Is Photoshop a necessity for a designer?

Photoshop is called Photoshop for a reason… it is an excellent tool for editing photos. If a designer is preparing a digital or scanned photograph for use in a project, whether it be a website, brochure, book design or packaging, the first step is often to bring it into Photoshop. Using a variety of tools within the software, a designer can:

• Crop photos
• Resize photos
• Adjust and correct colors
• Touch-up photos, such as “erasing” a blemish or removing a tear or fold
• Apply a large selection of filters such as “watercolor” for special effects and styles
• Optimize photos for the web by choosing file formats and reducing file size
• Save photos in a variety of formats for use in print projects
• Use their creativity to perform countless tasks.

The ability to create custom paint brushes, add effects such as drop shadows, work with photos, and a wide variety of tools make Photoshop a great tool for creating original graphics. These graphics may stand-alone on their own, or they may be imported into other programs for use in any type of project. Once a designer masters the Photoshop tools, creativity and imagination determine what can be created.

 

No doubt, photoshop is the most essential part of web designing and major editing part of web design cab be performed on web design.

 

Even outside of web design, i think Photoshop is one of the best tools to have as a skill set. It is so incredibly powerful. I definitely suggest learning it

 

I think it depends on what you are focusing on in your line of work.

 

Photoshop is useful thing for web designer and they can perform quality web designing work using it.

 

Yes

 

I have an AS Degree in graphic design and photoshop was the main course so yeah.

 

The most important for a graphics designer is to know how to work with vectors. You can just master the concept of a vector software like adobe illustrator. They gradually leaning photoshop too. That will help you more because the more knowledge you have the better professional you become.

 

If you are not going to use photoshop, then at least get illustrator.

 

It is standart. You must know Photoshop, Illustartor, Sketch, Corel Draw, InDesign, After Effects

 

No, it's not needed. But illustrator is most important. But some times you may need Photoshop to do some job, e.g.- animated gif, export .ico file using some plugin. But most of the jobs are done using illustrator.
I was using Photoshop before but now using illustrator for most of the jobs. Quality is great with illustrator works.

 

Ahaha, yes, sure. Do you know that Mac OS is not so popular for example in Western Europe and Asia? And Sketch will not be good there. But the Photoshop is used everywhere and it is universal tool and it is strange if you don't know how it work. I think it is "must have" soft.

Yes, but only for logos and print stuff) Websites, apps mostly are designed in the Photoshop or Sketch.

 

If you don't know. Website, apps are also designed using illustrator. I have done on both the software. But illustrator gave me better result.
But for beginner, Photoshop is easy to learn than illustrator.

 

I am using Photoshop for my work and I am feeling very comfort with this, and I want to recommend Adobe illustrator for the print design and Photoshop for the web design.

 

I was pointed at this by another member -- usually I don't poke my head into this part of the forums because the majority of people here know **** about *** other than graphic arts. My opinion on this subject is highly unpopular, but I'm going to just come right out and say it:

PHOTOSHOP IS NOT A WEB DESIGN TOOL!!!

It's a paint program; it's meant for drawing pretty pictures or editing photos; Dicking around in Photoshop is NOT web design no matter how many mouth breathing halfwits claim otherwise, and I've never seen a website that started life as a PSD that wasn't a bloated, inaccessible broken train wreck laundry list of how NOT to build a website.

Which is why Photoshop is a significant contributor to the fact that MOST of the people using Photoshop and calling themselves "designers" do not know enough about HTML, CSS, emissive colourspace, usability, user experience or accessibility to even open their mouths on the SUBJECT of design.

I say this because I treat web design the same way I would any other type of design; like electrical design, mechanical design, aeronautical design, architectural design, etc, etc... While you have the handful of artsy types effete white collar criminals throw money at, their designs usually end up doing things like treating pool-goers like ants under a magnifying glass or being so structurally unsound it's a money pit just to keep it standing -- while REAL designers; people who know about things like materials tolerances, structural engineering, and research how people actually use things work silently in the background... for one simple reason:

If a "design" is noticed, there's probably something wrong with it. GOOD design should go unnoticed as it should not impede what the item was "designed" to do. That's why as much as I dislike Apple's plain white "all the artistic style of a recently sanitized hospital ward" the simplicity of it and overall layout does not draw attention from what it's there for -- for the user to USE.

GOOD design should be transparent, only existing to make it so that the task gets done. You want MY idea of stunningly brilliant web design, go to Google search. Go to E-Bay... hell, you want to make a "designer" cringe, point them at Craigslist -- proof enough most "designers" know **** about **** and are either outright scam artists, or have been smelling their own ***** for so long they've got delusions from the fumes.

There are LIMITATIONS to design depending on the purpose, and most of the artsy crap people vomit up in PSD's is outright ignorant of those limitations, or is willfully ignoring them with a giant middle finger to the poor sods who actually try to use the resulting site.

At the end of the day people visit websites for the content, NOT the goofy graphical BS you hang around it. It's also a fact that the entire purpose of HTML is device neutrality! There is more to a website -- like serving your visitors what they came for and meeting their needs -- than your visual layout. Not all users are sighted, not all user agents will actually pay any attention to your layout; what about them?

To put it plainly, there are a lot of things in Photoshop you can do that have ZERO damned business on a website in the first place; fixed width containers, fixed height elements, fixed size backgrounds, fixed metric fonts with design elements that cannot handle dynamic fonts, elastic or semi-fluid design. Hell, MOST of the halfwits vomiting up PSD's don't even know what "WCAG AAA contrast" means.

Which again would mean they are only qualified to design two things....

Which is not to say that photoshop, or a lower cost alternative like Paint Shop Pro, or a free alternative like the GIMP cannot play a role -- it's just mind-numbingly stupid and completely back-assward to use it as your starting point; and the ignorant garbage most people seem to call "design" right now is more than enough proof of that if you understand even the most basic parts of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines or have paid any attention to user interaction studies and usability guides like those provided by the Neilsen-Norman Group. Which you ask most "web designers" about nnGroup, they either go "who" or start ranting a thousand times worse than I am here!

Proper "design" should adjust to the content, which is why the proper design should start with the content or a reasonable facsimile of future content in a flat text editor as if HTML doesn't even EXIST. You then semantically markup that content with HTML. Semantic markup being a sick euphemism for "using HTML properly" that we use so as not to offend the dipshits who just sleaze together HTML thanks to a complete lack of understanding what HTML is even for. Once you have that semantic markup saying what things ARE and NOT what they look like you will have a proper baseline for NON-visual UA's or those that will ignore your screen layouts. Then and only then do you design your first (of many) layoutS (yes, PLURAL) for screen media using CSS, worrying more about placement of items and ease of access and usability than the affectations of colour and presentational images. That first layout is usually best (this is just IMHO) for desktop resolution legacy browsers (anything pre-CSS) as the lowest common denominator -- said layout using dynamic fonts (declared in EM not PX unless ABSOLUTELY necessary, like on a future image interaction for gilder-levin), being elastic (adjusting paddings and widths to the font size -- again using EM's), semi-fluid (having a max-width in EM's so long lines aren't hard to read). Once you have ALL that do you try making it responsive for the other layouts. Then and ONLY then do you give it a paintover with colours and presentational images (if any, thanks CSS3!).

THAT is design, as it takes into account accessibility, graceful degradation, usability -- all provided by way of semantic markup, progressive enhancement and listening to usability guidelines.

Dicking around in Photoshop? That's not design, that's graphic arts; and again, it doesn't matter how pretty it is if the end result is useless to the end user. I think that's one of the hardest concepts for anyone to grasp in design vs. art; When designing you're not there to show of your L33t Photoshop sk1llz, or even (and this is a mind-blower to wrap your brain around) to meet the whims and fancies of the site owner and/or client. (It's often an uphill battle to convince clients of this) -- You are there to meet the needs and wants of VISITORS to the website...

Visitors who may not even be sighted, visitors who may have changed their default fonts size expecting websites to automatically obey it without them having to dive for the zoom, visitors that may still have to dive for the zoom and expect the page to still work without sideways scrolling, visitors who might dare to not be on that same magic high quality high resolution 27" IPS you "designers" might be fortunate enough to be seated at!

It's why declaring font sizes in pixels is rubbish, it's why declaring widths in pixels is rubbish, it's why creating fixed height elements or elements that cannot adjust to the flow or size of their contents are such complete rubbish you might want to invest in a incinerator -- all concepts most people screwing around making PSD's are utterly and completely unaware of!

Content FIRST == Visitors FIRST!!! Anything else is not design, it's graphic arts. As I often say, hiring a PSD jockey to do web design is like hiring a five year old with crayons to design a skyscraper.

 

Thats why I said "mostly") Yes, sure, you can design apps and sites in Illustartor but as for me it much difficult than in photoshop.
I just hate one thing in illustrator It is their Align tool. It works not like in Photoshop. But I started my career from PH and it is hard to switch my mind in other way

 

Using photoshop is not a necessity, you could use Gimp which a world class application and it is also open source. The problem is that the number of support resources for photoshop is a lot more than gimp. There are many tutorials about photoshop and while gimp can do a lot of things photoshop can do more. If as a designer you are willing to learn gimp it has almost all the things you will need to use. People mistrust the gimp because it is open source but it is a really good application for beginner designers that cant afford the photoshop.

 

Hey there @SpiderPigs

I'm currently about to finish my final year for a Graphic Design Diploma with a Major in Creative Advertising and have won various awards: so I feel like my two cents here will help.

Graphic design is a broad broad category which can lead you down many paths. Think of Graphic design as the tree and the jobs you can get from it as the apples.

• Art Director
• Creative Director
• Web Designer
• Brand developer
  
• Entertainment Design
• Motion Graphics Artist
• Illustrator
• Story boarder
  
• the list goes on...

If you want to get into it great! There are three main programs which you will want to study.

• Adobe InDesign - this program is for layout purposes and type setting, which is 100% required

Now note with these two below, its the designers preference which they want to specialize in, however note both are necessary.

• Adobe Illustrator - used for creating graphics such as logos which can be saved and scaled to any size (iphone to great wall of china) without loosing quality (.eps format if your wondering)
  
• Adobe Photoshop - used for digital graphics/ digital painting (examples: http://cosmosys.net/alpha-and-omega/), re-sizing images and changing image 'modes' generally in graphic terms.

To get a better understanding, google 'pro photoshop/illustrator examples' to see which each one can do at a high end level and what your goal is to achieve.

I personally, from an advertising perspective deal with Photoshop as it allows me to compile my compositions. My corporate branding friends however, specialize in illustrator.
At the end of the day, if you get a job - most of the work will be outsourced. If your looking to make logos and design brochures and what not: InDesign & illustrator.

Go to behance.net and have a look around at what work you like, the author gets to mention what programs they used - learn this one more if its the type of work you want to be doing. If its not listed, ask them in the comments - most designers are friendly!

Let me know if you want any more information

 

From my experience, Photoshop is a great tool for graphic design in general but also a great fundation for other, more complicated tools, like Corel Draw and Illustrator. I learned to use Photoshop in high school and it was fairly easy to understand and use. After that, all other image editing apps were easy to understand as well, since they all work in similar way. Photoshop is still my go-to app.
So, to answer your question, I think it's essential to know how to use Photoshop for any designer.

 

Photoshop is great for Graphic Design. It works well with logos buttons as well.
You can pretty much create a template for an app or a website with Photoshop, combined with other programs like Illustrator, but you will need to sit and code it.
That is separate. Coding, Designing Web Sites, have nothing to do with Photoshop.
Knowing Photoshop and its siblings will be great if you are coding a webpage or an app and want to design a logo as well.