In this video, I'm going to make a quick comparison between online tools that are available to you and Photoshop and explain to you why, in my opinion, I think Photoshop is still the best tool to use to create social media graphics. And later on in another video, I'm going to show you how you can also use Adobe XD, which is Adobe's new free tool. normally use for UI and UX design. And we are going to use it to create social media graphics, and to adapt them to different social media sizes in literally seconds, and bear them with Photoshop. But in this video, I'm going to show you some alternatives that you can use both online and inside of your mobile platform. So whether you're using Android or iOS, some of these tools are available to you to download a news on your mobile device.

So first things first Canada is one of the biggest, if not the biggest in this online space. We also have something called snapper, which is basically the same but it offers way fewer tools than Canva or swag app is just use your image and add some text. On top of that image. We have Instagram, which is usually used for infographics but you can also create social media graphics with it. Pablo by buffer, which is an app created by buffer, well known social media scheduling platform. And they have this Pablo app that you can use to create social media graphics and finally, we have place it which is as of recently bought by Envato.

And if you purchased and water elements subscription, you can get this place it online App Insight. Now what all of this And this is just a small sample of the online tools which are available to you. What all of these have in common is speed. And that's what they use to hook most people to use them. They have speed, they have simplicity, they have availability, which means that wherever you are, if you have your phone with you and 99% of us do, you can use it just basically with Facebook or with Google, simply login and start create social media graphics in seconds. That's amazing.

And it's fantastic that we all have this option to not just sit in front of our computers, but wherever we are, we can create quick and easy social media graphics. But in as I said, in this course, I want to explain why I think the Photoshop is still the best tool to use to create social media graphics, what all of these online apps and apps in your phones and tablets lack is The amount of functionality that you can achieve with Photoshop. Let me explain. All of them have subscriptions for you to pay. So you can try it for free and create most of your social media graphics for free. But if you want some advanced functionality you have to pay usually a monthly fee.

Now all of them have pricing and all of them have something that you have to pay. For example, for Pablo, I think I don't think you are paying for Pablo, but you are paying for buffer if you want some advanced playing. And what Pablo delivers is some simple graphics like these, but if you want some advanced one you have to pay some other tool for example, place it and so on. Also, almost all of them lack some advanced functionality, while in some of them for example, you can add background blur in Others you can so you have to pay for another app that you can add a background blur. And what happens if you don't like it or change your mind and you waste your money. And for example, in basically all of them, you cannot combine some different elements.

So if you have, let's check out place it. So for example, you have this 2018 autumn collection banner at the top or this particular one or whatever, and you want to combine it with this, but you also want to extend it or to rotate it like this. What happens in most cases is your options are extremely limited. So for example, you can drag and drop one element but you cannot edit that element. For example, I have a frame and I want to create a small hole inside that frame. I cannot do it.

I have to find another frame, which has that hole in it which takes time And what happens if they don't have that design element, you cannot create it yourself. So you're stuck, you have to choose something else, you don't like something else you want that specific graphic because you saw it on Pinterest or whatever your competitors use it or I don't know, whatever is the case. So you are extremely limited by those functionalities. Also, if you want to create different image effects, or you want to cut the image in half and use one half of the image in one image and the other half in another image, you can undo that, what happens if you want to add a background shadow and so on and so on. So what happens in most cases is what you see is what you get with these templates. So, for example, this one, it's really nice, but if I want to add, for example, this design element, it wouldn't work because it cannot scale it, it loses quality and so on and so forth.

So If you want to create just a quick social media graphic with the templates in hand, you can do that. And I really encourage you to do that. None of these websites are paying me to create this course, especially at Adobe. But I just want to compare it for you Just so you can know what you're getting yourself into when you're creating these graphics with these online tools. Also, if you can see this rows on the right, if you want to cut it a different way. In some cases, you can't.

So for example, I want to hide this top part but expose this bottom part, hide this bottom part but expose this left part. In most cases, I cannot do that while in Photoshop, I can. Once again none of these are paying me and I just wanted to show you what it means to have Adobe as a subscription. So for Adobe, you're paying as well. Except for Adobe XD, which I will show you in a later video, but I think it's like 60 bucks a month, something like that. And you're getting all of these programs, all these tools, you're also getting cloud storage and photography plans, and Dreamweaver and Adobe Spark and a bunch of apps and you're getting fonts.

With in most cases, you have to pay on these other platforms, and so on and so forth. So, basically, Photoshop it has been around for I think, 30 years or something like that. And majority of these online tools are online for just a couple of years. I think Canva has been the longest running competitor, but in that time, there is no way that they are able to implement tools and features that Adobe can because Adobe is just a Giant, they can move at lightning speed, implement different elements, create different graphics and put all that in place in regular updates, which you are getting if you're purchasing Adobe Creative Cloud. And in most cases, if you just don't pay for any of these online tools, you're getting just a random standard templates, which are going to be fine for most of you. But as I said, I just wanted to compare online tools with Photoshop.

So just to show you how easy it is I'm using Photoshop CC 2014, just to show you that if you also have an older version of Photoshop, it goes back to no CS six, that most of these tools are going to work which I'm going to show you in this course. So if you have all the versions of Photoshop, it works as well. And as you can see, we have a bunch of options that we can explore And literally spent months exploring Photoshop because it is basically the king as it comes to any graphics or design still today. It has many competitors but in my opinion, it's the most complete tool for whatever you want to achieve. And as I said in this course we're going to use cc 2014 version just to show you that you can also achieve these results with older version as well.