Illustrator VS Photoshop

Photoshop has launched in 1988. It was originally created as a tool for photographers to edit and manage their photos - and for many people, this remains its primary use.

Illustrator started its life a little earlier than Photoshop in 1987 and was primarily created for the typesetting and logo areas of graphic design. Illustrator is now seen as a tool for both graphic designers and digital artists to create many different types of digital products.

But which is better for specific tasks - and which is better overall? Obviously, the answer will depend on the specific situation, but here I'll lay out a broad overview of which tool I think generally works best in which case

1.    Which is better for logo design ?

A bitmap graphic created in Photoshop cannot be resized without pixilation or loss of quality. With that in mind, using Illustrator means your logo will be a vector object which is not part of a bitmap. Meaning it can be reshaped and resized while retaining all of its quality. Photoshop does have a place in logo design but for the most part, Illustrator should always be your first choice.

Winner : Illustrator

2.    Which is better for web design?

For many designers (including myself) Photoshop is usually the first choice here. As Photoshop graphics sit on a pixel based bitmap it would seem like the only choice for designing on screen media.

Winner :photoshop

3.    Which tool is better for digital art?

While Illustrator may seem like the obvious choice here, it all depends on the type of illustration. Illustrations usually start their life on paper, the drawings are then scanned and brought into a graphics program to colour. As mentioned earlier, with Illustrator we can create clean, extendable graphics, many of which can be easily reused.

Illustrator would be my recommendation for clean, graphical illustrations. Whereas I would recommend Photoshop for photo based illustrations that require very thorough detail and photo manipulation. For many cases, most illustrators would use a mixture of both, it all depends on what type of illustration you're creating

Winner : draw

4.    Which tool is better sketching and wireframing?

This is the skeleton like blueprint in which almost all designed entities begin their lives. Usually, a pen and paper is everyone's starting point but many digital creatives will just jump into a graphics editing program and start sketching in there.

Effectively you could do this in either program but for me, Illustrator is a lot quicker and easier to use for this task. The ability to easily resize, manipulate and reuse elements quickly is crucial when creating wireframes.

Winner : illustrator

And the overall winner is…

There is no winner! While I've done my best to metaphorically create a competitive fight between the two programs, the bottom line is it all depends on what you're trying to create and how you work.

Having a solid understanding of both Photoshop and Illustrator is essential for most designers, whether a web designer, graphic designer, fashion designer, illustrator or any other type of digital creative. Knowing these programs well is going to ensure you choose the best program for the task and create the best possible output. 

·         Photoshop has launched in 1988. It was originally created as a tool for photographers to edit and manage their photos - and for many people, this remains its primary use.

·         Illustrator started its life a little earlier than Photoshop in 1987 and was primarily created for the typesetting and logo areas of graphic design. Illustrator is now seen as a tool for both graphic designers and digital artists to create many different types of digital products.

·         But which is better for specific tasks - and which is better overall? Obviously, the answer will depend on the specific situation, but here I'll lay out a broad overview of which tool I think generally works best in which case.