Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Life Without Photoshop

quora.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 70 posts

Re: Life Without Photoshop

#21

Post by matt1 »

jdp23 wrote: post #17
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?

Balsamiq is for designing low fidelity mockups (wireframes) whereas jMockups is for designing high fidelity (pixel perfect) mockups. It makes more sense to compare jMockups to Photoshop than Balsamiq.

That being said, I can pretty effortlessly pivot from focusing on high fidelity to low fidelity. Right now I'm considering adding a toggle button that lets you switch back and forth, but am not sure if I want to go down that path yet. Do one thing well, right?

Re: Life Without Photoshop

#22

Post by nswanberg »

sudont wrote: post #10
srgseg wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Within 60 seconds I can have screenshotted another site whose template might be vaguely close in structure to that I'm thinking of, delete their text and write in my own. No way you can get anywhere close to that kind of speed with code.

Well, technically you can, but you’re right about the speed: javascript:document.body.contentEditable='true'; document.designMode='on'; void 0

Very cool.

I figured there must be some Chrome extensions that make use of this, and it looks like there are. One adds some WYSIWYG-type tools to the current page: http://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/claldafnnhbflndjb...

Re: Life Without Photoshop

#23

Post by jdp23 »

matt1 wrote: post #21
jdp23 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Balsamiq is for designing low fidelity mockups (wireframes) whereas jMockups is for designing high fidelity (pixel perfect) mockups. It makes more sense to compare jMockups to Photoshop than Balsamiq. That being said, I can pretty effortlessly pivot from focusing on high fidelity to low fidelity. Right now I'm considering adding a toggle button that lets you switch back and forth, but am not sure if I want to go down…

Very clear explanation, and agreed on doing one thing well. It'll be a lot easier to to leadership in the high-fidelity mockup segment, and then use that as a base to expand if it makes business sense.

Re: Life Without Photoshop

#24

Post by chaz »

I've stopped designing with code for all but the most trivial elements because I realized it's too easy to get sucked into the details too early on in the process. Designing via coded prototype means that mockups are high fidelity, and there were a lot of things going on at the same time: trying to write good copy, getting each element to align correctly, finding the perfect icon, and coding good HTML/CSS/JS. Iterations then starting feeling pretty expensive.

For the same reason people use lorem ipsum, I would recommend lower resolution tools (paper, whiteboard, wireframes, etc.) to keep details out of focus until it's time. I try to avoid Photoshop when doing early design work, but it's valuable for creating proofs for clients or as a spec for engineers.

Re: Life Without Photoshop

#25

Post by gambler »

flyosity wrote: post #11
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 a…

Problem is, Photoshop is the default for many designers. They start with image-rich websites and scale them down if necessary. I think good design should be scaled up from simple to more complex - with each instance of complexity being justified.

Do I really need to watch that video when I go to gm.com? Do I really need to figure out custom Flash-based navigation scheme when I go to a movie or game website?

Re: Life Without Photoshop

#26

Post by lwhi »

flyosity wrote: post #11
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 a…

I think there is an alternative to using Photoshop - especially if you use a Linux based OS.

I've often heard of people stating that GIMP is a valid alternative - I'd argue it isn't. GIMP is fine for performing a lot of everyday editing functions - but it's lacking in quite a few key areas (most notably CMYK support).

I think as an alternative, rather than having Photoshop - which could be conceptually viewed as an 'image IDE' - it's possible to choose to use a number of different command line utilities, plugins, scripts and applications to achieve the feature-set that Photoshop traditionally provides.

Creating and modifying imagery in this way, is arguably less intuitive, as workflows aren't so clearly defined - but there's the chance of matching (or possibly exceeding) what Photoshop makes possible.

Re: Life Without Photoshop

#27

Post by tiddchristopher »

xyzzyb wrote: post #12
karterk wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

In my experience, Fireworks is far less useful when it comes to the creation of graphics after the initial wireframing. On the other hand, Photoshop [and GIMP] is completely usable throughout the entire design process. For this reason, many designers would rather learn, and pay for, only one product, and that product is Photoshop. As a side note, although GIMP lags in a few areas, notably on the typography side of things, it's the best product for my needs when I weigh cost and features, and only rarely do I find myself wishing I had tossed several hundred dollars for Photoshop.

Re: Life Without Photoshop

#28

Post by mjac »

flyosity wrote: post #11
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 a…

That's a great point. Photoshop has extensive capabilities for visual rearrangement and transformation. Once the core design is created it can be cut up and extended with further XHTML/CSS elements (minimally for consistency).

Quora does not compare with even basic designs found in CSS galleries (http://cssbeauty.com/). Most are graphic heavy and use intelligent slicing for fast, aesthetic experiences.

For rapid design, you can use the 960 grid system (http://960.gs/) to speed up mockups, then implement the layout on top of 960's positional CSS. I tried this for the first time with my new design (http://mjac.co.uk/) and I think it produced a significant improvement in aesthetics and organisation over my previous XHTML/CSS mockups and completely custom Photoshop layouts.

Re: Life Without Photoshop

#29

Post by jdp23 »

jasonfried wrote: post #18

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

Jason, I wonder if a "direct to code" approach tends to correlate with design styles like 37signals and Quora's that favor clean sparse text-oriented designs. Conversely a Photoshop-oriented approach is likely to lead to image-oriented designs, with a lot more visual richness, appealing more to the emotions.

Re: Life Without Photoshop

#30

Post by lwhi »

jasonfried wrote: post #18

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

I don't think Photoshop has ever been a good application for creating website mock-ups.

There are a lot of custom applications that have been created specifically for the job - from simple apps like Mockingbird, and Balsamiq; to more advanced applications like Visio and OmniGraffle. I think these applications are best for carrying out the grunt-work involved in UI design.

I think the process of creating HTML mockups adds a layer of complexity that isn't necessary in the initial stages. Being able to concentrate on the purpose of design (rather than implementation) is liberating.

However, I think there are times when a client needs to be able to visualise a potential aethetic near the beginning of a project.

Perhaps Photoshop has a place here - because a basic wireframe produced in one of the former apps often requires too great a leap of imagination to effectively communicate the intended result. However - I think, a lot of the time, a vector package like Illustrator (or Xara or Inkscape) allows greater freedom (on the part of the designer) and makes the process of modifying a design less cumbersome.

Post reply on HN