Do you use Photoshop in Web Design?

When designing a new website, a designer’s most useful tool is a pen and paper to get those early sketches down. However, many designers propagate using Photoshop in their design stage.

Certainly in the early stages, it can be especially useful in helping to visualise the final design – all before hard coding it. This may be a time-saver, since you won’t have to fight with CSS elements and semantic HTML.

However in my view, I prefer to hard-code from the outset, thereby creating a reliable framework for the website to grow. Besides this, text and type just doesn’t look the same in Photoshop and your web browser. 37signals makes a very good case for not using Photoshop in web design – and it’s worth a read.

You can’t click a Photoshop mockup. This is probably the number one reason we skip static mockups. They aren’t real. Paper isn’t real either, but paper doesn’t have that expectation. A Photoshop mockup is on your screen. If it’s on your screen it should work. You can’t pull down menus in a Photoshop mockup, you can’t enter text into a field in a Photoshop mockup, you can’t click a link in a Photoshop mockup. HTML/CSS, on the other hand, is the real experience.

from 37signals