I don’t get cross very often. Actually that’s not entirely true.
I don’t get cross about software very often. Right. That’s not true either.
I’ve never before been cross enough about software to write a blog post about it… That’s the one!
What could have driven me to this point of no return? This video right here. To save you watching the video (and potentially getting as cross as me) let me explain my ire.
Adobe have cottoned on to the fact that a lot of people use Photoshop for making web page mockups. This has always had quite a few drawbacks: vast number of layers; having to label all of those damn layers to know what you did this morning; making new files for different screen sizes; objects not snapping to pixels resulting in anti-aliased edges; sucky align and distribute function; massive file size
I could go on.
So Adobe are creating, within Photoshop, the Photoshop ‘Design Space (Preview)’. This is how they explain it:
“Design Space delivers a sleek new interface with tuned interactions and new features targeted for your design workflows in Photoshop. Your entire Photoshop Design Space experience is optimized for common web, UI and app design tasks – minimizing clicks, mouse travel, panels, dialogs and clutter.”
Sound great, right?
Wrong!
What Adobe have done in Photoshop is re-create a crap version of Adobe Fireworks – software discontinued by Adobe a few years ago.
Why Adobe would be producing such retrograde software? Adobe are blessed with a huge following of designers who do EVERYTHING in Photoshop – logos, brochures, making tea, doesn’t seem to matter really. Rather than try and steer their customers towards a more flexible and productive workflow, they are trying to crowbar functionality into Photoshop that it simply can’t cope with.
Companies like Webflow, Macaw and Froont seem to have picked up on this and have produced amazing specialist tools for prototyping web pages. I’ve seen the benefit of this myself and now produce all my prototypes using Webflow.
Adobe are a company that listen to their users. Unfortunately this can result in really dumb ideas like “Design Space”. Don’t get me wrong – Photoshop is an essential tool that I use every day, but perhaps Adobe should be looking at specialist tools for specialist tasks instead of trying to make Photoshop do absolutely everything. Unless they can make Photoshop cook me a decent fry-up…