Life Without Photoshop • Hacker News Board

Re: Life Without Photoshop

#11

Post by flyosity » Sat, Feb 26, 2011, 2:40 PM UTC

lwhi wrote: post #4

To be fair, Quora isn't a very graphically rich site. I'm not totally sure whether an absence of Photoshop (and other Creative Suite products) is particularly worthy of explanation.

It seems like every "I didn't use Photoshop" article is always showing off a site that... looks like the designer didn't use Photoshop.

As a designer who's in Photoshop all day long, knowing when a layout necessitates using Photoshop or not is second-nature to me now. I'll just stop using it and hop over to my text editor and start writing HTML & CSS. And for sufficiently sparse layouts, I'll just not use Photoshop at all. I assumed everyone knew and did this, but perhaps I was mistaken.

Re: Life Without Photoshop

#12

Post by xyzzyb » Sat, Feb 26, 2011, 2:43 PM UTC

karterk wrote: post #9

vog wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never understood why people are buying proprietary, expensive stuff like Photoshop just for mock-ups. First of all, vector graphics tools like Inkscape are a lot better suited for that task. Second, even if you don't like vector graphics, there are great Free Software projects like Gimp and Krita that deserve our attention and our support.

>I never understood why people are buying proprietary, expensive stuff like Photoshop just for mock-ups. People have been using Photoshop for years (like myself), and personally these people feel that open source equivalents like GIMP are still way off in terms of competing with Photoshop. >First of all, vector graphics tools like Inkscape are a lot better suited for that task. I have used both Inkscape and Photoshop…

Why not fireworks over photoshop? Its hybrid vector/imaging toolset make for a good web design experience.

Re: Life Without Photoshop

#13

Post by mgrouchy » Sat, Feb 26, 2011, 2:56 PM UTC

Oddly enough, we don't use photoshop either. We use Keynote! http://blog.swixhq.com/designing-swix-with-keynote/

Re: Life Without Photoshop

#14

Post by _b8r0 » Sat, Feb 26, 2011, 2:57 PM UTC

I'm not a designer by any stretch of the imagination, but I do like fiddling around with pictures and occasionally make posters and design T-Shirts. I haven't used photoshop in about 5 years or so, I haven't needed to.

The Gimp is one of those tools that covers 80% of your design requirements. Having said that it's not particularly friendly for Photoshop users. An easier version for the transition is GimpShop (http://www.gimpshop.com/), although this hasn't been updated for a while.

For designers I can understand why living without Photoshop is strange, especially if it's the tool you're used to. For most people Gimpshop and The Gimp are more than capable enough, Free software and free to use.

Re: Life Without Photoshop

#15

Post by matt1 » Sat, Feb 26, 2011, 2:58 PM UTC

Plug: I'm building a web-based mockup tool called jMockups [1], which my long term goal is to supplant Photoshop as the high fidelity mockup tool of choice.

If you have qualms with Photoshop and can entertain the possibility of a better tool coming along, I'd really, really, really love to hear your thoughts on jMockups, what I can do to improve it, and how it can become a tool so phenomenal that it wouldn't make sense for you not to switch from Photoshop. Email me at matt@jmockups.com.

[1] http://www.jmockups.com

PS: New feature you might like: Instantly convert almost any website to a mockup so you can redesign it in minutes: http://www.jmockups.com/websiteconverter

Re: Life Without Photoshop

#16

Post by nswanberg » Sat, Feb 26, 2011, 3:05 PM UTC

_b8r0 wrote: post #14

I'm not a designer by any stretch of the imagination, but I do like fiddling around with pictures and occasionally make posters and design T-Shirts. I haven't used photoshop in about 5 years or so, I haven't needed to. The Gimp is one of those tools that covers 80% of your design requirements. Having said that it's not particularly friendly for Photoshop users. An easier version for the transition is GimpShop ( http:…

I think the article was more about using code to do the design rather than any image tools. You could replace Photoshop with Gimp in the article and the original arguments would hold.

Re: Life Without Photoshop

#17

Post by jdp23 » Sat, Feb 26, 2011, 3:09 PM UTC

matt1 wrote: post #15

Plug: I'm building a web-based mockup tool called jMockups [1], which my long term goal is to supplant Photoshop as the high fidelity mockup tool of choice. If you have qualms with Photoshop and can entertain the possibility of a better tool coming along, I'd really, really, really love to hear your thoughts on jMockups, what I can do to improve it, and how it can become a tool so phenomenal that it wouldn't make sen…

Seems intriguing. How would you compare/contrast with Balsamiq?

Re: Life Without Photoshop

#18

Post by jasonfried » Sat, Feb 26, 2011, 3:14 PM UTC

Along the same lines, here's why I skip Photoshop when working on designs at 37signals: http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1061-why-we-skip-photoshop

Re: Life Without Photoshop

#19

Post by jdp23 » Sat, Feb 26, 2011, 3:15 PM UTC

mgrouchy wrote: post #13

Oddly enough, we don't use photoshop either. We use Keynote! http://blog.swixhq.com/designing-swix-with-keynote/

Very interesting! I've worked with people who did their design in PowerPoint for many of the same reasons.

Re: Life Without Photoshop

#20

Post by yaix » Sat, Feb 26, 2011, 3:22 PM UTC

And you see it in the Quora design. It is centered on the content, and not on fancy graphics that distract from what the user came to find on the site.