Endless possibilities in graphic design
October 14, 2019
Endless possibilities in graphic design
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Adobe Photoshop
In my business, we create all our graphics in-house, anything from our own business cards to promotional leaflets, from signage and product packaging to website graphics. We also produce a lot of artwork to use in jewelry applications and all of it is created with Photoshop. We also use Photoshop for everyday tasks such as tweaking product images for website listings. It is our go-to graphics software. As a small business, our company structure is very fluid so all team members with experience are able to use the software.
- It does it all! There is very little that Photoshop can't handle.
- An intelligent and professional tool - this isn't some piece of kit to pretty up pictures for the Instagram public, this robust application goes further than most into the technicalities of color and graphic design. The more your learn, the more you discover it can do - it is a tardis of capabilities.
- Flexible - rich in options, it is easy to tailor to fit different settings - from the layout of your workspace and settings of your preferred tools to action sets that apply those tools in a particular order of your choosing. Multiple options can be saved and called up as necessary.
- The price! This is clearly a premium tool but the price is still a barrier for small businesses.
- It is a complicated system to get to grips with. Not easy to learn intuitively, one would benefit from attending a class. However, there are a lot of resources available online and for free.
- Clearly this is a pixel-based program, it doesn't understand vectors (lines). As such it is not a drawing tool and has limited drawing capabilities in that respect. This has always been the case and it is evidently Adobe's aim: they produce the Illustrator program that is specifically for drawing, and the two systems don't really work well together. One would expect that Adobe might have come up with a way to bridge that gap by now.
- It is a resources-heavy piece of software so your hardware will need to be up to the job, or you will suffer frustrating lags and lack of responsiveness.
- We have never had to use a design agency, all our work is done in-house which is a huge saving. We create all our promotional materials and send them to print.
- Likewise, with our website photography, we have never had to pay for a photographer to take or edit our images.
- It does, however, require a sizeable initial outlay, but the benefits are more than worth it.
The differences with Illustrator have been covered elsewhere - they are simply different applications for different purposes. Photoshop works with pixels/raster, Illustrator works with lines/vectors. As such the first is good with images, the second is good with drawings. Photoshop allows you full editing capabilities on images but is limited on design (but you can overcome this); whereas Illustrator is great for design, but doesn't work well with photos for example. Two very different pieces of software and it would be useful if they could overlap more.
Canva is the Wix of graphic design. An easy "drag and drop" type of program, with lots of templates and examples available, some free, some paid-for, but not much ability to finetune a design. It has its place however as it is nicely interactive, super intuitive and very easy to use. We have used Canva for website banners etc very successfully, however, it does not have a fraction of the options that are available in Photoshop.
Canva is the Wix of graphic design. An easy "drag and drop" type of program, with lots of templates and examples available, some free, some paid-for, but not much ability to finetune a design. It has its place however as it is nicely interactive, super intuitive and very easy to use. We have used Canva for website banners etc very successfully, however, it does not have a fraction of the options that are available in Photoshop.
Do you think Adobe PhotoShop delivers good value for the price?
Yes
Are you happy with Adobe PhotoShop's feature set?
Yes
Did Adobe PhotoShop live up to sales and marketing promises?
Yes
Did implementation of Adobe PhotoShop go as expected?
Yes
Would you buy Adobe PhotoShop again?
Yes