Finally, Photoshop Is Dead for Web and App Design

Dude you should really get a Mac and Sketch.

If you are still using Photoshop or Illustrator for your web or app design projects, it’s time to start switching to HTML and CSS.

I think the tools are not so important. Adobe XD in my opinion, should have a lot of improvements to be usable in my workflow. I'm a mac user and I still use photoshop to make my UI designs.

this is not the way it is totally wrong your heading is very offensive Photoshop served a lot in your initial days and now this is the respect you are giving to it shame on you , I think you forget and that even you started in Photoshop

Not sure why you say photoshop is hated. Yes I'm a Mac user but I don't use Photoshop for the purposes your headline proposes.

Where can we download trail for XD?

@Darren I have a Mac but for various reasons I stay on Windows. One of them is to better understand what it takes to be a web designer/developer on Windows.

@Darryl good point :)

@Gustavo certainly Adobe XD needs improvements but it already has many useful features for UI design which Photoshop doesn't and will never have.

@Tharun sorry if the title feels offensive. I admit it's a clickbait title, I don't use those normally but couldn't hide my excitement that finally there is a usable alternative to Photoshop on Windows. If you check my article from 3 years ago you can see that I believed Photoshop still had a chance for UI design - https://www.xfive.co/blog/psd-to-html-is-not-dead/. Instead Adobe buried it themselves by creating Adobe XD. It just took until now on Windows.

@Alex indeed, hated might be too strong word. However, as a Windows user you had no other alternative than to use it for those purposes too which might lead to frustration because certain UI tasks are so unintuitive and slow.

@Tarantej you should be able to download it from here https://creative.adobe.com/products/download/experience-design, but you need to sign up for Adobe ID if you don't have one.

Adobe XD just isn't there yet. I wish it were. I was the first to get excited about this program when it was first in beta however Photoshop still does a better job if you're considering the layer comps tools and InVision seamless sync app for prototyping.

Interesting view, I'm a Windows designer as well.

But I wouldn't think Photoshop is anywhere near "dead" or anything close to it. I actually have never used PS in my career for web design, only for image retouching.

I use Affinity Designer and I've been doing pretty good so far. Only $50 USD and no stupid subscription required. You can check it out here: https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/designer/

I have to admit, I love the title of this article, hahaha 👌

With Sketch, you actually buy a license, for $69 for a year of updates, and you can keep using the version you paid for even if there is a newer version on offer. In contrast, Adobe will chain you to a monthly subscription and if you don't keep ponying up you can't access your files. I understand you Windows folks are in a bind, but if you can avoid the Adobe subscription model, I would strongly advise you to do so. Try Figma, Moqups, Webflow, and other online tools to prototype web sites and apps that were built to be for web work, not something hammered into an existing codebase of a software company whose roots are in print. That's my opinion.

@Matthew I hope that now when XD has almost caught up on Windows, they will start adding new features soon again.

@Ricardo thanks! :) Affinity Designer is definitely one of the alternatives to Photoshop although it's been available for Windows just recently. But that's another proof that the situation with the UI tools is getting better on Windows.

@Chris thanks for the opinion. I agree that avoiding Adobe's products can save you a quite a bit of money, on the other hand the products you listed also charge monthly even they are cheaper. Creative Cloud isn't that expensive if someone uses all the apps, the problem I see is that you cannot create a smaller customized package of apps for a fraction of the price. So probably the best design combo in terms of price on Windows is currently Affinity Photo + Designer.

I've forced myself to learn Affinity and couldn't be happier. Adobe's confusing and seemingly neverending line of products is exhausting.

I don't know how a lot of designers used photoshop for web/app design for a years... I was try to use it, but always I feel that I work with a slowly and anti productive tool for ui design. When you have a lot of layers are a stopper for productivity, and manage vectorial shapes, buttons or text... photoshop is the worse choice for that.

@Dustin thanks for the tip! I tried Affinity some time ago but definitely going to look on it again.

@PiterParking I second that but until recently the only alternative to PS on Windows was Illustrator, which has its own issues.

"Catch Mac if you can" XOXO. You had me there.
Quite well written.

Can you also recommend some more good tutorials for XD. I will submit those on hackr for the programming community.

Even they stopped developing quite a few years ago its still Adobe Fireworks all the way .... Adobe XD is very limited.

I'm completely new to UI/UX and started a few months ago and what I've found is that Figma is a monster now (I have no MAC), with all these layers, components, prototyping just all in 1 and completely free for individual use. Should I consider Figma as my main tool or should I start learning PS in 2018? I think we all know the answer. PS wasn't built for UI/UX it's a photo editing tool and always was.
P.S. Adobe XD seems good so far, probably another good tool for web-design in future.

For fifteen years I have used Photoshop for cleaning and balancing photos, but recently I updated my iMac to Apple OS 10.13.6, and I am dead in the water. There is no way to talk with anyone at Adobe, and all their site offers is info for new users who need to buy the product. I intend to use this down time to look into finding a newer product from a better company.