Digital Art- Photoshop or Illustrator???

By,
Gauri

Photoshop was first launched in 1988, since then it has been the most popular tool for all the web designers for creating the web based images. Photoshop was primarily designed as a tool useful for the photographers to edit and manage their photographs. But over the years with the technology and the vast increasing demand Photoshop has got even more than just editing photographs.

Illustrator came into picture much before the Photoshop i.e. Illustrator was launched in 1987.Illustratoer was used mainly for the typesetting and logo designing as a part of graphic designing. Illustrator is now used as a tool for both graphic designers and digital artists for the purpose of creating various innovative digital products.

Both the Photoshop and the Illustrator are now the part of the Adobe’s extremely popular graphics programs

Selecting between Photoshop and Illustrator has always been a question that the Designers have in their minds. Thus choosing between Photoshop and the Illustrator solely depends on the type of images and the situation related to the digital designing.

Which is better for Logo Designing?

Considering the creation of a logo, both Photoshop and Illustrator can be used. Since the logo may be a predefined image initially, but its usability and maintainability is the important factor that the designers must keep in mind. The logo may be used many times and on much different material, thus reshaping and resizing of the logo may come into picture.

Using Photoshop you would create a Bitmap Graphic Images which cannot be resized without pixilation or loss of quality.

Thus Using Illustrator would result in creation of a vector image which is not part of a bitmap. This will ensure that the logo image created can be reshaped and resized and thus retaining the image quality. So, we could say in designing a logo Photoshop would not be the right choice instead Illustrator would be the best suited for logo designing.

Which is better for Web Designing?

When Web designing comes into picture most of the designers suggest the Photoshop tool. The Photoshop graphics is generally placed on a pixel based bitmap, thus Photoshop is the only choice for designing on screen media.

But if you are designing User Interfaces, Illustrator can be advantages over the use of Photoshop. Illustrator is good at resizing images and also great for creating reusable component. The Symbol Panel in the Illustrator you can create a library of icons and form elements that can be reused and manipulated over time thus making your design more consistent.

But for most of the part here Photoshop is the winner here. Very often Illustrator is always a part of the workflow in designing UIs but most of the work is done in Photoshop.

Which tool is better for Digital Art?

Illustrator may seem like the obvious choice here, but the type of illustration is more important. The first step of an illustration is that they are designed on the paper first and then scanned and brought into a graphics program to color. Illustrator would be recommended for clean, graphical illustrations.

Whereas Photoshop for photo based illustrations that require very thorough detail and photo manipulation. Most of the times it would be a mixture of both because it all depends on the type of illustration.

Which tool is better for Sketching and Wire framing?

Sketching and Wire framing is basically the blueprint in which almost all designed entities evolve. When Sketching comes into focus we think of the pen, pencil and paper, but digital sketching involves graphics editing program. We could use both the tools, but Illustrator is much quicker and easier to use for sketching and wire framing.

In Illustrator the ability to easily resize, manipulate and reuse elements quickly is crucial when creating wireframes.

Thus concluding I would say having a solid understanding of both Photoshop and Illustrator is very essential for most designers, whether a web designer, graphic designer, fashion designer, illustrator or any other type of digital creative. Better knowledge of these programs is going to ensure you choose the best program for the task and create the best possible output.