Photoshop or Illustrator, Which is Best for Icon Design

You know which software ideal for icon design? “Photoshop” has gone beyond being merely a brand name to become regular household word. It was originally created as tool for photographer to edit and manage their photos and for many people, this remain its primary use.

Adobe illustrator is a standard vector graphics editor and was primarily created for icon areas of graphic design. Illustrator is now seen as a tool for both graphics designers and digital artist to create many different types of digital product. Both are now part of Adobe’s powerful creative cloud suite.

Photoshop and illustrator compared, both expose nearly the same possibilities to create icons except that illustrator uses a vector based system. In which situation is which product more reasonable and when should I prefer illustrator over Photoshop or vice versa?

But which is better for icon design? Illustrator

Using illustrator means your icon will be a vector object which is not part of a bitmap While both program can create logo, you need to think about maintainability and uses of your icon. While its initial size may be predefined icon need to be resized and reshaped according as it’s likely to be used in many times on many different materials.

A bitmap graphic created in Photoshop cannot be resized without pixilation or loss of quality. With that in mind , using illustrator means your icon will be a vector object which is not part of a bitmap. Meaning it can be reshaped and resized while retaining all if its quality.

Illustrator can provide many advantages that Photoshop cannot. Firstly, Using illustrator here makes the job a lot faster- there is the obvious resizing points. Illustrator is also great for creating reusable component. Using the symbols panel in illustrator, you can create a library of icon and form element that can be reused and manipulated many times over.