Andrew Badham 2024-05-10 11:37:35

As someone who trains Adobe courses, one of the questions I get asked most frequently is, which product should I learn? For those who purchase the Creative Cloud which would include all three, that is a bit of a redundant question. Still, they might ask, which one should I learn first? That can be a really tough question to answer because, in many scenarios, all three products can do what the user needs. Of course, there will be specific functions in each app that are completely unique. For example, no one expects InDesign to be able to remove your ex from family photos. No, that is strictly Photoshop. However, I have designed business cards, banners and brochures in all three of these applications and they all did a pretty decent job.

So, how do I advise people on which app to go for? Well, it’s going to come down to what tasks they do most often and which of those are the most important. Based on that, we can choose the application that has the greatest strengths in that field. While these apps do have overlap in their abilities that doesn’t mean they are just as good in those domains. So, let’s go through a quick breakdown of what makes each app special and what it struggles with.

Photoshop

Probably the most iconic of the trio, Photoshop has a legendary reputation for its ability to manipulate images. After all, the word "to photoshop" has become a verb in everyday language; we talk about photoshopping images even if we’re using free mobile apps to make ourselves a little less harsh around the edges.

So, if what you need to do is take images and manipulate them in any way shape or form, Photoshop will be a great choice. Neither Illustrator nor InDesign really has any photo editing capacity beyond cropping and adding effects. So, if you need to do any more advanced edits, including colour correction and restoration, Photoshop really is your only option.

Photoshop is also excellent at creating montages and compositions which involve creating an image from more than one photo with or without added text. For example, a movie poster with a collage of scenes and dramatic titles would be an easy task for Photoshop.

Speaking of dramatic titles, Photoshop is great at adding effects to objects and photos and that includes your text. While many of the effects of Photoshop are similar or replicated in Illustrator and InDesign, I personally have found Photoshop’s effects to be easier to apply and more powerful.

On the unexpected side, Photoshop even has some video editing capabilities. They are not as good as Premiere Pro or After Effects, but they can get the job done. So, if you need to do video editing as well, but can’t afford the Creative Cloud, Photoshop might be a good option.

What Photoshop is not great at is large amounts of text. Simple functionality such as creating a bullet list is completely absent in Photoshop and creating multipage documents is not particularly easy either.

What it’s great at:

• Photo correction
• Photo manipulation
• Compositions

What it’s bad at:

• Text editing
• Multi-page documents

Illustrator

As the name implies, Illustrator is really good at illustrating. What it lacks in photo manipulation, it makes up for in its vector abilities. If you don’t know what that is, vectors are infinitely scalable creations, which means you can make them as small or as big as you like without losing quality. Most of the vector-based designs you’ll have seen would be logos, icons and illustrations.

Speaking of logos, if I were designing a logo, I wouldn’t dream of doing it in anything other than Illustrator. Illustrator has fantastic tools for creating custom shapes with precision, which makes it by far the best of the bunch for a bespoke design such as a unique company logo.

Another great application of Illustrator is the creation of infographics and promotional banners. The high precision of Illustrator makes it easy to arrange and align your content in ways that flow sensibly and look neat and respectable. Because the graphics it creates are scalable, you can easily use that to create large, crisp banners for your conferences and other promotional events.

In terms of publishing print material, Illustrator does a perfectly adequate job. It has decent text editing functionality and can create multipage layouts. Although, much like Photoshop once you get past a few pages, it can become quite inconvenient. So, if your brochure only has a few pages to work with, Illustrator will still be a great choice.

Now don’t get frightened off of Illustrator thinking that you need to create everything from scratch. You can often download stock vector files such as icons off the internet and customise them in Illustrator.

What it’s great at:

• Logo design
• Icon design
• Infographics
• Illustrations

What it’s bad at:

• Photo editing

InDesign

While InDesign might seem like the most boring of the bunch it’s actually our most requested Adobe course. There’s a simple reason for that: most marketing departments simply need to arrange their content in a layout that looks neat and appealing. They often already have the icons, images and logos that they need for their designs; they simply need to compile them, and that is what InDesign does best.

InDesign has by far the best tools for creating layouts, especially for multipage designs such as books, manuals, and larger brochures. Its templating system of parent pages makes it easy to streamline your designs, so you don’t have to repeat yourself on every page.

InDesign also has by far the best text editing capabilities of the three, which makes activities such as typesetting a breeze. So, if you were hoping to create magazine-worthy print layouts, InDesign is a no-brainer.

InDesign also offers some interesting options such as the ability to create interactive PDFs and include rich media such as video and sound in your published PDFs.

InDesign does have a range of effects, but they are not as dynamic as Photoshop. It does have decent vector editing capabilities, but they’re not as detailed and precise as Illustrator. That’s why most people use InDesign as their final tool in the design process. They create their logos, icons and illustrations in Illustrator, their banners and images in Photoshop, and then they put them all together in InDesign. Thankfully, InDesign can import Illustrator and Photoshop files without you first having to export them.

What it’s great at:

• Multipage layouts
• Templating
• Text Editing

What it’s bad at:

• Photo editing

Which one should you choose?

So, which one should you choose to learn first? It depends on what you want to do. If you want to create logos, illustrations and scalable graphics, go for Illustrator. If you want to create photo compositions, and correct and manipulate images, Photoshop will be your best bet. If you want to put together print-ready documents with lots of text or pages, go for InDesign.

If you’re going to learn all of them and you want to know which one to learn first, there are some things to consider. In my experience, Photoshop feels the most intuitive and it can do a lot just by itself, which means you can do many of your designs just using Photoshop. However, if you need to do multipage layouts, I’d recommend InDesign instead.

There is nothing wrong with starting in Illustrator, especially if you are excited about vector design, but it can feel a little finicky and unforgiving compared to Photoshop. However, it is very similar to InDesign, so learning this first will only help you with InDesign later.

InDesign should be your first choice if all you want to do is put your content together in a neat and beautiful layout. I personally found it the most difficult to learn, but with proper training, that is easily overcome. It is also similar enough to Illustrator to give you a boost in learning that as well.