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 Photoshop Design Space Preview, I spent yet another week trying to make Photoshop work for me.
It still doesn’t work. Design Space is on the buggiest experiences I’ve ever had on a computer, bar none.
I’ve even watched many of the design sprint videos the team at Adobe has posted on YouTube, and I have no idea how they’re getting the performance they’re getting. My MacBook Pro with Retina Display would crash doing a tenth of anything they’re doing.
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 Photoshop Design Space:
- proper support for vectors and much stronger zooming capabilities
- better font rendering, as well as displaying typefaces as vector properties. 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
- 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. ↩