PS is powerful, but it is a bit huge for designers, especially UI designers. Its version is updated frequently and unstable, and its operation requires high computer configuration. It is a "burden" for beginners. It is lighter but powerful. The appearance of the design tool, that is, the PS online web version brought to you by this article - instant design , powerful and free!
1. Powerful PS online web version
1. Multiple shape and path selection
Compared with the PS online version, Instant Design has unique advantages in multiple shapes and path selection. Using instant design, we can select multiple paths, shapes, and vector masks at the same time, and perform multiple tasks without multiple mouse clicks. When drawing a rectangle, Instant Design can generate four different rounded corners for more precise rounding settings. The stroking function is also more flexible, enabling fine-grained effects.
2. Pen tool
The pen tool is one of the core functions of PS, and Instant Design has also made breakthrough innovations in this area. The instant design vector grid tool makes drawing more convenient. You don't need to click the anchor point, you can directly select the line part to move, and the connected points will also move accordingly. The grids are automatically snapped and aligned, and the center point can be quickly selected in the middle of each line segment, which further improves the efficiency of graphics drawing.
3. Sketchpad tool
The Sketchpad tool in Instant Design is also a useful feature, allowing for easy management and output of multiple files. By creating a sketchpad, you can modify information such as the name, size, resolution, and background color of the UI interface. Each artboard is equivalent to a single file, and in Instant Design, artboards are more like powerful groups or divs than just artboards. Artboards designed on the fly also come with some extra properties, like background fills and multiple vector grids, to give you even more flexibility in organizing your content.
4. Reference components
Instant Design introduces the ability to reference components, making styling changes more efficient. Various layer attributes such as fill color, font, shadow, etc. support independent creation and use, and any style can be freely combined to maintain a high degree of freedom. If you need to modify a general parameter, you only need to adjust a color in the style, and the colors of all elements using this style will be automatically updated, which greatly improves the creative efficiency.
5. Component variants
Just-in-time design also excels in component variants. Traditional tools need to manually create multiple layers and open them one by one, while Instant Design introduces the component variant function, which merges multiple reference components into a whole, and can switch between different states of components at will. This makes it more convenient to modify the state of the component, eliminating the need for repeated manual replacement, saving a lot of time and effort.
2. Why PS is not suitable for UI design
Although PS is a powerful design software, it has some limitations when it comes to UI design. First of all, when multiple PSD files are opened and operated at the same time, PS may freeze, crash or crash, resulting in low work efficiency. Secondly, PS lacks component functions and cannot improve design efficiency, while UI design usually requires frequent reuse of elements. In addition, PS is relatively scarce in terms of UI community resources, and it is difficult to find a rich UI resource library. At the same time, PS cannot automatically layout, and moving layers requires recalculating the element spacing, which makes the design process cumbersome. In addition, PS's file sharing and delivery functions are not convenient enough, requiring manual cutting and exporting, and the size is difficult to maintain, which brings a lot of inconvenience to the work.
3. The new features of the web version of PS instead of real-time design
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Component function: The web version of PS replaces real-time design with powerful component functions, which can quickly create components for reuse in subsequent designs, and can create component variants by itself to improve design efficiency.
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High-quality design resource community: The web version of PS replaces the real-time design resource community with a rich UI/UX design work exchange platform, built-in numerous design systems and UI component libraries, and provides a large number of high-quality templates to facilitate designers to obtain high-quality resources.
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Auto Layout: The web version of PS replaces instant design to support auto layout, which can create a design that fills or shrinks to fit, and rearranges as the content changes, providing a convenient solution for device needs of different resolutions.
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Online collaboration: The web version of PS replaces real-time design and supports multiple designers to collaborate on a canvas or project, real-time online update and access to modified content, eliminating cumbersome file transfer and version update steps.
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Efficient interaction: The web version of PS replaces real-time design and can export multi-magnification images in Png, SVG and other formats in batches, avoiding manual cutting of images, and supports the conversion of artwork information into codes, which is convenient for developers to view and copy codes.
