Photoshop vs InDesign

Images are a great way to enhance audience retention and present complex information in an easy manner. Images make content more appealing to users which results in better performance of websites and web applications. Photo editing, manipulation and creation have always been tough tasks for designers so a lot of IT organizations released different photo editing software to ease this task. People often get confused in choosing the right software so we will compare two famous photo editing and image manipulation software, Adobe Photoshop and InDesign. Both of these softwares are very advance and provide a large number of robust tools to ease designing tasks.

What is Photoshop?

Adobe Photoshop is a graphic editor which is used to create and edit different types of images and allows users to save them in different formats. Thomas and John Knoll is known as its author and the development credit for this software goes to Adobe Incorporation. Initially, it was released in 1990 and its stable version was launched in 2022. It comes with a large number of tools to create and edit images like shape tools, selection tools, clone stamp tools, pen tools etc.

Advantages of Adobe Photoshop

• It is a professional photo editing software which helps in editing photos in an easy way.
• Almost all the image formats are supported by this software.
• It is available for various operating systems.
• It provides a large number of templates to use.
• It is an all-round software which produces high-quality images which are compatible with different platforms.

Disadvantages of Adobe Photoshop

• Buying for a lifetime is not available, only monthly and a yearly subscription is available.
• It is heavy software which requires a lot of memory and space on your system.

What is InDesign?

InDesign is a computer application built with the purpose of designing page layouts. It was developed by Adobe Incorporation using the C++ programming language. Initially, it was released in 1999 and its stable version came on the market in 2022 in the month of March. It is available in many languages. It is used for different purposes like creating magazines, e-books, newspapers, brochures etc.

Advantages of InDesign

• It is easy to install and configure.
• It comes with advanced tools all in one toolbar which can be placed on the top, bottom, right or left of the screen.
• It produces quality images which are suitable for print media.
• It allows different team members to work together on a project simultaneously.
• It has the power of community support.

Disadvantages of InDesign:

• It takes up large disk space on the user’s system.
• It requires heavy processors to work without hanging.
• No backward compatibility means files created in the new version cannot be opened in the older version.

Following is a table of differences between InDesign and  Photoshop:

	Photoshop	InDesign
1.	It can be understood as a pixel-based image editing software which is used to create, edit and manipulate images	It can be understood as a desktop publishing software which is also used in page layout designing.
2.	It is available in 26 languages.	It is available in 24 languages.
3.	Its subscription starts at $20.99 per month.	Its subscription starts at $20.99 per month.
4.	Its files are saved in PSD or PSB formats.	It saves files with the .indd file extension.
5.	It does not have the functionality to create page layouts.	It is used to create page layouts.
6.	It is built using Pascal and C++ programming languages.	It is built using the C++ programming language.
7.	It supports Extensible Markup Language (XML).	It does not support Extensible Markup Language (XML)
8.	3D object rendering is possible in Photoshop.	3D object rendering is not possible in InDesign.