Graphic design is a solution to many business needs, both for the creation of logos, layout of magazines, books, and even digital photo retouching to use images on social networks, posters, and different graphic compositions. But, what programs to use for design?
In my career as a teacher teaching concepts around design, I find that students are lost when it comes to choosing graphic programs. You have to first know that depending on the function to be performed, one program or another will be used and being able to complement them is the key to good work.
Graphical functions
non-digital graphic design elements
The design programs are differentiated by the following graphic functions:
Photo retouching
Digital retouching is about improving the quality of images. For this purpose, programs are used with tools to crop, resize, edit saturation, brightness, tones, contrast, from scanning them if they are on paper to more complex editions such as photomontages. Among them is the Photoshop program , widely used in the field of photography, any photographer uses this program to improve their captures, and in design to create compositions with different creative solutions.
Vectorization
Vectorization consists of creating images with geometric elements such as circles, squares, lines and especially Bézier curves , created by the engineer who bears his name. Programs are used for this with tools to be able to create vector images, that is, without pixels. Its advantage over raster images is that they can be increased in size without compromising their quality or resolution. There are programs such as Illustrator to create illustrations, logos, or simple layouts of a few pages.
Layout
Also called layout, it is the composition of text and images, and even audio or video if it is done with multimedia features. Programs such as InDesign are used , where master pages are created, so that the same basic composition can be used on all or several pages of the same document.
Animation
It is a resource that is increasingly used in graphic design , both for the creation of animated gifs, as well as presentations, credits or small animations for web pages. There are 2D animation programs such as Animate CC, or 3D animation programs such as 3ds Max or Blender.
Graphic programs
Let's start by learning a little more about the different programs. All graphic programs are based on analogue work , that is, they base their interfaces on traditional solutions. For example, they are provided with tools that can be knives, brushes, pencils, paint cans, as if we were working on a real table with real materials. They work with layers like the layers of paint that a painter actually uses in front of a painting that is initially white. And they superimpose colours, planes and details, one on top of the other.
Photoshop
It has an intuitive interface where you can improve the images, whether it is lighting, color, brightness, to give them greater realism, or on the contrary create creative effects. Without a doubt, the work of selecting images, cropping and composition is laborious. In other words, it takes practice and knowledge to be able to make realistic photomontages, without the intervention being appreciated. But with a precise methodology it can be achieved. Fashion photographers are the ones who suffer the most from the most complex editions. For graphic design work it is very useful to be able to improve the quality of the images and create compositions appropriate to each project. Another use of the Photoshop program is to be able to use the graphic tablet and paint and draw as if it were a painting. The easel is replaced by the computer, the canvas by the tablet, real brushes by virtual ones, having numerous sizes and thicknesses of stroke, and oil or acrylic by pixels.
Illustrator
It is very effective for vector illustrations. It has a work table, a blank space on which to work, so that you can add as many tables as necessary. It is very useful for drawing raster logos already created that we need to enlarge in size without affecting the resolution. In the following video you can see the difference between raster and vector. With Illustrator you can also create logos from scratch, composing different concepts, interweaving them into a single image that makes aesthetic and conceptual sense. To do this, you need to create freehand sketches and then draw them; you can use the graphic tablet for this, and even use it as a mouse.
The InDesign program
It is a layout editor, that is, it composes text and images. It is widely used in kuwait whatsapp numbers editorial design, for the layout of magazines, books, catalogues. It can work with an infinite number of pages, with the same tools as Illustrator or Photoshop but adapted to layout work. It can edit typography, compose it with images, and even videos and audios, as well as having an option to create interactive buttons, transitions and create interactive PDFs, that is, where the user can turn the pages of the document and access the videos and links how and when they want.
Cheer up
It is a 2D animation program that works with layers like Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign to place each element to be animated separately. It has a timeline, so necessary in animation programs, which makes placing a key frame with a certain time between another frame and moving the drawing create the illusion of movement. It works with interpolations, which are intermediate frames between the main key frames with the most important poses, and the program generates the intermediate frames automatically, saving a lot of time and effort in the animation work. In traditional animation there was the figure of the main animator, who drew the main poses by hand and the intercalator, who made the intermediate poses. With computer programs the work is greatly reduced. In graphic design, simple animations, gifs for web pages, small presentations, credit titles are increasingly in demand.