10 comments

  • Tom GantzerTom Gantzer, almost 8 years ago (edited almost 8 years ago )

    Very interesting, particularly about Sketch. I followed the hype train and gave it a chance (albeit only around a week) and found it lacking in a lot of aspects, particularly with it getting very buggy with large numbers of artboards. Ultimately my workflow is pretty fine-tuned in PS that it was proving a chore to perform the same tasks in Sketch. I feel it has some good traits, but not good enough to warrant me switching permanently.

    I also get this feeling that Adobe ignored designers for such a long time, that people are willing to sacrifice their efficiency in order to support the underdog looking to disrupt. I'm all for that as well, but from looking at Adobe's recent work in the design space, it's looking like an interesting year for design tools!

    8 points
    • Duke CavinskiDuke Cavinski, almost 8 years ago

      I completely agree, I've tried to give Sketch a shot so many times (two versions in) but I can get Photoshop to do the same exact stuff in a much more stable environment.

      I would, however, absolutely love those artboards in PS. Vertically tiling six windows isn't exactly the best experience.

      2 points
    • Timoni WestTimoni West, almost 8 years ago

      I tried out Sketch very early on and gave up on it. Then in Oct 2013 I gave it another chance, and it's been my tool of choice ever since. I'd be very curious to know which flows you've fine-tuned in Photoshop to the point that Sketch would take more time. I had to use PS for a project recently and it was genuinely awful.

      0 points
      • Tom GantzerTom Gantzer, almost 8 years ago (edited almost 8 years ago )

        It's been a good year since I last tried Sketch, but for me the pitfalls were as follows:

        • Lack of an alternative to Layer Comps (IMO artboards do not make a good substitution for this, however artboards alongside layer comps would be incredibly useful)
        • Lack of plugins support to tackle specific tasks (For example, I currently use Renamy, Oven & GuideGuide for icon design)
        • No equivalent for Smart objects and their interactions with layer comps (Save a button with multiple states as layer comps, import as a linked SO).
        • No equivalent for Adobe Generator (incredibly powerful exporting, I couldn't live without it, frankly.)
        • When creating 40+ artboards, the whole program becomes buggy; items disappearing, selections not showing and inability to move objects alongside massive slowdowns.
        • No alternative for Adobes suite of apps, such as Adobe Shape CC. (We use this for capturing sketches almost daily, and it is synced straight to creative cloud for use in PS or AI in under a minute.)

        It would be interesting as a current user if you are aware of workarounds for these things, though I get the feeling that for the more "general" projects that I work on, this workflow is going to save me a lot of time. Perhaps I can get into using Sketch again for smaller projects and give it a fair trial?

        0 points
  • Khoi Vinh, almost 8 years ago

    Thanks folks. Also worth noting that a few readers have written to me about tools that I didn't mention:

    • Keynote
    • Affinity Designer *
    • Tumult Hype *
    • InDesign
    • Creative Cloud Storage *

    The ones with asterisks were not mentioned by the designers we talked to. The others were mentioned, but only once or twice, IIRC.

    1 point
    • Timoni WestTimoni West, almost 8 years ago

      I just downloaded Affinity Designer a few weeks ago to try it out and ended up making my wedding invites design in it almost immediately. It's great at picking up where Sketch leaves off, creating very dense, complicated vector designs.

      0 points
  • Daniel FoscoDaniel Fosco, almost 8 years ago

    So many gold nuggets in here.

    This write up from a few months ago also offers a pretty good perspective on design tools.

    1 point
  • Emily SaforrianEmily Saforrian, almost 8 years ago

    What a great writeup, I think it's interesting that Dropbox has become the defacto shared network drive but there isn't a good way to manage workflows. I guess, more then anything I'm surprised that there aren't more tools like LayerVault and that LayerVault didn't make it either.

    Also, I'm not surprised about Sketch having such limited acceptance. As a UX Designer coming from tools like Balsamiq, Sketch was an easy transition for me but my co-workers who have been working in PS for years face a big barrier to change.

    0 points
  • Joel CalifaJoel Califa, almost 8 years ago

    Hey Khoi, great write up as usual. I love how you articulated that sense of inevitability around Sketch. I also appreciate how you include tools that indirectly help designers rather than just design software. That's not an obvious thing to include.

    0 points