Social media banner in Photoshop or InDesign ?

[Cindy27138906rj1y]

Hi all, here at my work there is a discussion about which program to use for social media banners. 

In my opinion both programs (Photoshop and InDesign) are suitable for creating social media banners. 

Because Photoshop is usable for editing images, but InDesign is also usable for good designing a simple layout for social media banners.  

What would you say is the best program for creating simple (image, text, logo) social media banners. 

Thank you in advance for your opinions! 

[Myra Ferguson]

I'd say make the banners in whichever application you're comfortable using. 

You can use in5 with InDesign to export HTML5 content. HTML5 output may be smaller than animated GIFs.

You can also convert your in5 HTML5 output to an animated GIF with the in5 animated GIF Maker. Photoshop's animated GIF may have a higher quality output, though.

[Mylenium]

Entirely depends what you mean by that and to which sites you want to upload. Most sites will not allow to upload any dynamic imagery or code-based solutions, so @Myra Ferguson 's solution is probably not relevant unless you are a paying advertiser on e.g. Facebook that have more liberties with this. Most sites simply want PNGs/ JPG/ WebP or GIF, not even SVG.

Mylenium

[Myra Ferguson]

Oh, I was thinking banner ads. I get questions about those all the time.

[Cindy27138906rj1y]

Yes sorry I wasn't clear, in my head "simple" is just a JPG image :). But still thank you for your reply! ANd first sentence I guess stays, using whichever application you're comfortable using. 

Because I have some one saying that you shouldn't make social media banners in Photoshop but personally that's just my go-to program, so  I was wondering what other people thoughts are on that! 

[Myra Ferguson]

It's possible that the concern about using Photoshop for web is the conversion of text to pixels, but if you're making a JPG, then go for it.

And, especially if you were creating animated GIFs, Photoshop is great for that! 🙂

[Cindy27138906rj1y]

So for now the conclusion would be to use whatevery you feel best with? 

You would not recommend one specific tool for simple JPG banners for social media? 

If there is anyone with a different opinion I am really curious to hear. 

So people don't agree that Photoshop is the WRONG tool to use for this? 

[D Fosse]

The main thing for web design is to be able to work in pixels, so that you get a precise preview at 100%. Photoshop will always do that, InDesign if you choose "web" intent.

Note that if this is a "responsive" site that changes the rules a bit. Responsive design scales images to browser width, with the result that they will never be sharp anyway. In that case it's absolutely critical that text remains live vector, not created as part of the image. So here the answer will be InDesign.

For print it's a different matter. Then the answer would always be unequivocally InDesign.