Bye bye Photoshop

Admission ticket for Smashing Conference in Freiburg

Vitaly Friedman and Marc Thiele of Smashing Magazine (a leading blog on design and development) made the first Smashing Conference possible in Freiburg. We were there.

With 16 trendy speakers, including Oliver Reichenstein of iA Writer, Aarron Walter of Mailchimp, and Christian Heilmann of Mozilla, the two days were truly inspiring. Thanks to the great talks and an informal atmosphere, time flew by. By the way, Freiburg is a beautiful city. Tim is still fascinated by the little streams that run through it. And during the breaks, there were of course plenty of bratwurst and bockwurst bites.

A subtle recurring theme during the conference was the reduced use of Photoshop. This was highlighted by, among others, Jeremy Keith, Stephen Hay, and Andy Clark.

Photoshop and Reality

The biggest disadvantage of Photoshop is that it doesn’t reflect reality. After all, we don’t view websites in Photoshop. Below is a list of its drawbacks:

  • Websites are viewed in the browser, where fonts and other elements are rendered completely differently.
  • The web is inherently fluid—something Photoshop is not. You can’t design for 99 different viewports in Photoshop. Responsive design cannot be created in Photoshop.
  • When working in Photoshop, you’re not directly building the final product in HTML and CSS, which is a waste of time. Therefore, don’t show complete Photoshop designs to your client, as it sets the wrong expectations.

Photoshop from Now On

Photoshop is excellent for one thing: designing the mood of a website. You can use Style tiles for this purpose. We have been using mood boards for a few years now (about which I discuss further in another note).

Additionally, there are certain details that can’t always be designed in HTML/CSS—for example, a specific modal window with a trendy little arrow. In those cases, Photoshop can serve as a handy reference tool while you’re busy working in HTML/CSS.

Conclusion

So no, don’t get rid of Photoshop. Instead, work faster on your final product in HTML and CSS. It saves you time and money.

To make the web stronger, pure Photoshop designers really need to start working with HTML/CSS.

More about the Smashing Conference

— This post was originally written on the Studio Wolf blog.

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Geschreven door Aljan Scholtens