Illustrator vs Photoshop

[wisdom_of_trees]

So today in class my professor stated that if you do a company logo or any kind of letterhead that needed to go to print it was better to do it in Illustrator rather than Photoshop. He argued that vectors will always print better and clearer than the rastered images in Photoshop. He also argues that no matter how high your resolution or dpi in photoshop, the print will come out looking pixelated and cheap when it went to the printers.

...needless to say, a lot of the class didn't agree with him.

[Elwell]

He was right, although maybe for the wrong reasons (or maybe your recollection of what he said is flawed). The advantage of vectors is that they're infinitely scalable and resolution independent. So the same file can be used from anything from a business card to a billboard with no loss of quality.

[Jason Rainville]

And all of them are wrong.

Sure, you could jack your dpi in PS to, oh, 6000 just in case the logo needs to be on the side of a billboard, but guess what? How big is that file going to be? How long will it take to resize it? A vectorized image will do that in seconds, because there aren't any bitmaps, just equations.

Sure, you could design your logos in PS, but guess what? Good design doesn't depend on crazy filters, pen tablets or illustration... in fact it never should. Good design is simple, readble and usually flat. Vectors are clean and sharp - exactly what a logo should be.

Tell me why the class disagrees.

EDIT: aaaag, fancy pants elwell beats me again...

[Ilaekae]

Vector Rulz!

[wisdom_of_trees]

Tell me why the class disagrees.



I think that a lot of them felt that they don't have the kind of artistic license that they would with photoshop. One girl felt that her art needed some photo-esque quality that Illustrator could just never lend itself to. I have no idea about why she thinks she needs to use hyper-realistic imagery in her logos though. I just thought I'd share here though, some of the bickering that went on in class today was pretty ah...interesting. I was one of the few people who agreed with him, damn near had my head taken off though.

[Jason Rainville]

That's one of the weirdest arguments I've heard of... and to be so adament about it. Tell them to reduce their artwork to 1X1 inches and see how well that artistic license holds up.

Besides, you can do great things with Illustrator. Aside from some of the awesome work seen on this site, my prof (who's absolutely great) showed us some of his mindblowing illustrator work (an owl morphing into a shuttlecock) that took away all of our initial thoughts about illustrator.

Maybe they just need to be shown some good examples to get into the clean but still beautiful way of thinking.

[Magic Man]

Sounds like the people in your class know shit.

m

[Jason Ross]

Vector art is also less expensive to print as long as you minimize the amount of colors . You can spot/pantone color as well so you can reproduce the same color regardless of printer. But overall...since when do kids in some class with no real world experiencereally know what they are talking about? I mean they are "students" right?

[GriNGo]

Use the both together. I work at an ad agency, so I know how that works. Normally you would use Photoshop to add effects & shit to your logo (of course, working in a high res & dpi),place it inside an AI file, and you'll use illustrator to make the vector part (with masks), text creation, simple effects (like strokes and drop shadows), etc. But those photoshop+illustrator logos are extremely rare, only used when the logo implies some sort of photographic image. Illustrator is more than enough for your logo needs.

PS: If a logo has more than 2-3 colors, then I will seriously start to doubt with your design skills. The best logos only have 1 color (excluding the white). Photographic logos are mostly amateurish and unprofessional.

[Meli Hitchcock]

I think that a lot of them felt that they don't have the kind of artistic license that they would with photoshop.

Heh, sounds like none of them have ever launched Illustrator and really explored what that program is capable of.

Tell them all to hit http://limkis.com/ and come back saying their artistic license would get stifled. =p

[brianhamner]

Illustrator is overly complicated anyway. Corel draw is easier to work with. But he was right, bitmaps will pixelate. I am a graphics artist and I have to deal with converting bitmaps to vectors all day long to work a laser cutter/engraver and send off ad specialties to different companies. If you do all your work in illustrator, you can always convert it to a photoshop bitmap. If you try to go the other way and make a bitmap into a vector image, you can spend alot of time and energy and in some cases never get it to work. And since the majority of printers and ad spec companies wont even touch something thats not vector art, your instructor was right to tell you that you want to work in illustrator first. It will save you alot of time and headache.
Photoshop is good for pictures. Illustrator/Corel is wht you should always use for logos and ad designs. Vectors will always print better.

[Joshua Fountain]

You can do realistic/illusionistic artwork in vectors... it just takes a longer time.

The ability to upscale and downscale however and whenever you want with no time limitations or extra work put in makes it priceless for logo work and things of that nature.