Item: Adobe PhotoShop
Rating: 7
Author: Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Adobe PhotoShop

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Adobe Photoshop for a wide range of creative projects, from retouching event photos, to making social media content that's a composite of photos, to replacing backgrounds (or extending), cleaning up photos that aren't quite right, resizing assets, and more. PS has been an essential program in our creative toolbox for 20+ years.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Photo retouching
Cloning items to fill empty spaces
Editing content of an image to add or remove someone for example
Setting up concepts for digital assets like an email newsletter

Cons

The AI assist is not quite there in some instances
Updates tend to change long-standing hot keys or routines
Learning curve can be steep if you're not overly familiar with how Adobe PhotoShop works

Return on Investment

It's getting awfully expensive so that's a negative
It's good and getting things batch processed or quick touch ups, so that's a positive
Changing functions or well-worn work paths means re-learning a few things, so that can be a negative when you're in a hurry

Usability

Without a doubt, it's very usable for pros in the industry. Only dinged it a point for the updates that change stuff up on us, but that's easy enough to navigate. Once you're a bit familiar with how things work and what you want to do, Adobe PhotoShop is very good and getting you the results you want. Can't ask much more than that.

Alternatives Considered

Adobe Express and Canva

A lot of the newer, younger staff, have worked extensively in Express and/or Canva. Some things in those platforms, like one-button background removal, have made it very easy for them to quickly do mock ups. But if they have to do something a bit more complex, Adobe PhotoShop is a challenge for them. Same with filters, gradients and so on. Express and Canva can do it all for you, but you really need a better skill set to do pro work. Adobe PhotoShop is much better, albeit sometimes more challenging, in that regard.

Key Insights

Do you think Adobe PhotoShop delivers good value for the price?

Are you happy with Adobe PhotoShop's feature set?

Yes

Did Adobe PhotoShop live up to sales and marketing promises?

Did implementation of Adobe PhotoShop go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Adobe PhotoShop again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Adobe InDesign, Adobe Illustrator CC, Adobe Premiere Pro

Likelihood to Recommend

Great for all of the previous tasks mentioned, but the learning curve is getting a bit more complicated as they update and evolve, moving some key features, or swapping functions. For example, on one Mac in the office, proportional re-sizing is as simple as dragging the corner of the photo. On another one, it requires holding down Shift and dragging. Yes, that's because the versions are different, but many of us grew up using Shift as the modifier, so it just means learning new muscle memory.

Comments

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Adobe Photoshop has its issues sure but its still the tool you probably need