Adobe Photoshop - an Ad Agency's Must!
August 31, 2015

Adobe Photoshop - an Ad Agency's Must!

Daniel Joyce | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

CC, CC14, CC15

Overall Satisfaction with Adobe Photoshop

Working at an ad agency, Adobe Photoshop is a huge part of our business! We use this and other Adobe products every single day. Half of our team are designers who use Photoshop to create billboard, web, banner, print and other such advertisements. One of the great things about Photoshop is that it's part of the Adobe platform, which means everything we create in Photoshop is transferable and immediately useable in many other Adobe products. Photoshop helps us be able to create drafts and edit them fast and efficiently.

Pros

  • Creating content. It's as simple as that. Whether you are starting something from or editing a previous design, Photoshop has all the tools you need to get the job done.

Cons

  • The biggest 'gripe' I have with photoshop is the lack of workspace options. Don't get me wrong, you can customize how the workspace looks to fit your own needs and style. What I want, is three basic layouts: basic, intermediate and advanced. When you're looking for a tool in photoshop you may not know where to find it because tools are grouped together. If they offered a layout where you could see all the tools at once, in a more busy layout, I would appreciate that.
  • Updates. Adobe is great at updates and they have them often. Normally, it's with major updates that the placement of certain tools move but with some smaller updates, in-between CC, CC14 & CC15, they have chosen to move a tool or use a different icon for a tool. I'm all for improvement, but I'd prefer tool movement to be kept to the yearly, major updates.
  • Tutorials. Adobe is also great at offering free online tutorials. They have many advanced and intermediate tutorials available but they are lacking in the beginner category. There are other services for these, but it would be great if Adobe made some. When we hire a new designer, most of the time they know their tools. If we're looking for someone 'green', they may or may not know the layout all too well. Having a simple 5 minute video explaining the layout would be helpful in these times.
  • We're able to work faster with Photoshop due to the new subscription structure they have. All of our go-to designers have Photoshop on their own computers that they pay for. This allows us to call them in a pinch over the weekend and have them work from home.
  • Photoshop doesn't necessarily make it faster for our team to get the job done, but I've never heard one of them say they would stop using Photoshop for another program entirely.
  • Photoshop is the reason we have a design department. It's a great tool that allows us to expand the business we can do. We started off as a post house for editing and now we're a full fledged Ad Agency. Adobe is part of our everyday life at the office. We started by using images in some of our edits/reels but realized we had the tools to edit them for web and promotional use so we started a design department and now it comes with all of our edits. We shoot stills and edit them for our clients websites, flyers, etc.
Lightroom works right along side Photoshop seamlessly. They're both Adobe products and are meant to work together for easy and well thought out productions.
Coral Aftershot: while I've never used it, I have heard some of our designers talking about it. Those who have used it liked it, but said it's not as strong as Photoshop.
Photo editing is done best within Photoshop and Adobe Lightroom. Photoshop and Lightroom talk to each other intuitively so they work very well together. It's a seamless transition between the two applications. Photoshop is the go-to for professional photo editing and I don't see that changing any time soon. Photoshop is perfect for major tasks. If you're working professionally for a company that will publish your work, you can't go wrong with Photoshop. If you're looking for an online blog or for Facebook, Lightroom would do the trick just as well.

Using Adobe Photoshop

11 - They are our design team. They edit photos for web, bill boards, flyers and special events. They create and manage websites and also use photoshop to edit and touch up hundreds of photos a year. After a shoot, we'll come back with, usually, between 10,000 & 15,000 depending on the number of shoot days. They narrow it down to about 100 selects and start editing from there.
Apart from myself who is our broadcast support specialist, all of our Photoshop users can help each other out. When it comes to the technical issues, that is where it falls to me. If it's a creative or program question, all of our designers can assist each other to cover any weaknesses.
As far as supporting my team, I just need to know how to troubleshoot different problems to get them back on their feet fast. It's not that hard really. If worst comes to worst, un-install and re-install.
  • Photo editing. This is the professional go-to for photo editing.
  • Photoshop is the main tool for our design team. Our design team will work on special event fliers and banners for weeks or even months and then start all over again for the next project. With Photoshop, you can take certain assets you've used before and migrate them to your new project(s).
  • For the basic alterations Photoshop has saved us a lot of time and money. It's a very easy tool to use and it allows our video editors to go in and make minor tweaks if needed.
  • As I said in my review, we did not have a design team as we started out. With our owning Photoshop, we were able to build a design team and now grow and expand our business.
  • Photoshop is really for photo editing and creating images and/or designs. There is no future growth that I can see right now. It's an application that does what it's meant to do very well.
We have 11 people using the program almost every day and when needed, we pull in other free lancers to continue the work flow. We have our Adobe subscription set to auto-renew every month and we're not getting rid of that anytime soon!

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