Adobe Photoshop is a great program for modifying already created images or graphics, like photos.
Raster or
bitmap graphics are created in Photoshop. These graphics can sometimes look a little jagged since raster images are made up of individual colored squares, known as "
pixels". Everything in Photoshop is just a series of pixels, so if you’re scaling something up or down, it can lose its quality very quickly.
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Photoshop is a popular choice for web graphics, photo editing and designs since those projects will stay at a fixed size. Editing photos is great in Photoshop, because it includes a lot of unique filters, special effects and tools.
Adobe Illustrator is an advanced vector-based software.
So, unlike Photoshop’s pixel-based format, it uses mathematical constructs to create vector graphics. In Illustrator, a line is composed of two dots connected by a computer algorithm, instead of just a line of pixels. Because of this, Illustrator is used often to create logos or anything that may need to be printed or displayed at different sizes. A vector graphic will
never lose its quality if it’s scaled up or down. Illustrator will also give you a better print output since it’s not resolution dependent.
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A drawback of Illustrator is that it can’t be used easily to modify images that are already created, since there are limited filters and image editing tools available to you.
Adobe InDesign works best when it comes to making multi-page layouts with a lot of written content, like magazines or books.
It’s still best to stick with Photoshop and Illustrator to create graphics and then send them over to InDesign if you’re working on a book or PDF, since you’ll have more options and control over your creations. InDesign will preserve the vector images you created in Illustrator.
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