Can You Really Do It All In Photoshop?

I dont think using photoshop for all your project is ok. Photoshop… You are photoshoping, retouching do some magic that’s ok but text and vectors? Not from a serious designer’s perspective. When it goes to print, the text spreads ink which is very bad and the quality is never good for the vectors. In general, PS has no good text and vector control.

Richard

I just do small jobs on the side, and while I have used photoshop for some projects, I am a publisher girl … just can’t afford the larger programs and my local printer and I have an ideal set up – she doesn’t complain and I follow all of her directions. There are times I find the export function of publisher even easier when putting together logos and mastheads…wussy, I know, but when I have limited time, it works for me.

I can’t imagine using Photoshop to lay out a newsletter!!! There is very little control and I think the text options are VERY limited. It sounds like a lot more work to me, plus, you have to constantly be aware of resolution. Photoshop is simply not meant for text-heavy layouts. That’s why it’s called “Photoshop”…it’s for editing photos!

Photoshop is a bitmap based application designed to manipulate graphics, photos, and raster images. Based on my experience it will be very difficult (not impossible) to build a multiple page text based document like the ones we can build in InDesign. Text is more manageable in a Desktop Publishing application. I wonder what would the file size for a newsletter built entirely in photoshop? 700mb?

I used to use Photoshop for all projects, period. It worked well. Recently I’ve taught myself to use InDesign and now I use InDesign whenever the job requires proper text layouts. I usually create backgrounds of business cards, sell sheets, flyers or album covers in PS and import it in ID. PS has limited text manipulation so for efficiency, quality and ease the images get treated in Photoshop and the text or vectors are added in another application.

Anyone who uses photoshop or illustrator for page layout projects is an amateur. Why is this even being discussed on a board that is presumably for industry professionals?

It depends on speed and efficient use of time. Of course you can do everything in PS and a couple of lines of text is fine. But I would not want to format four pages of text for a newsletter in PS. In the same way you can write letters in PPT and produce a ‘presentation’ using Word. But it not the most efficient approach. Use the right tools – there is an overlap with all of these programs, but for a newletter I would use a publishing tool, for a business card I would use PS as there is not too much text.

I work at a Printing Company. We print high-end packaging. I am also a designer with 10 years experience. If we get an item designed completely in PS we have to reject it. Designers have lost their jobs because of this. We have to have vectors and text. Photoshop art should be placed into Illustrator for packaging and InDesign or Quark for page layouts. If you are printing a few 100 brochures from your desktop printer – fine use PS for everything. If you intend to be viewed as a professional designer, you will need to learn the appropriate programs to create your artwork files. Otherwise you will not stay on track in this fast moving and evolving design world.

The responses here help me grasp the concept of why the layout programs are needed.
I have not, in fact, worked with multiple pages of text.
The personalized booklets I construct are made up of mostly edited image.
When I said “unlimited” text applications,I never thought of full pages of text. But merely what the PS tools can do with text as a logo or title, in designing cd/dvd labels and such. The text becomes art work.
I don’t mind being called an amateur as long as people are happy with the work I do.
But I don’t see why it is necessary to be a snob!

I work for a small non-profit .org, so we all do many jobs. I have had to learn layout, first in PageMaker and then InDesign (also PS). I appreciate this website for helping me with layout concepts, ideas, and tips. I have appreciated many ‘industry professionals’ who have helped me in the past – especially our printers. Where is the harm in helping us ‘amateurs’? We generally do not have the funds to hire professionals.

I have been a graphic artist, designer, typesetter, art director for 14 years. I have worked for several printers and also for several magazines. It is not a being a snob. Your business cards in photoshop are not professional.
The people down at the print shop may print your photoshop card for you but I assure you, the people who work where the ink hits the paper, are talking about you and the lady doing hers in publisher.

Files made completely in photoshop and publisher require more time to process and prepare for the press than files properly prepared and with Quark or Indesign. Publisher which we never had on any mac in any art department, required a pc just for changing publisher to a pdf.

Most printshops now are ctp and use high quality pdfs. The pdfs that come from publisher
always require additional work to make sure they will print properly. The black text is often rgb. Pressman hate that. You have to make it a pdf then open it in either Illustrator or Pitstop professional and change the colors to cmyk.

Photoshop has the many capabilites but a multipage document is not one of them.

I once recieved a booklet 16 pages at the printhouse. The files were on a cd. I opened up to see 16 ps files with no page # or. (If you send a .ps file you better send the fonts if you expect them to correct anything. It was a complete nightmare. Printers genernally charge $75 per hour to work on files.

I am trying to make a living and yes I hate to see badly designed things but worse I hate to see jagged text or low resolution image. An exprienced graphic artist cringe over these things. Not everyone with a computer and photoshop is a graphic artist.

I took classes years ago in print and multimedia. I have been working in print since 1995 and went back to school last year to refresh my web skills. I got laid off and I am doing freelance work to pay my bills.

I have been reading this site to learn more about html, css, I know dreamweaver and flash.
Years ago I studied Director.

I know as a multimedia artist I have many thing to learn.

Instead of considering the experienced person a snob. You should listen and learn.

As a graphic designer since 1969, I’ve used PS for business cards and ads that don’t require a lot of type…and it works just great. My DTP program is Quark and since most designers have gone over to InDesign, I find using PS for small projects to be excellent. I use a thin 7 pt. type on my own business card and it’s clear and sharp and crisp.

Text and vector graphics in Photoshop can be fully preserved by using the Save As … pdf option and then controlling the printing from Acrobat or Adobe Reader. The output is the same quality as a pdf generated from InDesign. So for the likes of business cards etc Photoshop can do the job, but with no ability to link or flow text between frames it is only suitable for single page text light jobs.

Remember: the secret is to use PDF to control the output.

If you are printing 150 business cards at Kinko’s and can make something you like with Photoshop, why not do it? Certainly if you have a high-profile client, are creating a multiple page document, or working with an expensive printer you should be creating documents using Quark or InDesign and applying artwork created in Photoshop.
And, yes, some of the answers were snobby. And, no, this is not a professionals only website – it’s About.com, where people go when they need to learn about things, hence the tutorials and questions like this. If you don’t want to be bothered with this go find a professionals only website – there are plenty of them out there.

I agree with Brandon. This is not a site for professionals. It’s actually a site for do-it-yourselfers, jacks-of-all-trades and such. If we wanted to be ” professionals” we’d go to college and learn this stuff. We wouldn’t be on About.com.

I love Photoshop! But I wouldn’t want to do “everything” in that program. InDesign and Illustrator are also great programs – InDesign for page layout, and Illustrator for illustrations of quality that Photoshop can’t compete with.
Of course, there a million other programs, but these are what I have to work with. They are all great programs that work very well together.
Jim Q ~ On Q Graphic Design

In the art of graphic design I am an amateur of 12-years standing. Since I have used Publisher for most of that time, and taught the programme for a few years of it, I cannot understand why anyone who either wants or needs to produce only simple business cards, fliers and the like would want to use (and buy) Photoshop to do so. Publisher can do those jobs and do them well. When it has come to graphics projects of a more serious nature, however, Photoshop has been my programme of choice, for several years, but in producing multi-page text projects, such as my current 360-page book, I have used the only page-layup programme with which I am familiar: wonderful InDesign, the use of which I have taught myself during the course of my setting up of the book — but which I did not use in producing the text: I used Word 2007, a far superior programme to InDesign for doing that job, as far as control is concerned. In short, it boils down to what should be the obvious: use Publisher for the simpler graphics/text projects (did I mention that Publisher beats Photoshop hands down for text projects?), Photoshop for the more complex, where the need for heavy manipulation of graphics presents itself, and InDesign for page layup.

Thanks to all of you for expressing your interesting opinions. Since we have varying thoughts on the subject in hand I guess it boils down to the fact that we should do what works for us — and to use programmes we can afford to buy in order to do it.

Designers are always very passionate about the tools they use, and sometimes that passion can come across a snobbery. I have been a graphic designer for over 15 years, I have done freelance work at various companies with various workflows, some good and some bad… But what this has taught me is the ability to be flexible.

Of course Photoshop may not be the professionals choice for typography, but the program does have some powerful text features that Adobe makes better with every version, and the PDF output does give your text true vector quality.

But all that aside, I’m often appalled at the closed mindedness of some designers, and it is a bit of snobbery to look down on those that make due with the tools they have or who use tools that are not intended for the purpose… “Dilettante”, “Jack of all Trades”, “Novice”? Be careful, today’s novice is tomorrow’s innovator.

“Whatever works” has become my motto. I am more than adept at using InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, AND Quark. I know each programs strengths and weaknesses, and I have been pressed into using each of these programs for purposes for which they were not intended. At the end of the day the job got done and my clients loved it, and my ability to think outside the box! (Which incidentally, resulted in more work.)

Although I would not attempt a newsletter or multipage document in Photoshop, I would knock out a business card or a flyer in Photoshop in a heartbeat. Believe it or not there are some printers who are more than happy to print your Photoshop business cards and flyers. (I’m not speaking for all printers, because there are some that will curse your name for bringing them a Photoshop file with text in it, but then again some printers are still mad about having to throw out their Linotype and Photostat machines too.)

I think a true artist transcends tools. I bet Leonardo DaVinci could have painted a masterpiece with a stick! Best tool for the job? Certainly not, but he was DaVinci, and a tool is just that… a tool! Hammer a nail with a rock? I wouldn’t, but hey if a rock’s all you got, hammer away!

Signed,

Open Minded (Professional) Graphic Designer

I am very happy to listen and learn. That is why I come here. I only know what I have learned by tackling one project after another, and from what the ‘experienced person’ has taught me…most of which have more the attitude of Keith, for instance.
‘always a breath of fresh air to hear the judicious, modest point of view.
And thank you, Brandon and Joyce!

My wife and I started a DTP business in about 1985 with a MacPlus and PageMaker 1.4 on floppy disks. The business has fed both of us very comfortably ever since, tho’ the equipment is a bit different now. As I recall our graphics programs were Canvas and Macdraw.
Every month now we produce a 56 pp and cover magazine with the covers in colour and at least 8 full colour pages. We use 2/3 of the C3 suite, ie Photoshop and Indesign ( I have yet to find a task that AI does better). So I guess if experience over time scores points we get on the board
Anyone who uses Photoshop for page layout obviously has nothing better to do with their time. Use the right tool for pete’s sake. Ps is for manipulating existing images, Indesign is a beautiful layout tool and the printers love its pdfs.
Doing sophisticated page layout work in photoshop in a commercial atmosphere is a big WOFTAM.

Photoshop is definitely NOT suitable for desktop publishing or rather: layout design. It lacks the features you’ll find in InDesign or QuarkXPress. I’m referring to fonts, page sizes, printing resolution, etc.

To create even the most simple document in Photoshop is near-crazy.

I really appreciate all the viewpoints here. I am a CADD Designer (Engineering – for over 20 years) who wanted to be a Graphic Artist (MOM said get a real degree first…Blech!). I am trying to start that dream at this time, and need to get in at the LOW end (unemployed and starting over). Is the SERIF software that compares to Pagemaker a good starting point? Does anyone use Corel Draw, and does Corel have a layout software? Thanks!

For most things involving text a typesetting program is a better way to go.

There are a number of reasons to use a typesetting program.

On a very superficial level, programs like Indesign understand technologies like OpenType better.

Also, they are laid out to make more accessible the controls for changing tracking and kerning and the like (though I do wonder about Indesign’s interface sometimes as compared with Quark).

Character and Paragraph styles are not available in PS, as aren’t libraries. Nested styles are also important.

Compiling multi-page docs in Photoshop is impossible.

Smart find and replace (Grep style), spelling and grammar are supported in ID.

Typesetting programs make better use of memory especially in displaying the docs onscreen.

When outputting docs to EPS and/or PDF PS cannot match ID for documents including text.

Technologies such as snippets also make cross-resource stylistic consistency easier.

For the record I produce a 32-56pp newspaper weekly and a large number of contract resources.

Debs,

Might be worth checking out the open source software, I have them but have not really used them as I have PS etc

PS equivalent is GIMP and Indesign equivalent is Scribus, before anyone shoots me down, yes I know that the industry standards are PS and InDesign but they are expensive (PS Elements is cheap and is a subset of full PS and may suit most new starters). The key in my view is to understand the principles and so use the right ‘type’ of tool. And if you need Office then OpenOffice fits the bill.

I like Photoshop for removing backgrounds, changing backgrounds, and a few other things. But the majority of any designing I do, is in Illustrator and Quark.
With Illustrator I can get defined text and shadows on the text that aren’t all blury!

Vector vs Raster. The true test is to type a letter in Photoshop and in illustrator/ InDesign. Zoom in as far as you can go. The results will tell all. Good luck!

Photoshop is for image editing. Period. Anybody who uses it as a page layout program is completely off base. There are freeware programs out there (Inkscape (for vector), Gimp (for raster) and Scribus (for page layout) that you can get to do it correctly. Please DO NOT use PS for page layout! A sure sign of a rank amateur. No matter what anybody says.

Brandon, thank you for mentioning that. I was offended by the snobbery of some responses because I am not a professional; I am a hobbyist and independent artist. I enjoy using PS for freelance projects, and I am here to gather tips from other people. I am just starting to learn about various software programs available.

I can’t believe how many people are clueless how phenomenal Photoshop is. There’s no other app like it. As an Art Director of an international company and a professional fine artist & photographer of 15 years, Photoshop is the workhorse for anything. You can do anything with it if you do it right. I just finished a complex 40 ft. x 8 ft. digital mural using Photoshop and Illustrator. Worked like a charm! Photoshop is an EXCELLENT tool for biz cards to flyers to banners. Combine Photoshop and Illustrator = EXPLOSIVE results. They work fantastically together. However, I do strongly recommend using InDesign to put together biz cards, brochure and page layout projects. Only you can make it fun!

In spite of what may appear as snobbery, Donna’s comments are completely accurate. What I read into her comments is frustration more than any snobbery. The design and printing business can often be a hair-pulling experience.

I’ve been in the design and printing business for over 15 years. Photoshop is indeed a powerhouse of a program and you certainly can use it to design anything you want. HOWEVER, if you intend to take that file to get it professionally printed on an offset press, you may find out that you’ll end up paying more because the prepress department might have to manipulate or sometimes re-create your file in a layout program because of either fonts bitmapping, or colors not separating properly….especially if you want to print in spot (Pantone) colors.

If you only intend to get it digitally copied at your local kinko’s, then your files may be quite sufficient for that type of printing. It all comes down to your final output.

Altho About.com may not be a professional site, I would assume that most people who pose questions here wouldn’t mind some professional advice. I sure wish I had some professional advice when I first started in the business. It would have saved me a hell of a lot of money, time and frustration.

Wow. Heidi was offended by some of the comments? It’s people that know trying to educate people that don’t know. It’s using the correct tool for the job. You want advice then get offended when its offered? If posts on a website from people you don’t know and will never meet offend you, you need to grow a thicker skin. IMHO

I have created some images and scanned them into Photoshop to retouch. Each image requires type that has had to be warped slightly. As Indesign does not have this function I have done this in Photoshop. Can anyone tell me if this will look sharp when printed? I realise that Indesign is the program for text formatting but the look I want for the text can not be done. I have used indesign to set up my page layouts and then I will make a PDF for the printers. Also am I right in saying that embedded fonts as they are already embedded in the Photoshop document and so are automatically included. Thanks for any advise,
Alex
Alex

I have had to use photoshop to add warped text to some images that I have crteated for a children’s book I’m working on. This is because Indesign doesn’t have a warp text function. I have set my pages up using Indesign and I realise that this application is best for formatting text but it can’t help me it seems. I wondered , from a professional perspective, is this acceptable? Would the text look sharp enough for print? There is only one line of text per page, varrying in size from fairly 120 pt down to 16 pt.
Also as the text is done in photoshop there is no text to embed in Indesign. Am I right in thinking the text is automatically embedded from the Photoshop file when I create the PDF from the Indesign file. Would be most grateful for any advise,
many thanks
Alex

apologies for the 2 versions of that message…thought I’d lost the first one

I have a new job. As part of my freelance work I started offering services to companies where I tweet for them. The most surprising part is that I have found some customers! The subjects aren’t the most exciting in the world, I tweet about things like term life insurance, but work is work! And I am learning about industries that I never knew much about. It’s fun so far.

I’m new to Photoshop. When I try to create a greeting card, I get the message “valid size not availalble for this creation”. What am I missing?