If you’re considering a career in graphic design, you’ll want to know which tools you might use to bring your creativity to life–and you’ll want to master them. In the Graphic Designer Diploma Program at AOLCC Alberta, you’ll learn how to use three industry-standard software tools that will help you create eye-catching digital images, illustrations, web page layouts, and more. Keep reading for a brief overview of Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign. Learn their features and why they’re all essential for all future graphic designers to hone their skills and create high-quality design projects for clients.

1. Create Compelling Visuals With Photoshop During Your Graphic Design Career 

Adobe Photoshop is an all-in-one software that allows users to draw, edit, and produce designs. You’ll have various features at your disposal to create stunning visuals. These include retouching and remixing tools to alter photos, hundreds of drawing brushes that allow you to create unique digital calligraphy, quick-click selections to save time when choosing an area of a project to work on, and much more. The primary benefit of Adobe Photoshop that makes it so widely used is the complete creative control it grants its users. It supports most file types, allows users to work in layers, and enables image adjustments down to the pixel.

Photoshop is among the most commonly used photo editing tools in graphic design careers

After completing our graphic design diploma program, you’ll use Photoshop to create interesting graphics, edit visuals, and complete any design project that requires a significant amount of detailed work. Photoshop is a part of Adobe’s Creative Cloud and is designed to work in tandem with other Adobe staples, such as Illustrator and InDesign. 

2. Create Scalable Projects With Adobe Illustrator 

Adobe Illustrator is commonly used to create vector graphics. Instead of a set number of pixels, which is what photoshop projects are composed of, vector graphics are made up of lines, curves, shapes, and points, based on mathematical formulas. One benefit of vector graphics is that they are highly scalable, meaning the design doesn’t lose image quality even as it is expanded or shrunk. After completing your graphic design course, you may use Illustrator for design projects that might need to be resized often, such as graphics used in business cards and large posterboards, for example.

3. Create Professional Print Layouts With Adobe InDesign

InDesign is an excellent tool for designs containing heavy blocks of text as well as visual elements, like books and ebooks, magazines, and brochures. It’s considered the industry standard for long-form, multi-page documents, but there are several more applications. Throughout your graphic design career, you can also use InDesign to create professional reports, interactive virtual documents, and any project that requires you to combine graphics with text. 

In the Graphic Designer Diploma Program, you’ll receive comprehensive instruction on all three Adobe programs mentioned in this blog. In addition, you’ll learn about colour theory, typography, page composition, and much more. Our students receive a well-rounded education that prepares them to take on various graphic design projects.