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Tristan Gaebler
6,204 PointsQuestions for all you web designers
I am interested what design tools you guys use. I've heard a lot and adobe suit, but that its prices are a bit bloated. Is adobe suit worth it? Do you use something else like sketch 3?
Also, all the stuff you do in those design tools, cain't you do those with HTML/CSS?
Thanks for the help!
3 Answers
James Barnett
39,199 PointsI've heard great things about Sketch from Bohemian Coding and Pixelmator both for OS X.
Kevin Korte
28,149 PointsMy answer is a bit opinionated. And to be clear, I do own the Adobe Master Collection CS5 on my personal Macbook, and at work I had them buy me Adobe Design Collection CS6. As you're likely aware, these are thousands of dollars worth of programs.
I do use them a lot, but are they critical....no.
Would I purchase them again, today, on my own dime....no.
Would I sign up for Adobe's pay monthly plan....no.
If I were in your shoes, I would look for the less expensive or free alternatives. And from what I've heard, there are some good ones out there.
For a free alternative to Illustrator, I've heard of Inkscape time and time again. Haven't used it personally since I have Illustrator, but it would be my go to starting point if I needed a vector program.
Gimpshop is the Photoshop alternative I've also heard about, a lot. It would be the program I'd start with if I didn't have photoshop.
For both programs though, I'm sure there are others, and a quick google search should turn up those results.
I do not rely on them as much as I use to. For the most part I use photoshop to quickly play around with colors, shades, etc. For Illustrator, I use it mostly to create my SVG graphics.
Everything you can do in these programs, you should be able to turn around and do in HTML and CSS. Which means no more splicing for the web in photoshop! LOL.
James Barnett
39,199 PointsI wouldn't recommend using either Gimp or InkScape as they lack the polish of Adobe's professional product.
Eric Vandenberg
9,095 PointsI don't know if I'd call Adobe polished. Its pretty ironic how Adobe's design interfaces themselves appear pixelated as they don't even scale to Hi Res monitors. The interface nodes are small, uncustomizable, and all around just bad design. Historically, Adobe has struggled to keep up with hardware advancements. They just now released a version of Photoshop CS that is more compatible with the 2012 (yes 2 years ago) Mac Retina Display.
Eric Vandenberg
9,095 PointsAdobe suite offers a Creative Cloud subscription where you can download their latest releases of practically any software they develop. I've been paying a student rate of $29/month and I've been mostly using Photoshop CC, Illustrator CC, and Premiere Pro CC but they offer many more products such as Lightroom, InDesign, After Effects, DreamWeaver, etc.
Their products are useful but the learning curve can be a bit steep because you must learn each program individually and they are loaded with a ton of features. I'm thinking about checking out other software for that reason. If anyone has experience using sketch or any other products I'd be interested in hearing how they compare