Hands on with Adobe XD CC
With the recent release of Adobe XD, we decided to spend some time using the tool — mostly testing to see what affect, if any, it might have on our daily Sketch usage.
Below is a rundown on some of the key Adobe XD features, as well as some issues and linked resources for reference.
*Note — this feedback is pre 0.5.2.29 Beta, Adobe just released an updated and stated “We’re rolling out updates to Adobe XD every month with new features”, sounds solid.
Artboards
Mimicking Sketch — Adobe XD includes pre-loaded artboard templates — organized by Apple, Google, Microsoft and Web — including Apple Watch and Android Wear. The initial touchpoint in your workflow is now a bit more simple and much more efficient.
Masking Done Right
Partially — you can quickly mask by dropping an image from your desktop, straight onto a shape layer in XD and the shape’s fill magically becomes the image. The feature is amazing, but unfortunately somewhat unusable due to it’s limitations — you can’t resize or move the image around within the mask. Hopefully this makes an update soon.
Importing from Sketch & Illustrator
Unfortunately, XD and Sketch aren’t cross compatible — making direct copy/pasting vectors between the two impossible — for now all you get is a bitmap from Sketch to XD. If you’re assets live in Illustrator, which they should, you’re good to go.
Prototyping
I’m still not sure how I feel about this — I was expecting more. The one upside is that given XD is a native app, it’s a much more efficient and intuitive from a usability standpoint than most of the web platforms out there — however it’s lack of features means the only real use case is for very low fidelity prototyping.
Exporting
There are some slight differences here between Sketch and XD, the big thing worth mentioning is you’re limited to exporting only PNG & SVG— strictly exporting assets won’t be an issue, but the flexibility of exporting a PDF would be a huge plus for additional design needs. It also acts strictly as an asset generator — so every export you end up with 2–3 saved file sizes.
Takeaway (XD vs Sketch)
I can only base this on my own experience — but for someone very efficient in Sketch — I would only ever have one reason to open Adobe XD currently — a quicker low fidelity prototype process.
Current Workflow: Sketch to create > export multiple layers and/or images to Dropbox > then Marvel to link together and/or update screens.
XD Workflow: Design tab in XD > Prototype tab in XD
XD wins in efficiency, but in terms of value and scale it doesn’t come close to Sketch + the majority of prototyping tools out there (many of which are free). The XD prototype offering is very low fidelity, you can link objects w/a few transition options — that’s it. Hopefully we’ll see some valuable updates in the near future!
XD Resources:
- Dribbble: Adobe XD Free
- Introducing Adobe XD CC
- Getting Started
- Tips & Tricks
- Keyboard Shortcuts
- Adobe XD Community Forum
Additional XD Issues:
- No Layers
- No way to make Gradients
- If you use shadows anywhere in your design, the program gets really sluggish
- There’s no line spacing, amongst many other text edit issues
- Grouping is buggy
- It resets your tool preference every time you switch to a new tool
- When saving, it resets your save as preference ever time you go to save
- Align drop down doesn’t work at all, and you can’t align to arboard
- Keyboard shortcuts are buggy
- No line/border options, such as ends, start arrow, dash, etc..
- When using a shapes with borders, Pathfinder subtract/add/etc.. gets wonky