Why I still use Photoshop

Currently in Adobes moment of need, alternative competitors are offering their products at a more affordable rate, directly going after adobes disgruntled customers. Combine this with the current economic downturn the world is at the time this post was written, people have more reason than ever to move on from Adobe’s Creative Cloud. Affinity is a great alternative for vector based artwork, as well as providing a suitable replacement for Adobe Acrobat. For video editing, DaVinci Resolve provides a strong solution that also has a version that is free to use. With Adobe Animate, Canva Calvary happens to provide a procedural based alternative that also happens to be free.

The only program that I was hard pressed to find a suitable replacement for was photo shop. Photoshop is primarily used for illustration, while also having plenty of utility to support other task. With it being used for illustration work there are special requirements that must be considered before making the switch to another software. A big one that I did not consider to be much of an issue was performance past 4000 pixel resolution.

Looking at Clip Studio Paint as a potential alternative, we can see that performance is starting to lag at 6000×4500 pixel resolution.

This issue is further exacerbated with 8000×6000 pixel resolution and that is fine. This is especially true when I switch to larger brushes.

When moving over to photoshop at 8000×6000 pixel resolution we can see that photoshop is more performant.

With illustration it is important to note the difference between the resolution being displayed to the public and the actual pixel dimensions being used for the drawing canvas. When uploading image to different websites there is often a file size limit that needs to be considered. The resolution size will have a direct effect on the size of the file being uploaded. Often times image will have to be shrunk to meet these file size requirements so our perspective on pixel size is warped. Clip Studio Paint was designed to streamline the creation of mangaka based artwork which has an emphasis on line work not illustration. Rebelle 8 also has the same issue, but for its case it was designed to simulate real life brushes.

While there are alternatives that I can use in lieu of photoshop for a more affordable price, I would be paying for it by losing access to the higher resolution canvas photoshop provides. Without the higher resolution, users will have to yield control with how gradation can applied. Normally when artist wants to create a smooth surface, you would have to paint the differing values in layers than apply a smudge brush to provide that smoothness. While it tended to be tedious at times, it allowed for the necessary control that made. It was the difference between having the artwork look professionally done and looking like the artist relied too much on air brushes.