# An Overwhelmed Designer's Guide
*A quick and dirty guide on what to use for design tasks.*

When given a design task, there are multiple digital tools at your disposal both on the internet and with software on the computers at the Learning Lab. However, sometimes the options can be overwhelming.

Here is a quick guide for what tools best suit particular projects to make navigation a little easier.

## Adobe Suite

### Cameras → Digital Images

**1. Lightroom**

If we already have a tool for photo editing like Photoshop, why would we need another one? Good question. **Lightroom is essentially a super specific subset of Photoshop which helps you edit large batches of photos in one sitting**. And, it keeps them **organized**.

This program is a critical processing step when taking a **large batch of images from an SD card in a camera**, and it helps you look at a bunch of related images (like a burst) and compare them to each other using **tags, star ratings, and flags**. This makes it very easy to narrow down the gems from a long/large photoshoot, and to quickly edit those batches.

When working from camera to computer, **Lightroom is a great first step**. From there, for more detailed editing and manipulation, head to photoshop.

*TLDR:*

**Good for:** *Sorting lots of photos and quick edits*
**Bad for:** *More extensive edits, and it is has a lot of moving parts*
**What makes it cool:** *Fast photo editing capability*

**2. Bridge**

Adobe Bridge is a lot like Lightroom, but it has **stronger sorting capacities and few internal editing features**.

*TLDR:*

**Good for:** *Sorting lots of photos, simplicity*
**Bad for:** *Editing the photos*
**What makes it cool:** *Super simple*

### Digital Images → Modified Digital Images or Print Images
**Photoshop**

Photoshop is probably the Adobe program that most people recognize. It is a **pixel based program** that is **optimized for manipulating images**. It is an incredible tool that lets you do a wide range of tasks from transforming photos into comic books to creating mockups for website design to creating 2D animations.

It’s great for **color correction, collaging together photographs, swapping backgrounds, and working with texture**. However, it also has very comprehensive brush tools, which make it an excellent tool for **digital drawing and painting** (when paired with a drawing tablet—like a Wacom). And, it talks to other adobe applications.

One of the coolest things about Photoshop is its ability to **create images in layers**, and that when you create those layers and open an image in another program, say to animate the image in Adobe After Effects, the layers will be retained. There are so many things that you can do in Photoshop with a little bit of exploration that it is probably better to highlight what it is not optimized for.

Photoshop is **not great for creating things that need to exist in multiple different sizes**: to be blown up super huge for a billboard and also printed on a business card, and sometimes work can come out as blurry if you try to resize it after the fact of creating it. Photoshop also **doesn’t do well with massive amounts of text or toggling multiple different compositions at once**.

*TLDR:*

**Good for:** *Photo editing, creating templates and mockups, digital illustration, 2-D animation, creating images that can be modified in After Effects for animation*
**Bad for:** *Lots of pages, lots of text, logos*
**What makes it cool:** *Layers, masks, textures, brushes, and the ability to import and customize fonts, pictures, etc*

### Idea → Digital images or Print Images
**Illustrator**

Illustrator is a **vector based program** that lets you work in a space with multiple compositions called artboards, which allows you to shift elements from one to another--like working at a physical table with a bunch of different collage elements. However, the size of those artboards doesn’t really matter because working in vectors allows you to make elements that can be **resized to any scale without losing resolution**. Hence why it is great for making **logos and working with text in creative ways**.

Its name also suggest that it has **extensive drawing capabilities**, and it does! However it is much more possible to draw with just your mouse in Illustrator than in Photoshop because of its focus on shapes and the specific physics of the pen tool. Though, drawing with a tablet is very common practice.

It's good for working with **illustrations, photos, and lots of text**.

**InDesign**

**Google Docs, Slides, Sheets**

**Online Resources like CAVA**