Photoshop For Logos

Illustrator and Photoshop are some of Adobe's great drawing and design programs. I have always used Photoshop to design my website templates and logos, but lately I have been wanting to use Illustrator for logos. This is because Illustrator produces vector images (they can be resized without any loss in quality). I have no experience with Illustrator, so I'm wondering if it would be best for me to take the time to learn how to use Illustrator? Does it have as many features as Photoshop? Is it as user-friendly as photoshop? I have spoken to people before and they claimed that although the images couldn't be resized, photoshop has the ability to make better logos.

What are your opinions on this?

 

I use photoshop for logos and i dont plan to switch

 

Me too. I'm not sure how advanced is Illustrator because is used it only several times, but I think you should stay with something you already know

 

I've been having the same conflict as you. But I ended up deciding to learn how to use Illustrator, because when it comes down to it, it is more capable than Photoshop when it comes to making logos. Photoshop is still better when it comes down to making templates IMO.

 

wow. I'll go ahead and say it: It's literally impossible to produce a corporate-quality professional logo using Photoshop. Cannot be done!

A logo *must* be vector by simple definition! Although there may be vector capabilities in Photoshop, it still thinks of the canvas in pixel-space, not in vector-space, so the image itself, although scalable, isn't an acurate vector.

Thankfully, Adobe Illustrator is FAR easier to learn than other vector apps out there because you already know 90% of it already - all of the tools in Illustrator that Photoshop has have the same icon, same shortcuts, and work the same way. The learning curve is so small.

Honestly, play with text in Illustrator for a year and you'll wonder how you EVER though Photoshop was adequate.

Photoshop isn't a bad piece of software, it's just not for logo design. Photoshop, as the name implies, is a Photographic editing and manipulation program, and it does that very well. Illustrator is a Vector Illustration app, and for that sort of work, it does an amazing job.

Also do check out Inkscape, I find it more powerful in the illustration areas than Illustrator, and weaker in the text tool area, but for the price of free why not have and use both.

To all those 'designers' out there using Photoshop for everything - quit lying to yourselves, you're not designers, and any trained graphic designer will just laugh at you if you seriously think you can use Photoshop to do what Illustrator does. Go out and learn how to use it, it's wonderful and I use it daily.

Vectortuts.com should help a lot (also check out PSDtuts for photoshop tutorials by the same people).

Good luck, and please do bother to learn it everybody, once you do understand it you'll wonder how you ever managed before!

 

I have a problem similar to yours... I seem to be a horrible designer with Illustrator...

Illustrator has the feel and seems to be pretty similar to photoshop but, is not as user friendly I guess...

I love Photoshop for desiging everything, it is a shame and sad that it isn't vector based as Illustrator...

 

Innovati you are great. Your post always give such a good knowledge.

 

Illustrator its a powerfull and very friendly tool but most likely its really different from PS, well both have little same things as layer and filters, but yah man, pen tool =)

 

i like combining them both to give a different effect ^^

 

Is it possible to do blurs, shadows and pretty much anything Photoshop can to in the Layer Effects dialog box and filters menu in Illustrator and save it as a vector that can later be scaled and resized and then saved how you want it at any point.

Anybody who reverts a logo back into photoshop is simply hasn't learned Illustrator yet. Taking a vector logo into Photoshop is the quickest way to bastardize the work you've done - the point of having a vector is that it's scalable, so if the final is designed as a vector originally then finished as a bitmap what's the use in making it a vector in the first place?

Quite simply put - any logos that are originally designed in a format other than vector shapes, are pictures and not logos.

@caffeineromance: you say Illustrator is 'most likely' really different from PS, and while it is true that it is vector-based instead of bitmap-based, It's still made by Adobe, the tools have the same names, work the same ways, and often have even the same shortcuts between programs. Learning Illustrator from Photoshop should be easier than learning another bitmap editor (that isn't photoshop and is made by a company other than adobe). I can understand fear of the unknown, but please have some faith. Adobe is your friend, not some bitter old man who after taking your money tries to confuse you until you curse him and never give him money again. They try their absolute BEST to make them as easy as they can without sacrificing too much power, just on order to keep the customers they have.

Combining a vector with a bitmap creates a bitmap. The logo, the final one that is used, must be a vector. 100% vector. I can understand somebody just not knowing this and that's fine, that's why we have the forums, and that's why I bother to try to help - but to see so many uninformed people misleading everybody else is saddening. No matter how hard I try to educate I'll just be drowned out by a flood of people who don't know.

 

I took innovati's advice and just delved into Illustrator, and I will never use Photoshop again for Logos and such which may need to be printed at different sizes.

The vector stuff is really amazing, drawn by points and math rather than pixels, means that you can resize it to any size without any quality loss. Amazing! And you can basically do anything with Illustrator that you can with photoshop.

Cheers.

 

I agree with innovati, I am a Photoshop maniac but when it comes to logos and vector illustration, you can fake vector with Photoshop but It will never be as clean or as profissional looking as Illustrator.
@cra88 : I used to have the same problem you are having making the switch from photoshop to illustrator but then i stumbled upon vectortuts(dot)com and that's when Illustrator finally began to make sense .

 

Just REP you green, my friend. So, from now I need to reopen Illustrator after get bored of it. I really want to go on as a professional designer in the future.

 

Photoshop logos for website and 10$ worth logos. Vector logos are more like professional, industrial designs, company logos.

 

I have to agree with innovati here, people get so used to using Photoshop because it is possibly, the single most mainstream Photo editing software avaliable. I remember how shocked people used to get when I told them that I prefered using Fireworks MX back when Macromedia was Macromedia. I hadn't really used photoshop back then, I first used Fireworks.

People get so used to using photoshop that they believe they can do anything and everything with it!

If that was true, then why would Adobe even bother to create Illustrator? What would be the point in that?
The fact that there is even a program just goes to show that it is more localised and focused upon one area of design.

So if you want to illustrate, make vector based images, use illustrator, if you want to use photoshop for manipulation in a pixel space, use photoshop, if you want to paint, use painter!

Just had to chuck that last part in there!

That said, I did create that Ricky Gervais Vector image in photoshop, http://i554.photobucket.com/albums/jj413/hylianslast/Ricky-Vector.jpg which was my 1st ever Vector image. If I had used illustrator I think it would have looked nicer.

 

Use illustrator. It produces cleaner and nicer images.