What are you using to build your PSD designs?

Photoshop or Illustrator? OR? and why?

Coincidentally, with the new CS6 creative suite, I have this question.

I’ve seen a lot of people using photoshop though it is an app designed specifically for photo manipulation. I get why it is used, it works, you can do this stuff with it. But what are you using and why?

So? explain yourself! Please.

Most are using Photoshop probably because it’s the most rich in features. Knows vectors, raster, filters, etc.. and can import pretty much any other image format. I don’t think is the best thing for webdesign… but it seems it can do the job.
I’m a Fireworks guy.

Indirectly, that is my question: what is best for web design and why? photoshop or illustrator?

Photoshop is no longer only an app specifically for photo manipulation, it’s also the industry standard when it comes to web design. I don’t know if you noticed, but CS6 introduced many features to make the webdesigner’s life easier.

Anyway, why would somebody use Illustrator for website design? You don’t need vector shapes in a template. The alternative to Photoshop is Fireworks..

I use a combination of the gimp and illustrator.

Illustrator happens to have some good blending modules. Illustrator also happens to be great if you’re creating social icons which need to be resized and not loose accuracy.

Eventually, I want to move to just opensource… So gimp + inkscape. But for the time being I prefer using illustrator, as the fonts render much better.

I use Photoshop, all the way. I’ve tried Gimp, Fireworks and Illustrator. I don’t know if it’s just that I didn’t have the patience to learn them upside down (like I learned photoshop), but it just seemed to me that they have fewer things than photoshop has. I would love to go opensource, and I even had the perseverance to try that for a couple of months. But at the current stage, and with the current options on the market, it’s just not possible for me. My designs were lower quality in Gimp than they were in Photoshop, so I had to give it up.

girlscancode said
I use Photoshop, all the way. I’ve tried Gimp, Fireworks and Illustrator. I don’t know if it’s just that I didn’t have the patience to learn them upside down (like I learned photoshop), but it just seemed to me that they have fewer things than photoshop has. I would love to go opensource, and I even had the perseverance to try that for a couple of months. But at the current stage, and with the current options on the market, it’s just not possible for me. My designs were lower quality in Gimp than they were in Photoshop, so I had to give it up.

Strangely, I had the exact same experience.

Hi girlscancode. Long time no speak.

Definitely agree with you there. You should always use the right tool for the job and it seems once you’re used to photoshop it can be difficult to switch.

At the moment a combination of illustrator and the gimp serves me well so that’s all I need. The only issue is obviously the price. But I have two old laptops at the minute so I tend to just reformat each one alternately when the demo license expires.

I’m real tempted to use photoshop but the bloat of having both that and illustrator open side by side is too much. Overall, I weighed up the pros and cons and illustrator is the much better of the two for my needs.

Ps +1

I use Photoshop to draw my interfaces and layouts… and illustrator to create some vector art (logos, icons, background effects). The best part that you can use Illustrator as smart elements at Photoshop! It’s an amazing feature!

I’ve tried other opensource apps, like Gimp… but… :((((((