Today, our Director of Marketing, Emily McNally, who began at VPM as a Graphic Designer, talks about what you need to know when designing for print using Adobe Creative Suite programs.
“Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign are three of the most commonly used Adobe programs by graphic designers, especially those who specialize in print design. While there is a bit of an overlap among them in terms of basic capabilities, they are not easily interchangeable. Each has its own set of core strengths, and when used correctly, these three programs work great together as a team. Here’s a quick rundown of what each program should be used for depending on what you’re designing:
Adobe Photoshop
Raster graphics
Photo editing and manipulation
Filters and special effects
Adobe Illustrator
Vector graphics
Logo design
Shapes and line art
Adobe InDesign
Typesetting
Composition
Multi-page layouts
Exporting for print
When designing for print, elements from Photoshop and Illustrator often come together in InDesign for final composition and print preparation. For example, let’s say you were working on designing a brochure for a small business. Photoshop would be the program of choice for retouching the company’s photos; Illustrator would be the program of choice for perfecting the company’s logo; and InDesign would be the program of choice for typesetting and laying out the composition of the brochure, which would include the photos and logo designed in the other programs.”
Which of these three programs is your favorite? Share your thoughts with us on Twitter!