: Using Photoshop to create a magazine My question: Can I create a magazine exclusively using Photoshop? My understanding: It should simply be a case of using CMYK and an adequately high resolution.

@Eichhorn212

If you're doing a one page ad, it might not be the best idea, but you can do it. If you're designing a full fledged magazine, then don't use photoshop. I find layout out text when creating a one page web design mockup in photoshop to be tedious enough, I definitely wouldn't create a multiple page print project in it.

You can use photoshop for all of your graphics and place them into indesign, but using indesign for the text layout, even if it means spending three hours watching tutorials first, will be a massive time saver.

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@Barnes313

My question:

Can I create a magazine exclusively using PhotoShop?


YES you can, BUT this is not the industry standard and it is highly frowned upon. See last paragraph.


My understanding:

It should simply be a case of using CMYK and an adequately high
resolution.


The standard is 300dpi for print, but again, that depends on the medium, quality, detail and output desired.


Other software:

InDesign is pretty alien to me though I've read that it's better for
managing large amounts of text.


InDesign is currently the standard because it is simply an Adobe product and works well with Illustrator and Photoshop. Some shops still use good ole Quark but its usually there as a reference to people still stuck in the old times or for old file reference.


Request for additional context:

Any links to resources on this manner would be appreciated (e.g. good
websites for learning/templates).


Adobe does a TV channel known as AdobeTV and they have their own magazine with tutorials online known as Layers Magazine

Now that I've answered your question please note I cannot stress enough how bad of an idea it is to use Photoshop for designing print and these are several points why:


File delivery will be nearly impossible unless in PDF format.
Editing is in possible because your file size will be huge, Id estimate around 3-5gb.
Some print shops I know of will not print your design because plates are horrible when created and this is because the designs are not vector based.


I will add more when I have free time.

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@Alves566

No, you cannot design in the normal sense of the word design a magazine or any book for that matter in photoshop alone.

Photoshop alone has no way to do multipage layouts so at the very least you're going to need Photoshop, Distiller and Acrobat Pro to make the final print ready .PDF file.

You would be far better off learning at least the basics of InDesign though to do Table of Contents, Page Numbers, and the ability to flow text from page to page.

To clarify the first sentence though of my answer. Yes I could mock up a magazine and how I might want the template to look as in a rough draft. Or if I'm not professionally printing the magazine I could do individual pages in photoshop and kinda fudge it at a cheaper printer where you just upload the images and do a small run or even singles. To make a true magazine though - no you cannot do it with just photoshop.

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@Twilah924

Yes, Photoshop could be used to design a magazine. But, so could MSPaint. This is absolutely a job suited for InDesign.

InDesign has much better tools for typesetting. If I didn't have InDesign available to me, I'd probably even use word processing software to lay everything out instead of going with Photoshop. It's definitely not the tool for the job.

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