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Adobe Project Comet vs Sketch

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Caution! This article is 8 years old, and our opinions may have changed.

Digital design has always felt like it’s never had a dedicated “design” application, that it can call it’s own. Designers either use Photoshop, Illustrator or Indesign (If your absolutely bonkers!) Fireworks tried to fill this gap to appeal to UI designers, but it has always felt like a mixture of photoshop-flash-illustrator and an over complicated mess that has never really full took off within the community.

But recently Adobe announced Project Comet, which they call an “all-in-one solution for UX designers”.

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Sketch by Bohemian Coding was designed to focussed on UI and UX design, and it wasn’t trying to be a tool for everyone or every discipline. Project Comet also seems to be built around this model, but why has it took so long for Adobe to react to this? To me, Sketch seems to have also been built out of the frustration of Adobe’s monopoly in the creative software market and also with the expensive costs for Adobe CC.

According to the 2015 survey “The Tools Designers Are Using Today” by Subtraction - Sketch came out on top of all Adobe products for Brainstorming, Wireframing and Interface design.

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Adobe do see Sketch as a rival, by slightly mentioning Sketch (Not by name) in their Announcement back in October, and having a slight dig at Sketches stability by mentioning UX designers need software that delivers “quality and stability that you expect from Adobe".

But between the two (Sketch & Project Comet) there are similarities. The ability to create multiple boards, live previewing on multiple devices, plugins and easy sharing (As of 3.4). Project Comet trumps Sketch though by having the ability to link with Photoshop & Illustrator very easily - But is this a benefit? Surely, we should be able to not use these applications at all.

Yes, Sketch has had a rocky road to where it is now, but what I love about Sketch is it’s simplicity, how it integrates with other tools such as Invision and how it’s independently built.

Will designers that use Sketch move to Project Comet? We’ll have to wait until 2016 to find out.

Co-Founder of MadeByShape. You'll find that my blogs are all about 'techy stuff' including Craft CMS related writing.