Photoshop or Illustrator? Or something else?

Hi there - So I'm wanting to create some drawings for a game and I've been told by some people that I should use Illustrator because its vector based and other people have told me that using Photoshop is fine even though it's not vector based. Anyone have any tips for the best way to create your images and getting them into Construct 2 without them looking fuzzy? Thanks!

Sean

Not sure which one fits your needs best. If you want to make some pixel art you can use Photoshop but for anything with complicated shapes its better to use Illustrator, it has so many options to create shapes. Photoshop then again, does have a lot of filters you can apply to your images or heck, even create patterns and effects with a few simple actions.

For me, Photoshop was easier to master, I never really mastered Illustrator fully, so I personally stick to Photoshop for the time being. So Photoshop for effects and pixels, and your needed cropping, downsizing, Illustrator for shapes like characters, vehicles and whatnot. I'm sure someone has more to say about this, but it's best to judge for yourself what the programs can do (search Photoshop/Illustrator tutorials) and see if their capabilities fit your needs.

— Well to be more specific, I am designing a title screen for the game. It'll essentially be a digital painting. I am way more comfortable in PS than I am in Illustrator so it'd be great if I could do it in PS.

Also, does the image in PS have to have the same width and height as it will need to have in Construct 2 when I save it in PS or can I mess with the dimensions in C2 once I import the painting?

Thanks!

You can resize the image once it's loaded into Construct 2, by adjusting Sprite size, for example. Because of that, if you use Photoshop to make your graphics, it's generally recommended that you make them large enough for the largest resolution you plan to support. So if your game is targeting 1920 x 1080 at the highest, then you might make your title screen the same size and then scale it down for smaller resolutions.

I can't see why it would be better to make it in Illustrator rather than PS, when the files get imported into C2 they will be converted anyway.

The biggest benefit of using vectors to make graphics in this case, is that you can scale without loosing quality, but that is lost when imported and converted to a pixel based one. So I would suggest that you use what you think is best.

However it might be easier to do animations with vectors, as you can drag things around using the control points etc.

If you are looking for a good vector program, I would recommend Inkscape which is free and easy to work in as well.

srm1984 If you are good artist then you could even use free version GIMP too. Depend on your talent mate