Hi. I’ve done work on the web for a number of years now and have worn a lot of hats. I now find myself wearing my designer cap for the first time in several years.
On my last go-round several years ago I used Photoshop (CS3) for Windows desktop to do mock-ups to show clients. In the time since I have used Balsamiq a bit and tried to teach myself GIMP, since I have moved to running Linux as my primary OS. I’ve gotten decent with GIMP, but I am in no way comfortable using it as my go-to creative tool now that I have some real jobs in my queue.
I’ve thought about Photoshop CC at 9.99 a month, but in a lot of ways Photoshop seems like overkill for what I need–a tool to allow me to quickly deliver my vision for a site redesign to clients.
I’ve done a 180 and seem to be moving more towards using cloud tools lately for the convenience. I was looking over creative tools in the Chrome Web Store this morning, but there are a lot and it seems a bit confusing. Do any of you use cloud tools to deliver the initial mock-ups to your clients?
Photoshop is the standard for professional work. GIMP is nice but still doesnt compared to PS in a professional environment. A carpenter is only as good as his tools. The same can be same for designers.
I can design a site in Notepad and MSpaint but its not going to be my best work due to the limitations of my tools. Get it?
Yes, I get it. What I was alluding to is that there are plenty of professionals who are looking to move on from Photoshop for more basic tasks. Spending $700 for a hammer when a $5 model will drive the nail doesn’t make you a better carpenter, only lighter in the wallet.
Anyway, I was hoping to get some honest evals of current cloud tools. I have been giving Sumopaint for Chrome a spin over the last day or so and it looks like it might fit the bill for what I need.
I have used Imagemagick to do headers and layouts; as it is command line you can composite items and move them about precisely. I would guess it is installed in Linux systems by default if you wanted to try it.
My primary work machine is running Fedora, but I have several machines throughout the house and find myself bouncing around a lot lately. Hence why the cloud option has piqued my interest.
Again, this is for simple layouts–an initial deliverable for smaller businesses. I am not talking enterprise-level stuff here. I realize that Photoshop or another professional tool is 100% the way to go in that case.
A Chrome web app + Google Drive definitely has some potential I think. It certainly makes the platform a non-issue.