Why is Photoshop still so famous for game development?

Hello, as far as I'm concern at aduk.de our developers and designers use adobe photoshop and PixBuilder. Preferences depends on your taste and habbits.

 

Also a AP & AD user. I find it much better than PS in some respects. It does need some index color tools though.

 

I think that Photoshop will be more and more popular, regardless of whether it is related to games or not. The modern world goes digitally and photos are becoming more and more photoshopped. Look at how many different and high-quality presets you can find and use for free at https://www.pinterest.com/retouchpictures/free-lightroom-presets/. Recommend.

 

Recently switched to Affinity Photo from Photoshop after looking through free alternatives like Gimp and Krita. Haven't used it too much yet, but the first experience is very positive. The UI and shortcuts are basically the same, so I didn't even have to get used to it. Loads faster than PS. And it also has some features that are pretty useful for gamedev, like filter layers and procedural textures that allow for more non-destructive workflow. And it seems like procedural textures are pretty powerful, there are a lot of presets, and you can even write your own functions.

 

I really want to move from PS to AP, but there are a few things in the way.

Most notably is the fact that Unity does not have an importer for Affinity Photo and that you have to take multiple steps to export to PDF is enough to really annoy me. I like to save often and CTRL-S takes 1/4 of a second as opposed to File->Export->PDF-> Export->Save. One is so fast it's subconscious.
This difference may seem small from the outside, but from practice, it makes a large difference, you have to break the flow of your work and thought pattern in order to do it.

If there was a watch to key-bind or create a macro for export that ended up as 1 key, that would solve the issue. No, I won't be installing something like autokey for this.

On a lesser note, Affinity made some UI/UIX design choices which are quite alien. The way copy and paste from layers works is just really "different" at times with how you have to maintain context with layers. Obviously, that are trying to compete with PS, so things that make the UI alien like this are bad choices.
The way cropping works is strange too.

However, the export problem is the one stopping me coming over for my daily driver.

Still relevant in Dec 2020

 

It depends on the look you are aiming for and the type of brushes you want to use for making concept art or game assets. For instance, your artwork will look more stylized and edited if you go with photoshop and its brush engine but the brush engine in photoshop is much better than Affinity. Affinity doesn't have many brush settings that you would want to change and although you can import photoshop brushes into it, the brushes get destroyed completely after import because of the absence of the settings applied to it. However, the brush engine in clip studio paint wins the competition compared to both photoshop and affinity because you can import and use photoshop brushes exactly as they were created in photoshop and you can create blenders and more variety of brushes in clip studio paint. In conclusion, you can't choose a software unless you work in both software and see which filter and look you need and what you are getting from the software. For me, I found clip studio paint to be the best option for illustration and concept art because I tend to paint with more traditional approach but if you want to use advanced tools to manipulate, apply filters and change how your artwork looks, you might want to use photoshop because it has more filters and manipulation tools compared to affinity and clip studio. My advice is go with affinity or clip studio because it is one time payment and way cheaper than photoshop until you actually need the filters that photoshop has and move to it or realize that you are getting the job done in affinity or clip studio and don't go with 120$ a year for photoshop. You can do most of what professionals using photoshop for in affinity so no need to go with the trend.