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PhotoShop - My thoughts after using it for 10 years...
October 30, 2019

PhotoShop - My thoughts after using it for 10 years...

page V | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Adobe Photoshop

We use Photoshop for our creative for our company and for our clients - Ads, email banner headers, digital photo retouching (for when there are errors in photos), designing social media images, print... There are so many applications for it. Ultimately, it helps us create pro graphics and designs and work with high-end graphics to represent our company and that of our clients. It's a vital program in our line of work.
  • Photo Retouching - Some of our clients have photoshoots - and even after the photographer has edited the photos, we have to crop something out, remove a ring, add a background. PhotoShop is our go-to program for that.
  • High-end graphics - We are able to engage in advanced editing, in-detail, and at high Res so that the images that we make (and that represents our clients) are print or screen-ready.
  • Versatility - You can use it for design, layering images, creating new effects, batching your work - there are lots of possibilities with this program.
  • Price: They used to charge $800 every few years for a newer upgraded version, and now it's on subscription status. Now, to use PhotoShop it's $50 per month. It's not awful, but I'd be a more passionate brand evangelist if they took the cost down a bit more :)
  • Adobe PhotoShop CAN but it isn't ideal to create brochures and multi-page print layouts (you can, but InDesign is a much better product for that).
  • Photoshop is OK for social graphics. Adobe SPARK is the new product to help with batch graphics. (thank you adobe).
  • The difficulty of use - This is an advanced program. I really wouldn't recommend it for newbies. It takes a learning curve to work with it.
  • Because we've worked with PhotoShop: We've been able to seamlessly move products across software (design something in Illustrator, drag it into Photoshop) - This is efficiency. Time is money!
  • We started our agency with graphics: This has been foundational software to creating our clients' end products. We still use it every week (if not every day).
  • Minor negative: Monthly subscription basis. But it could be worse. We've had some software that charges $100 per month for FAR LESS functionality. We'll take it as it is.
PhotoShop far outclasses Canva for the photo editor/designer. Nuances of a pixel or pica can be the difference between balance and misproportion - and Canva can sometimes move elements in the process of editing > final export. This is frustrating. We recommend PhotoShop for those who know what they're doing with photo editing and for design.

For beginners, Canva would be a better place to start to learn basic layering and effects. Once they were ready to move to more settings, I'd recommend shifting over to PhotoShop (and getting training, buying a book, or more!)
Well, I'm going to be honest and say that we have never had to speak with support in person. The software has performed that consistently for us over the course of 10 years that their online documentation (or a computer reboot) fixed our problem. We've never had a billing issue, either. Rare in our modern era.

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

Scenarios where we love using PhotoShop:
  • Editing a background
  • Editing someone or something out of a background
  • Removing or adding items to a photo
  • Creating visual effects on or with a photo (making a photo look old or an old photo to look new)
  • Creating print-ready, high-res high-end graphics
  • Creating gradients
  • Creating multi-layer effects on photos
Scenarios where you can use PhotoShop, but other items in Adobe line can facilitate better:
  • Creating illustrations, vectors, or iconic shapes: Adobe Illustrator is better for this
  • Creating multi-page brochures or books: Adobe InDesign is better for this
  • Creating batch images in different renders and sizes for multi-platform media: Adobe Spark is good for this.

This is NOT an easy product to work with. You must have experience and training in order to produce the desired effects (Not for beginners).

Using Adobe Photoshop

3 - The people in my organization that use PhotoShop are graphic designers and social media managers. We use the images in our social media for clients in banners, email headers, and occasionally in print. We have an internal training with my team with standards that are directly applicable to their work inside of PhotoShop (and the images that they produce with the program).
Our PhotoShop software has never broken down. That sounds crazy in our modern era - but whenever we come across a challenge, we go find online documentation. Billing is handled on a subscription basis, so we haven't had problems there either. We've had a very drama-free life with this software, so we've needed very little support for it.
  • High-res photo retouching: Editing a background, removing something out of a background so that it can be.
  • Social media graphics.
  • Graphic production: Business card (note: Illustrator and InDesign can do this, we just use this program in a lot of cross-functionalities).
  • Email banners.
  • Facebook Ad creative production.
  • Sometimes some of our clients send us things that we can't put online. So we've had to edit things out (rings, cuss words, etc.) to make them brand-ready and audience-appropriate.
  • Gif creation - For social media and email headers. Gifs can increase your click rate online when used appropriately (and not all the time) - we've used photoshop to create gifs that get published on social media.
  • Continued photo retouching.
  • Continued social media graphics.
We get a lot of use out of this software. It's vital for work with production in our industry and has a lot of cross-functionality - creating social media images, retouching photos, editing photos, creating gradients, and more. It's pretty fuss-free in that we haven't had to reach out to support and the program hasn't crashed on us. We are trained on the software (so again, this isn't for beginners), but for detail-oriented designers and creatives like ourselves - it's a no-brainer.