Sketch vs Comet
Picking the best Design tool just got harder
There are many Design tools out there and a good UI/UX Designer’s toolbox should include many of them, but it is important to have a go-to app that can solve many of your needs. It can be daunting, when new to the world of design, to pick the tool for your job.
Here’s to hoping some points on this post would help some designer with their dilemma.
For young up-and-coming designers, Sketch seems to be the way to go, whereas more experienced Designers favor Photoshop & Illustrator, but that might be about to change.
There are a variety of use-cases for Designers from graphic design to User Interface design to prototyping, animations, etc. Sketch has become the go-to design tool for most designers for prototyping and iterating over UI designs.
Enter Sketch
Sketch has become the new Design tool of choice for designers who do not always need the full bloatedness of Photoshop or Illustrator. It is a fast and lightweight application allowing users to quickly mock-up UIs and iterate through them.
Photoshop is a gigantic application with great photo-editing but not-so-good web designing abilities. A more appropriate comparison can be made with Illustrator, but Sketch goes beyond just graphic design or digital illustration.
Being the only app on to feature more than once in the infographic above, Sketch has a loyal fan base, and for good reason.
Sketch Pros
- Lightweight, fast
- Easy vector manipulation for Objects and fine control over its properties.
- Reusable Elements & exporting assets.
- Prototyping on iOS devices using iOS Mirror.
- One-time fee (no subscription)
Not to mention, Sketch also has a dedicated community of designers and developers who have designed countless resources and plugins like Silver and many others. This community is a good part of the reason why people love Sketch.
But now, Sketch has to face the new challenges ahead…
Adobe’s answer to Sketch
The up-and-coming challenger has woken the giant that is Adobe. This latest offering, Project Comet, is shaping up to be one of the most ambitious design products in a long time.
Comet promises to be a tool for wireframing, visual design, interaction design, prototyping, previewing and sharing, all-in-one.
Scheduled to arrive in early 2016 as a public beta, not much has been heard about Comet since Dec 15 2015, when this article was posted on Medium by Andrew Shorten . As the post entails, Comet aims to be the Designer’s unicorn: combining features like sharing assets to importing real-data from various sources.
Comet’s arsenal of features
- Integration with Adobe suite and all its glory.
- Windows support (not for the public beta in early 2016)
- Real-time prototyping and editing with iOS
- Integrating real data from files, Google Sheets, and any website
Some really interesting features are on display here:
I’ve got to say, Adobe seems to be doing a great job on the product features for sure and with the public beta, they will surely get even better.
Thoughts
Adobe certainly does not have the first-mover advantage on the designers for this product and they will hope to make up for it with features they believe designers really need. I certainly agree on some aspects like the real-data integration as I think making prototypes look realistic instead of the “Lorem ipsum” does go a long way.
While Comet has the edge on paper, Sketch’s advantage lies in their user-base and countless plugins and resources. Also, Sketch’s pricing model of a one-time payment is a definite winner. With extensive support from the community, users are unlikely to be tempted away from Sketch.
Adobe’s key will to make Comet as lightweight as possible and to open up the Javascript API for users to extend the app and make plugins.
This is all very exciting but the best part is I can’t wait to see what Sketch will have in store for us as they try to add new innovations to what is already a hugely popular tool !
