Every time I start mocking up a new project, I have a habit of beginning the work in Photoshop. After all, it seems that many other designers — some who I greatly respect — swear by the software. So there’s this part of me that figures, it must just work.

Of course, we all know that’s not necessarily the case. But when Adobe used this year’s Creative Cloud update to release Design Space Preview, I spent yet another week trying to make Photoshop work for me.

It still doesn’t work.

I can certainly appreciate the vision Adobe has for the product, but it’s so far behind. Artboards and a simplified skin won’t save Photoshop. Here’s what it would take to get me out of Sketch and back into Adobe’s playground:

  • proper support for vectors and much stronger zooming capabilities
  • better font rendering, as well as displaying typefaces as vector properties. Really, if anybody should be able to pull this off, it would be Adobe. If I can do it in CSS, I want to be able to do it in Photoshop.
  • a native, speedy, buttery-smooth app for OS X. Sketch is so much less prone to crash on me that using it is a total no-brainer.
  • an interface that doesn’t make me feel like I’m wandering through a pit of darkness and despair

Am I asking for too much?1

Footnotes

  1. All this being said, if you ask me, the only reason to continue using Creative Cloud is InDesign and Adobe’s sensational colour tool. Particularly if you’re on a Mac, it seems like there’s a better alternative for every other app. ↩︎