Photoshop, Illustrator or InDesign: which should you learn first?
If you are new to all three, start with Photoshop Introduction. It teaches the image editing almost every job needs, and you don’t need any previous experience. If you create brochures and reports frequently in your role, start with InDesign instead, and if you are designing and illustrating from scratch, start with Illustrator.
Let's look at these three programs and see how they work individually and together. The key question you need to ask yourself before dipping into any of the three is what does your workload and role most look like?
- All three courses are two-day (10am to 4.30pm) and no previous experience is required.
- List price £549 + VAT with prices from £399 + VAT on many dates.
- Classes of up to 8 in London, or up to 6 live online, taught by Adobe Certified Experts.
- 28 days of helpdesk support after the course.
Photoshop Introduction: for photos and images
9.8/10 satisfaction from 2,142 reviews
Photoshop is such a common entry point for anyone getting into digital design. The reason for this is that it covers a lot of the bases that most of us need in our day to day workflow and it does those tasks in a really intuitive way, once you have the skills locked in. Whether you need to retouch headshot images for the company website, resize images for a marketing email or crop an image to perfect the composition, Photoshop is the tool to use. That's the kind of thing most people use it for day to day, but there is so much that you can do with it creatively, like remove backgrounds, combine images or adjust colour. In a world where imagery has a very similar look and feel, Photoshop lets you create your own images rather than relying on stock photos. It's the starting point for many designers. It is very likely to be yours too.
Illustrator Introduction: for logos and illustrations
9.7/10 satisfaction from 1,125 reviews
So how is Illustrator different from Photoshop? Well, the clue is in the name. Think of Illustrator as more like a canvas, where lines, curves and colour come together to create logos, illustrations and graphics. To break it down, you would design these in Illustrator:
- A logo
- A garment design
- A character for an animation
- An infographic or chart
- Text layouts for adding to video
Graphics created in Illustrator are called vectors and they are scalable from tiny to as big as you can imagine. Illustrator can do useful things, like take your sketches and create digital versions of them, which you can scale and edit. It is a real designer's tool, so if outright creativity is your need and photos are less of a thing, it is one to look at, but I'd say second in the list when it comes to developing your design skills portfolio.
InDesign Introduction: for brochures, reports and documents
9.7/10 satisfaction from 4,156 reviews
InDesign is very different from the others as its focus is on multi-page document creation. You can design layouts that look professional and this translates across all media, such as catalogues, reports, brochures, leaflets, posters, any kind of printed material you can think of. But it doesn't stop at print. InDesign lets you create digital documents in many different formats and also allows you to add interactive elements to your documents to help engage readers. It is widely used for print and digital publishing in creative and marketing teams. If your role requires document creation over images, skip Photoshop and Illustrator and head straight to InDesign. Then follow up with Photoshop when you have InDesign under your belt.
Pixels or vectors: why it matters
Photoshop works with pixels, tiny squares of colour that make up an image. That’s what you need for photos, but if you enlarge a pixel image too far, it turns blurry. Illustrator works with vectors, shapes drawn from points and lines, so you can resize them as much as you like without losing quality. That’s why a logo should always start life in Illustrator. Made in Photoshop, it will look fine on a web page but blurry on a large banner or document.
Which should you learn first for your job?
Marketing assistant: start with Photoshop. Most of your day will be editing and resizing images for emails, web pages and social posts.
Junior designer: start with Photoshop, then Illustrator. Between them they cover images, logos and graphics, and InDesign can follow when you need it.
Social media: start with Photoshop. It covers cropping, resizing and adjusting images for each platform.
Communications, reports or publications: start with InDesign. If your work is newsletters, reports and brochures, that is where you will spend your time.
Do you need all three?
Not straight away, but they are designed to work together. Take a company brochure as an example. The photos are edited in Photoshop, the logo and any charts are drawn in Illustrator, and everything is laid out across the pages in InDesign. Once you know one program, the other two are easier to pick up, because they share many of the same tools and menus.
What to learn after the introduction course
Once you are comfortable with the basics, each program has an intermediate course that builds on what you have learned:
You can see every course in one place on our Adobe courses page.
Questions people ask
Can I learn all three at once?
You can, but I wouldn’t recommend it. Each introduction course is two days, and you will get far more from the next one if you have spent a few weeks using the first in your day-to-day work. Pick the one that matches your job, use it, then add the next.
Is Canva enough instead?
For quick social posts and simple graphics, often yes. Canva is fast and easy to share with a team. Where it falls short is detailed photo editing, original logos and long documents for print. If that is most of your work, our Canva Design Basics course may be all you need.
Which one is hardest to learn?
In my experience, Illustrator takes the longest to feel comfortable with, mainly because drawing with the Pen tool takes practice. Photoshop and InDesign tend to click sooner, because the tasks are closer to what most people already do on screen.
