Michal Ždanský Due to the excesses and behavior of Adobe towards its customers, more and more graphic artists and designers are looking for alternatives, just as they were looking for a replacement for QuarkXpress and found it in Adobe InDesign. Photoshop has two good alternatives on the Mac - Pixelmator and Acorn - and with the addition of features to both applications, more and more people are saying goodbye to Adobe's feature-rich software in a cluttered user interface. Illustrator has only one adequate substitute, and that is Sketch.
Like Illustrator, Sketch is a vector editor. Vector graphics have recently gained more and more importance due to the general simplification of graphic elements, both on the web and in operating systems. After all, iOS 7 is made up almost entirely of vectors, while texture apps in older versions of the system required very skilled graphics to create wood, leather, and the like effects. After spending a few months with the application, I can confirm that it is a great tool for both beginning designers and advanced graphic designers due to its intuitiveness and range of functions.
The user interface
It all starts with a clear arrangement of elements in the application. The top bar contains all the tools with which you will work on vectors, on the left is a list of individual layers, and on the right is the Inspector, where you edit all vector properties.
In the middle, there is an infinite area that allows for any approach. All elements in the application are docked, so it is not possible to position the toolbar or layers differently, however, the top bar is customizable and you can add all the existing tools to it, or select only the frequently used ones and use the context menus for everything else.
While an infinite area is standard in vector editors, for example when creating graphic design applications it is ideal to have a bounded work area. Although it can be solved with a rectangle as a base, for example, it would be difficult to adjust the grid. Sketch solves this with the so-called Artboard. when they are activated, you set the individual surfaces and their dimensions in which you will work. Either free, or there are several preset patterns, such as an iPhone or iPad screen. When you're working with Artboards, all vector elements outside of them are grayed out, so you can better focus on individual screens and not be distracted by anything that sticks out.
Artboards have another great use – the related Sketch Mirror application can be downloaded from the App Store, which connects to Sketch on Mac and can directly display the contents of individual Artboards. For example, you can test how the proposed iPhone UI will look on the phone screen without having to export images and upload them to the device again and again.
Of course, Sketch also includes a grid and a ruler. The grid can be set arbitrarily, including the highlighting of lines, and the possibility of using it to divide the column or row area is also interesting. For example, you can easily divide the space into three thirds without having to display the other auxiliary lines. It is a great tool, for example, when applying the golden ratio.
instruments
Among the vector drawing tools, you'll find practically everything you'd expect - basic shapes including spiral and point-by-point drawing, curve editing, converting fonts to vectors, scaling, aligning, just about everything you need for vector drawing. There are also several points of interest. One of them is, for example, using a vector as a mask for an embedded bitmap. For example, you can easily create a circle from a rectangular image. Next is the arrangement of the selected objects into a grid, where in the menu you can set not only the spaces between the objects, but also choose whether to take into account the edges of the object or whether to add a box around them if they have different lengths or widths.
Functions in the top bar are automatically grayed out if they are not available for the given object. For example, you cannot convert a square to vectors, this function is intended for text, therefore the bar will not confuse you with constantly lit buttons, and you immediately know which of the functions can be used for the selected layers.
Layers
Each object you create appears in the left column, in the same order as the layers. Individual layers/objects can then be grouped together, which creates a folder and the panel shows the entire tree structure. In this way, you can move the objects in the groups at will, or merge the groups into each other and thus differentiate the individual parts of the work.
Objects on the desktop are then selected according to these groups or folders, if you like. If all folders are closed, you are at the top of the hierarchy, selecting one object will mark the entire group to which it belongs. Click again to move down a level and so on. If you create a multi-level structure, you will often have to click through for a long time, but individual folders can be opened and specific objects in them can be selected directly.
Individual objects and folders can be hidden or locked in a given position from the layers panel. Artboards, if you use them, then serve as the highest point of the whole structure, and by moving objects between them in the left column, they will also move on the desktop, and if the Artboards have the same dimensions, the objects will also move to the same position.
To top it all off, you can have any number of pages within a single Sketch file, and any number of Artboards on each page. In practice, when creating an application design, one page can be used for iPhone, another for iPad and the third for Android. A single file thus contains complex work consisting of tens or hundreds of individual screens.
inspector
The inspector, located in the right panel, is the thing that sets Sketch apart from other vector editors I've had the chance to work with so far. Although it is not an innovative idea, its execution within the application contributes to very simple manipulation of objects.
By selecting any object, the inspector changes as needed. For text it will display everything related to formatting, while for ovals and rectangles it will look a little different. However, there are several constants such as position and dimensions. The size of the objects can thus be changed very easily by simply overwriting the value, and they can also be positioned precisely. Color selection is also well done, clicking on a fill or line will bring you to the color picker and a preset palette of some colors that you can customize as you wish.
In addition to other properties, such as the termination of joints or the style of overlay, you will also find basic effects - shadows, inner shadows, blur, reflection and color adjustment (contrast, brightness, saturation).
The styles of both fonts and other vector objects are very cleverly solved. In the case of text, its properties can be saved as a style in the inspector, and then assigned to other text fields. If you then change the style, all text that uses it will also change. It works similarly for other objects. Under the Link button, there is a menu for saving the style of the selected object, i.e. line thickness and color, fill, effects, etc. You can then link other objects with this style, and as soon as you change the property of one object, the change is also transferred to related objects.
Additional functions, Import and Export
Sketch was also developed with an emphasis on web design, so the creators added the ability to copy CSS attributes of selected layers. You can then copy them into any editor. The application cleverly comments individual objects so that you can recognize them in the CSS code. Although the code export is not 100%, you can still achieve better results with a dedicated application Webcode, but it will largely serve its purpose and will let you know if it can't transfer some attributes.
Unfortunately, the editor cannot yet natively read AI (Adobe Illustrator) files, but it can handle standard EPS, SVG and PDF formats. It can also export to the same formats, including, of course, classic raster formats. Sketch allows you to select any part of the entire surface and then export it, and it can also mark all Artboards for quick export. In addition, it remembers all the selected surfaces, so if you make some changes and want to export again, we will have previously selected parts in the menu, which of course you can move and change the dimensions as you like. The ability to export in double (@2x) and half (@1x) sizes at the same time as 100% size is also nice, especially if you are designing iOS applications.
The biggest weakness of the application is the complete lack of support for the CMYK color model, which makes Sketch completely useless for everyone who designs for print, and limits its use to digital design only. There is an obvious focus on web and app design, and one can only hope that support will be added in at least a future update, just as Pixelmator later got.
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After several months of work and two graphic design jobs, I can say that Sketch can easily replace the expensive Illustrator for many, and at a fraction of the price. During the entire period of use, I did not come across a case where I missed any of the functions, on the contrary, there are still a few things that I did not have time to try.
Given the general transition from bitmaps to vectors in mobile apps, Sketch can play an interesting role. One of the orders mentioned just concerned the graphic design of an iOS application, for which Sketch is perfectly prepared. The Sketch Mirror companion app in particular can save a lot of time when trying out designs on an iPhone or iPad.
If I were to compare Sketch with Pixelmator against its competitors from Adobe, Sketch is still a bit further, but it owes more to the robustness of Photoshop. However, if you plan to leave the Creative Cloud and the entire Adobe ecosystem, Sketch is clearly the best alternative, surpassing Illustrator in many ways with its intuitiveness. And for the $80 that Sketch comes in at, it's not that hard of a decision.
Note: The app originally cost $50, but dropped to $80 during December and February. It is possible that the price will decrease over time.
[app url=”https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sketch/id402476602?mt=12″]
The size of the installation file is also amazing - 6,2 MB!
That's all nice, but without CMYK support (which is not yet planned) it's a pain in the ass for DTPers ;-) Which doesn't mean that it doesn't have its goal ;-)
This is the umpteenth article about a graphic application that ignores the non-existence of CMYK. I would like to see those orders :)
Both orders were for applications, so CMYK didn't fail me. But I understand that for designers designing materials for printing, the absence of CMYK is fatal. It should definitely be mentioned in the review.
To the added paragraph: Pixelmator only saw previews in CMYK. It cannot work in CMYK.
May I know what Quark made his users so angry about? I don't know that history, I'd be interested. Thanks.
It is well described here: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/01/quarkxpress-the-demise-of-a-design-desk-darling/
Thanks. Quark upgrade pricing is still terrible. However, as a casual DTP "creator" who only got into it after the introduction of the InDesign subscription, Quark is pretty much the only alternative.
I personally got used to Pixelmator and I do what I need in it, but from the screenshots I can't imagine using this instead of Illustrator…….
Hello, is there any application in the appstore that would be like adobe indesign? I need something for flyers and so ... thanks for the advice
I think from Swift Publisher.
Any experience?
I don't use it, but it has positive reviews + you can download a trial to try it out. Another similar program is
Scribus, who it's open source and it's free.
More affordable, perhaps even simpler, is iDraw from Indeeo. I have a version for both Mac and iOS. It's a pretty good vector editor
Without CMYK, everyone does DTP, graphic design, print in general. But otherwise I'm keeping my fingers crossed, the swelling of Adobe applications will certainly not suit everyone in the future, not to mention paying for a CC subscription.
It looks good, but I think 70 euro is enough