now use that to open and edit any legacy .fw.png files. You then save as a .PSD and it saves all the layers..

I hope that helps