Designer For Non-Illustrators

[Engine44]

I have Photo and am considering Designer to improve the appearance of my website. I’m not an illustrator.  I can barely draw a straight line, lol.  Would I still be able to use and get benefit from Designer?  Thanks,

[gdenby]

Designer will certainly let you draw a straight line w. ease. And more. Its loaded w. layout features. Presents for  different web page displays, and mostly various Apple devices. Grids, margins, snapping to those, and snapping to other objects. Auto spacing and alignments. Constraints so shapes are automatically positioned relative to different sized frame spaces. Etc, etc. Really, for many layout tasks, its about as easy as spreading peanut butter and jam on toast. 

 

No automagic buttons for "make this a good design." Just now, no presets for common color combination schemes. 

[Alfred]

1 hour ago, gdenby said:

Just now, no presets for common color combination schemes. 

 

If you right-click on a swatch in the Swatches panel, you can choose the 'Create Colour Chord' option to create a set of related swatches (complementary, analogous, tetradic, etc).

 

[toltec]

6 hours ago, Engine44 said:

I have Photo and am considering Designer to improve the appearance of my website. I’m not an illustrator.  I can barely draw a straight line, lol.  Would I still be able to use and get benefit from Designer?  Thanks,

 

I would say no. You could use it because it is very similar to Photo, but a website is basically a mixture of text and bitmap images, so you are really better off with Photo.

 

Designer is more about vector drawings.

 

Spend your money on the soon to be released book about Photo and learn some techniques.

 

 

 

[gdenby]

23 hours ago, Alfred said:

 

If you right-click on a swatch in the Swatches panel, you can choose the 'Create Colour Chord' option to create a set of related swatches (complementary, analogous, tetradic, etc).

 

 

Ah, hadn't thought to right click the swatch. Tho' what that does seems to alter the whole of the swatch, and what I was talking about was more like selecting a primary hue, and automatically creating a a set of complementaries, or split complementaries, and/or tonal variations. Such as, a blue color, which is a primary shape, might get a set of yellows or oranges depending on the color circle used, or a split with oranges and light greens, or reds and yellows, all adjusted to appropriately varied saturation and luminance  to contrast or support the primary hue. 

[Alfred]

On 07/11/2017 at 10:31 PM, gdenby said:

 

Ah, hadn't thought to right click the swatch. Tho' what that does seems to alter the whole of the swatch, ...

 

Are you perhaps thinking of palettes rather than swatches, Greg? If you add a new palette (via one of the options on the Swatches panel's 'hamburger' menu) and then right-click a filled object on the canvas and choose 'Add to Swatches... > From Fill', your shiny new palette will contain a single swatch from which you can create a colour chord.

 

[gdenby]

Thanks, learned something.