app design illustrator or photoshop

Which is best for you, Adobe Illustrator or Adobe Photoshop? How are they different?

"Design is intelligence made visible." — Alina Wheeler

The selection of Illustrator & Photoshop can leave you quite baffled. Especially if you are new in the industry as a designer, you might also be facing a hard time finding differences between the two. when and why to use each program, since on the surface they seem so similar.

Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator are two of Adobe's massively popular graphics programs in the design industry. If you're working on a new project, you might have a hard time figuring out which of the two programs will work best for your specific requirement.

Photoshop & Illustrator are a common application for graphic designing. Deciding on which one of the two you want to work over depends on what you want to create the most.

The main difference between Photoshop & Illustrator is the kind of graphics each application creates, Photoshop creates raster graphics using pixels, while Illustrator creates vector.

What is Illustrator:

Adobe Illustrator is advanced, vector-based editing software. Vectors are scalable images that can be sized as small or as large are you need them to be, but look the same when it comes to clarity and resolution. Illustrator uses mathematical constructs to create vector graphics. If you have a line drawn that way, every time the application displays the line, it redraws the line from scratch using the equation it has in memory.

A vector graphic will never lose its quality if it's scaled up or down. Illustrator will also give you a better print output since it's not resolution-dependent. Common vector file extensions are AI, EPS, and SVG. Illustrator is considered the best application for:

Freehand drawing
Logo and icon creation
Infographic creation
Projects with an extensive line drawing (for example, graphs and charts)
Custom fonts and typography
Print projects with excessive typography
Custom font creation
Work that needs to be scalable to accommodate a range of platforms and products

What is Photoshop:

Photoshop is raster-based and uses pixels to create images. Raster graphics are the kind of graphics where the image is created by having small squares, called pixels, arranged side by side. The computer memorized the arrangement of these pixels & uses that to display the picture. Photoshop files are saved with extensions PSD, so that we can continue editing from where we have left from. Typical raster file extensions are of JPG and PNG.

Photoshop is a great program for modifying already created images or graphics for example, photo editing since those projects will stay at a fixed size. Another great benefit of Photoshop is that you can have complete control of your projects since you can edit your graphic pixel-by-pixel. Photoshop considered the best application for:

Photo editing and enhancements
User interface design
Graphics composed with minimal gradient
3D painting and animation

Comparing their features:

While Photoshop is the tool mostly and widely used for image editing purposes, Illustrator is mostly and widely used for image creation purposes. Illustrator also doesn't allow you to automate page numbers. Illustrator cannot be used with ease to modify images that are already created, since there are limited filters and image editing tools available.

Photoshop's editing tools let you crop, adjust lighting and colouring, mask blemishes, and add or remove backgrounds. Creative professionals also use Photoshop for user interface creation, website designs, and graphics with minimal gradient.

Photoshop is not a good choice when creating logos. Everything in Photoshop is just a series of pixels, so if you're scaling something up or down, it can lose its quality very quickly. since the pixels are memorized by the computer, it can't be enlarged without losing some of the quality. Vector graphics a huge advantage over raster, no matter how you zoom in or enlarge the picture, and no matter how large the paper you want to print the image on is, vector graphics will never fail you here.

Illustrator is an object-based editing tool and therefore, you have a collection of objects with their own attributes. Whenever you select an object in Illustrator and apply any effect on that, it affects the entire object. Whereas, in Photoshop, you select it on a few chunks of pixels instead of the whole object. This is one of the fundamental and one of the imperative differences between them both.

Illustrator's advantage lies in graphics creation, as you sketch images and enhance this work through the application. Illustrations are more than digital eye candy. Freehand drawing and colouring options, along with line drawing and typography features, make Illustrator ideal for artists, illustrators, and anyone who likes to draw. Illustrator is also beneficial for businesses that need to create logos and icons for their marketing materials. Web designers often use Illustrator to create logos and images for banners and websites. Artists use Illustrator's line-drawing tools to create charts and freehand drawings.

Even though Photoshop can handle vector images, it is not recommended because the result is still as good as that taken from Adobe Illustrator. When making a digital painting it is recommended not to use Illustrator because of the Brush icon in Photoshop that allows you to mix pixels up to give it a new colour.

Images edited previously in Photoshop can always be re-edited in the same software. However, this luxury lacks severely in Adobe Illustrator. Once an image, be it a logo or an icon, is created on Illustrator and is saved as a normal image, it cannot be edited on the same software. It is because, once an image is saved, it develops pixels that don't work on Illustrator but that image can be edited on Photoshop.

Conclusion:

You'll come to find that some people just prefer to use one software over another, but sometimes it's best to use Photoshop and Illustrator together. Lot of the hotkeys and tools are the same in both the software, understanding the application for each program is important. One program is definitely not better than the other, they're just different in their own ways. Understanding the difference between Photoshop and Illustrator will help you make the decision about which software is best for your next project. Make your choice and start learning!! Designing is creativity with fun.