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I'm not a graphics illustrator or an artist, and I only have Fireworks CS5.

I purchased this EPS at depositphotos thinking that the road (with the line in the middle) was actually two curved lines. Unfortunately, it's just one vector with the line in the middle.

With Fireworks CS5 I've tried to divide this vector into two vectors (left and right side of road), but I simply don't know how to divide it. I even tried to redraw it with the Pen tool, but that was a disaster

Can anyone suggest an easy way to divide this vector into two separate vectors?

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  • Fireworks isn't a vector image editor. It's raster software. If you can't afford to buy anything, get Inkscape, it's free. It can open that EPS file just fine. Not sure what you are trying to do though. The road is a compound path filled white, the lines up the middle are holes, not lines.
    – Billy Kerr
    Jul 10, 2022 at 19:08
  • Fireworks is a vector editor @BillyKerr It does a bunch of proprietary stuff, but it has vector tools and will allow you to save a PNG with embedded vector data (which only FW will ever see). While geared for early webDev, it was as good with vector as Flash was originally - Not the best, but workable in some situations. I would agree that using Inkscape or Illustrator would probably be easier/better.
    – Scott
    Jul 10, 2022 at 19:11
  • @Scott - but isn't Fireworks' output raster, not vector? That's what I meant. If the OP wants to edit an EPS, then I don't think it could be output as an EPS with vectors. It's been years since I used Fireworks, so I may be wrong.
    – Billy Kerr
    Jul 10, 2022 at 19:17
  • @BillyKerr I think FW could export a vector EPS file (it's been a long time to to be honest). Mostly what I recall is it was essentially the same as Flash.. could do vectors, but not for print work. And, much like Photoshop, EPS/PDF files may contain raster fills in vector containers. It was a decent vector editor for web-destined content though, especially if you wanted to work with vectors, but ultimately output raster. Question asks how to edit the eps, not necessarily output an eps. (Maybe I'm wrong :) )
    – Scott
    Jul 10, 2022 at 19:24
  • @Scott - Yeah, I'm not installing it to find out - LOL ;)
    – Billy Kerr
    Jul 10, 2022 at 19:27

1 Answer 1

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Redrawing the curves, tracing the artwork, would be the easiest method in my opinion.

It's been a looooooooong time since I had a system which could run CS5 apps, let alone since I used Fireworks. However, tracing the sides with the Pen Tool in Illustrator is fairly straightforward.

enter image description here

Note it is not necessary to redraw the sides. One could easily just copy the artwork then delete everything except the path for one side. Then repeat for the other side in the copy.

enter image description here

This works, but in doing so the Blend method below for the centerline will fail due to the construction of the original paths. So you'd have to determine the centerline yourself. (This is why I'd choose to merely redraw the side paths.)

Then, with Illustrator I merely created a blend between the sides to get a center path...

enter image description here

Then...

  • Object > Expand the Blend to get that centerline as an actual path and Edit > Copy it
  • Object > Path > Join the bottom and top anchors for one side and you then have a shape for that side.
  • Edit > Paste in Front to place the centerline again
  • Object > Path > Join the bottom and top anchors on the other side, and you've got a shape for each side...

enter image description here

I can not remember how to do any of this in Fireworks at this point, other than drawing with the Pen Tool.

(While not Fireworks CS5 specifically, this all uses Illustrator CS6... which is as close as I can get to FW CS5.)

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