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What Is Difference Between Photoshop And Illustrator?
If you’re new to graphic design or just the Adobe Creative Cloud framework, you may be wondering what the difference between Photoshop and Illustrator is.
Photoshop creates raster images, while Illustrator creates vector files. That concludes the plot.
Obviously, they are a little more complex than that. But, rather than glossing through anything with a clever remark, let’s dig into the weeds and sort it all out. Learn Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign through our Blue Sky Graphics online graphic design course today!
The Fundamentals: Raster vs. Vector
Let’s begin from the beginning in case you’re new to the designer scene. Adobe has a range of programmes known as the Adobe Creative Cloud, and with a recurring membership price, you can use any of their products. There are two applications in there that we’ll be working on today: Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop. Each has a priority, and it’s critical that you understand all of them if you want to be a good designer.
JPEGs are raster files (also known as bitmap files) made up of pixels, which are the tiny blocks that make up the computer’s monitor. Raster files, which include your personal images and the majority of picture material on the internet, allow for the mixing of colours, colouring, and other effects. In the field of logo design, raster files are a no-no.
Vector files are made up of lines rather than pixels. This ensures that regardless of how tiny or big the design is, the machine can make it in the same manner. It’s why you can use the same logo on a business card because a billboard, and they’re all created from the same paper.
What is the significance of this? The short explanation is scaling and rendering. Assume you have two similar photographs that are the same scale. The first is a vector drawing (created in Illustrator), and the second is a raster file (created in Photoshop). All would be fine and seamless once you expand the vector. However, enlarging the raster file is not the same. Since it is pixel-based, adjusting the amount of pixels in the object allows the device to guess where pixels can be omitted or inserted to complete the look. Which works well some of the time, just not all of the time. That’s why, when you double the size of a picture, it looks gnarly and pixelated.
The Benefits and Drawbacks of Raster Files
By chance, when you deal with a picture, you’re dealing with a raster graphic. After all, the images that come out of a camera could be RAW, JPEG, PNG, or even TIFF, but those are all various kinds of raster graphics, because you’re living in that environment. But that’s fine; it’s a nice place to be.
Raster files are ideal for artists because they have a great deal of versatility. You can merge, use paint brushes, and build smooth gradients with raster data, and while you can do any of these stuff with vector files, it’s much easier to do it with raster. Since it is dependent on pixels, as you run the method over several pixel points, a normal blending point happens. When you choose to be creative, you have a lot of choices, and it’s how you can quickly edit images.
They are, though, not scalable — for the most part. As previously said, since everything is dependent on pixels, it is up to the machine to determine which colour can go where when the picture is resized. Furthermore, several print shops have DPI (dots per inch) standards for the photographs they use. It’s usually 300DPI or higher, and you’ll need a high-resolution picture to do that. You can’t simply adjust the DPI and assume the consistency or size to stay the same — either of them has to yield. However, you should experiment with sizes a little bit, particularly if you’re going smaller. And if you screw with the DPI a little in the process, the picture fidelity normally stays the same heading that way. The trick is to note that going bigger means sacrificing consistency.
Since there are too many different tones to choose from, changing colours in a raster format may be more complex. It ensures you have to become a ninja with the lasso method if you want to alter a background, which is fine but may be intimidating to a novice artist.
The Benefits and Drawbacks of Vector Files
The capacity to scale vector files is by far the most noticeable benefit. A vector file may be indefinitely resized in any direction with no loss of accuracy or pixilation, regardless of the resolution of the monitor or the object on which it is shown. In short, it’s the only file form you can use while working on any concept that requires scaling up or down at any time.
It’s also really simple to adjust a colour in a vector file: simply tap it and choose a new one from a swatch or colour picker. Like they claim, it’s a piece of cake.
And leads us to the disadvantages. It is possible to create photorealistic vector pictures, but it is not only difficult but also time consuming. You can mix raster effects with vectors — gradients and so on — but it can be difficult. After all, whether they have a raster effect, they aren’t true vector pictures, and all of that will break down when you look at the data in outline view.
Outline view is a mode in Illustrator that allows you to see the lines of a drawing on their own. It reveals where the points directly link in a basic vector sketch, but if you use an impact or attempt to render something photorealistic, the outline becomes even more complicated. It resembles a topographical map of the French Alps, except without the frost.
The other problem with vector graphics, and especially Illustrator, is that they are far more challenging to learn how to use. Though Photoshop seems to be intuitive, dealing with points and the pen tool in Illustrator may be exasperating because it doesn’t always perform as anticipated. And combining routes may be almost as difficult or confusing when you can disagree with Illustrator’s interpretation of the scenario. It makes you want to huck your machine through a wall, and as someone who values their drywall.
