

Ask HN: What do designers you work with use to provide assets to you? - ten7

I run a small interactive shop in Minneapolis (TEN7.com) and we work with designers all the time. We&#x27;ve required them to provide layered Photoshop files to us so that we can create the designs, both in Desktop and Mobile. It&#x27;s worked great. We&#x27;ve never encountered a designer for whom this is an issue.<p>We&#x27;re now working with someone who has basically accused us of being out of touch, saying that &quot;Most designers I know do not think of Photoshop as a &quot;design&quot; program. A lot that I talk to prefer to do layouts in indesign and then present pdf files with multiple layout versions to clients.&quot; Basically, she&#x27;s designed everything in InDesign, used that to show mocks to our mutual client, and then she recreates them in PSD for &quot;the developers&quot;.<p>As far as I am concerned, this is idiotic. Just use Photoshop to begin with, and you&#x27;re done.<p>What I really want to know is whether I&#x27;m the crazy one? So, community poll... what do the designers you work with provide to you? Photoshop? InDesign? Fireworks? Illustrator? Something else? HELP!
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lsiunsuex
Why would you design in InDesign first, then recreate it in Photoshop? That's
ridiculous; you're doing twice the work.

I've been moonlighting as a freelance web developer for 8 years now for a guy
in Toronto Canada and he always sends me PSD files to slice and dice.

Recently, I've been working with a new designer local to me in NY; fresh out
of college. She wanted to know how to send me the designs so I sent her one of
the ones I get from my guy in Toronto. She had absolutely no problem following
the layout; how the design was broken into groups, labeled, ordered, etc...

PSD or bust. And no, Pixelmator isn't the same.

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ten7
That's exactly what I thought. Complete and utter waste of time. Plus, the
designer is charging the client to "convert" it as an additional fee. Just
crazy.

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heldrida
Most designers I work with 99% use Photoshop.

The best designers I've met, they use Photoshop just for manipulating images,
etc. They also use Fireworks ( __adobe is not supporting any longer), etc.

I think who designs for web, could and should know how to create prototypes. I
don't think Photoshop is the best tool for design. Principles like Master Page
and so on, are non-existent in Photoshop...

Anyway, I hate to open PSD files, photoshop is slow. I usually pick the full
merged JPG and work on that. Cut images from that etc (everything not perfect
with errors, etc). Then I share the image folder with the designer and he
substitutes the images for me etc - this is usually already coded, so as long
as he position the images properly etc overwritting it is fine!

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frozenport
I do publishing and we go straight Indesign. Covers are made in Photoshop.

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ten7
You cut images and layout from InDesign? What do you mean by Covers?

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frozenport
We produce a scientific journal with associated promotional materials, every
issue there is one cover which is produced in Photoshop. The advertising
materials are made in InDesign (our designer gives us 2 choices for each item)
and each issue is programatically layed out in IDML by my software and touched
up by a some kid I found at a coffee shop. I do computer work for this group
and I wouldn't call us particularly profitable.

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crgt
Photoshop or Illustrator files.

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ten7
Options:

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ten7
InDesign

