Tag Archive for: Photoshop

Why Are Designers Upset About Creative Cloud

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Creative CloudFor the past decade or more, Adobe and Photoshop have been staples in the vocabulary of any designer. Adobe has been by our side constantly upgrading, and draining our wallets, but not really causing much of a stir. Not even the Flash vs. Apple conflict really shook the boat that much.

Simply put, Photoshop and its partners in the Creative Suite have been the go-to applications for a huge number of the people working in web development, photography, design, and video.

With their latest new release however, that all could change.

As you may have heard, Adobe has decided to stop releasing physical software in favor of a move to a cloud-based subscription service called Creative Cloud. What you might not have heard is that there is already a petition signed by over 37,000 angry people begging Adobe to abandon their plans.

The move to the Creative Cloud would mean that Adobe would drop all support for older versions of their software, specifically the Creative Suite (They will continue to add support for CS6 for now). However, the Creative Cloud would function essentially the same as the old software. It won’t be a set of web apps, and you will still have to download and install the software to your hard drive. But, all your files and data will be in sync across multiple computers and devices.

The monthly subscription service will be $29.99 for existing CS customers, and $49.99 for new users. But, you could also buy just a single program for $19.99 a month each. For that price, you’ll also get 20GB of cloud storage.

Basically, Adobe has found a way to attack piracy and increase their profits by making users continuously pay for the software and not distribute or manufacture physical objects. And that is why users are upset. While the subscription fee is obviously a fair deal lower than the cumulative price we payed for previous releases, over time this means Creative Cloud will be much more expensive than ever before.

It also creates a new (more expensive) option for all other design software companies to follow. Adobe has always been the trendsetter in this area and it is likely even the alternatives spurned Photoshop users turn to will eventually follow suite. Or, this could be the end of Adobe as the gold standard. As Corey Siegel from Design Instruct puts it, this is Adobe’s “all in” bet.

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Best Places To Find Free PSD Files

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Photoshop IconRaw, high-quality PSD files are one of the most treasured finds online for web designers. They aren’t particularly easy to find, especially compared to all of the readily available resources out there like tutorials, scripts, and templates. A combination of contractual restrictions for much of our professional work, and fear of outright plagiarism of our hard work keep many from sharing their finished PSD files for others to use.

We should be sharing more of them however. PSDs speed the design process up dramatically, as designers can cut and borrow elements of existing files rather than building nearly identical looking versions from scratch, as often happens.

PSDs are also great for learning. Rather than reading tutorials, designers can dig into PSD files and see how every layer acts, individual settings for simple elements, and truly get hands on while studying other designers’ techniques.

While these files aren’t as popularly shared online, there are some sites devoted strictly to sharing PSDs for our own use. Jacob Gube listed the ten best sites posting new files on a regular basis that are high enough quality to be used professionally.

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The Most Frequent Mistakes New Photoshop Users Make

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After all these years and new Adobe programs, Photoshop is still the tool for designers. It is the tool of the trade no matter what style you like, whether you do digital painting, sign style design, or photo manipulation. But, Photoshop is to us like the scalpel is to surgeons; in skilled hands it is a great tool, but it can be dangerous if misused.

Unlike when a surgeon makes a mistake, it can sometimes be hard to tell when you are misusing Photoshop or creating a design others aren’t going to respond to. When you’re learning the program, there is so much at your fingertips it can be tempting to use everything, even when you don’t quite know what it does. It also offers many different solutions to problems – some better than others – so it is easy for the uninitiated to complete the task they wanted without getting the right results.

Jay Adrianna, writer for Onextrapixel, recently wrote about thirteen incredibly common Photoshop mistakes designers and photo editors make, as well as easy ways to fix them. Whether you are a beginner, or someone more used to the program looking to refine your techniques and improve your finished products, it is almost guaranteed there is something you can learn from the tips offered. As always, the key is moderation.

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Fireworks vs. Photoshop – Which Is Best For Web Design?

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Photoshop is the program for graphic design. At this point, that is considered more of a fact than an opinion. It is the standard which just about everyone that can afford it uses. It might not actually be the best for web design anymore, however.

Fireworks, originally made by Macromedia, is another Adobe product, which Harish Chouhan believes makes more sense for web design, especially with its recent integration with other creative suite software.

So why is it better? First off, it allows for much faster and easier prototyping and sketching. You don’t have to constantly worry about layers because Fireworks automatically makes each element an individual object to be edited, scaled, etc.

Fireworks also uses PNG as it’s native file type, which makes Fireworks files much more sharable than Photoshop documentaries. PNG, or Portable Network Graphics, is a patent free file format which allows for saving of multiple Meta data.

Chouhan has even more reasons you might consider switching to Fireworks. It can do almost anything Photoshop can, but it will save you time and frustration.

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