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Friday 3 May 2013

Why You Should Not Use Photoshop Vs HTML and CSS

Now this is kinda bold topic to write about. I know I am going to hurt millions of Photoshop lovers. Photoshop is considered like a Goddess in design world. But… some serious questions are raised about it’s performance in last couple of years about it’s capability to produce quick iterations based on client’s feedback. We the designers prefer to save time and produce good quality designs rapidly. Budget is the main concern for every entrepreneur and not willing to spend money in this recession period. We the designer community wants the handsome compensation for our time spending on design.
 
If we keep working over photoshop to keep our client happy, it gonna hurt you back. You will still need to code that out after approval resulting in more man hours. I am listing out some points about why you should not use photohshop.
Photoshop is not giving a pure vector graphic environment to let you modify your designs really quick. Even if you modify your design, you will still need to code this.
Photoshop mockup cannot be clicked and no interaction can be designed. Forms designed in photoshop cannot be filled with a value. Buttons or navigation designed cannot be clicked or interact with. CSS is the answer to this question. Simply, create navigation using css by filling in colors through # codes and create hover states with drop down menus etc. Style your forms in css and make it a working prototype to let your client play with this.
The appearance of text in different sections of your phtoshop designs are not showing how it will look like on a browser. Every browser has it’s own way of rendering text on client’s machine. So it’s a big minus for Phothoshop and will confuse your client when he will see actual text rendered on browser and compare it with the actual photoshop mockup you sent him
Photshop is very distracting and keeps your focus away from the basics of design. Usually alignments and even distribution of design elements are ignored and designers spend time on effects and appearance of the objects. You can simply use css and html to achieve the alignment and balance thing.
Photshop is a repetition of your efforts. You worked out a mockup in photoshop in two days got it’s approval by client and now you are going to do it again using HTML / CSS. It’s better to focus on building something real productive and you can always improve and enhance it. Why spending time to adjust gradients, strokes on photoshop? You can do it using css. Shadows? Yes css is the answer. You can set x and y offset, its blurness and color. Every modern browser supports the css3 design related attributes.
You cannot iterate your designs quickly and share. As we discussed above, photoshop keep distracting you by providing a huge list of tools. You want something to align right, simply float it right. Text size looking small, increase a pixel in css and refresh browser. Submit button color is not using the right tone, open css and change it’s hex code, refresh your browser. HTML / CSS is a rapid prototyping thing as compared to the lazy photoshop design practice with no real interactivity involved.

If I conclude this discussion, I would prefer to work directly in HTML/CSS saving my time and efforts and provide cheaper solutions to the clients. By no mean I am saying Photoshop is not productive or just a scrap, but there are some serious issues with it’s iterative and collaborative capability. HTML/CSS is interactive and Photoshop is not.

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