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Adobe has created several phenomenal, professional design tools, and they all have their own uses. While they all can handle small-scale designs, if you’re doing design professionally and want to step-up your game, then it’s important to pick the right tool for each job you tackle. That way, you’ll end up saving lots of time while your designs will be even better. This post will go over all three of these tools. We’ll go over what each of them is good for, their strengths and weaknesses, and we’ll try to give you an overview of when to use which tool.
Photoshop
Let’s start with Photoshop. Photoshop is Adobe’s professional tool that primarily serves for photo creating, manipulation, retouching, and editing. Photoshop is used by just about anyone, from graphic designers to painters, who can use the tool to even paint digitally. Think of it this way – if it has to do with photos, Photoshop can and should be used.
Let’s go into a little bit more detail. It would be best if you used Photoshop when you need to retouch photos, as it allows you to easily adjust colors, cover any imperfections, and do it all perfectly. Also, if you’re designing pictures and images that you’ll post on the web, go with Photoshop. Same with app mockups, and even animations and video. Photoshop can easily handle all this, and you can rest assured that your work will be as professional as it gets.
However, Photoshop does have some restrictions and limitations. For example, while it is possible to create vector images in Photoshop, the program isn’t created with vectors in mind, which means you’ll find it quite hard to create them. That said, if you’re creating logos, for example, it might be a good idea to skip Photoshop and use an alternative. Also, if you’re creating a design that requires you to “litter” it with a lot of text. As we’ve said earlier, Photoshop handles photos, and while it can handle text as well, it’s probably better to use an alternative that’s better suited to handle text.
Illustrator
Next in line, let’s cover Illustrator. Illustrator is a phenomenal tool that specializes in vector graphics. Anything that you’re designing and will probably be scaled from use on business cards to gigantic billboards should be done using Illustrator. Think logo design here. Logos go everywhere, and as they’re such a vital part of every company’s identity, they need to be pixel-perfect no matter how big or small they’re presented.
Illustrator should also be used for any designs intended to be printed out. Using the tool, you can effortlessly set type, design layouts, create design elements, and even use the images you’ve previously created with Photoshop. Also, if you’re designing icons or mascots, pretty much everything that you can imagine that might be stretched to different sizes, all this should be done with Illustrator.
However, not everything’s fine and dandy. As said before, Photoshop is meant to be used for photo editing, and while Illustrator can handle simple manipulations, it’s way too restricted in functionality to be used for photos. Also, is you’re designing multi-page documents, such as magazines or brochures, then Illustrator shouldn’t be your first choice. Remember, vector graphics, icons, logos, one-page documents – Illustrator.
InDesign
The third tool that we’re going to discuss in this post is InDesign, another professional tool from Adobe’s suite. InDesign was developed with newspaper agencies and other big media outlets in mind. Think for a second – what do newspaper agencies do? They create and publish newspapers, of course. InDesign is, therefore, perfectly suited precisely for this purpose, to easily create designs with large amounts of text present. Of course, this is not the only use case. Designers use InDesign to create visuals for books, posters, and fliers, but the correlation between all these designs is exactly the amount of text.
In the previous section, we discussed that Illustrator is great for designing one-page documents. In this regard, think of InDesign as of a tool that is best suited for multiple-page documents. InDesign really is a great tool for its intended use, and shouldn’t be used for anything else, as Adobe itself offers better solutions for different use cases. Another way to think of InDesign – it’s like Illustrator, just bigger, for designing bigger things.
That said if you need to design smaller things like business cards and flyers, go with Illustrator and not InDesign. As InDesign is a publishing tool, or more precisely, as it has publishers in mind, it doesn’t offer much photo editing capabilities. While you can obviously use images and cover them with text in InDesign, these photos should be pre-edited and prepared in Photoshop before they reach InDesign.
Choose the right tool for the job
Ok, so now that we’ve covered all three of these tools, hopefully, we’ve made it that much clearer what each of them should be used for. You should always keep in mind that Adobe suite provides amazing tools, they are just not all equal or meant to be used for the same jobs. If you strive to be a professional designer, then you should probably be as proficient as possible in all these programs.
Even though Adobe created all these programs, and because of it, they are quite similar and easy to switch between, beginner designers might find it difficult to navigate them. If you’re having issues learning these programs, then perhaps you should take an online course that will easily teach you how to use them. If you don’t know where to find courses, make sure to read our post where we discussed the best places to learn everything there is to learn about graphic design, including how to use the tools.
Final thoughts
All three of these programs are amazing in their own regard. Just always keep in mind that all of them should be used for their intended uses in order to get the most out of each of them. If you need to edit, retouch and manipulate photos, use Photoshop; if you need to create vector images and design one-page documents, go with Illustrator; if, on the third hand, you’re creating a publication, a book, magazine, or a newspaper, then go with InDesign.
The post Adobe Suite Explained: Photoshop vs. Illustrator vs. InDesign first appeared on CSForm.
The post Adobe Suite Explained: Photoshop vs. Illustrator vs. InDesign appeared first on CSForm.