The Right Design Tool For The Right Job
By Nicholas Svizzero
A Cloud Teeming With Creativity
Adobe Creative Cloud is a set of applications and services from Adobe Systems that gives subscribers access to a collection of software used for graphic design, video editing, web development, photography, along with a set of mobile applications and also some optional cloud services. Among these programs lie three specific applications that are catered toward the print, web and graphic design that we will be looking into today: Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator and Adobe InDesign. In today’s educational systems, most programs teach one of those three as their primary means for design, and although it is true that a design can be accomplished using any one of these, it isn’t necessarily the correct way as these three programs work in a symbiotic relationship.
Adobe Photoshop
Oh yes, Photoshop. My love-hate relationship of everything having to do with design starts right here with this very program as most educational institutions use this as their primary vehicle for teaching design. Although Photoshop can do many things beyond even thought possible, Photoshop should only be used as your photo editing and manipulation program, unless we’re specifically stating digital artwork (this does not include logos). The reason behind this is because Photoshop is a raster/bitmap editing program rather than a vector editing program (you can read an in-depth explanation on what each of these terms mean here). Essentially, any text elements, shapes, etc. made with these programs will not be given a hard edge and as a result look out of focus and unable to be scaled later effectively.
Adobe Illustrator
Illustrator will be your logo and vector creation program. It is a vector based program and doesn’t suffer any of the pitfalls that Photoshop has to affect it in this regard.
Adobe InDesign
InDesign should act as your assembly as well as text creation program. All files created in Photoshop (photos and images) and Illustrator (vector artwork) that will be used in a print document should be placed within a layout in this program. Text elements have the greatest options within this program and as such should be implemented during this step.
Conclusion
All in all, below is a general consensus of which program to use during each step:
Photoshop – Images
Illustrator – Vector Graphics
InDesign – Assembly & Text