Illustrator or Photoshop, the Ultimate Question

As a web designer the question always seems to spring up from time to time, "do you use photoshop or illustrator?". Now for those not aware Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator are two commonly used applications used by nearly every designer worldwide for various purposes such as website design and layout. The question being asked is which is better (or best for you), photoshop or illustrator for your layout needs? Every designer has a different opinion, here is mine;



Lets start with some pros for each to begin.
Photoshop Pro's:
• easily manipulate images and add a wide variety of effects
• work predominantly raster based
• manipulate text to suit your needs
• ability to quickly mask and crop

Illustrator Pro's:
• work in vector format and resize infinitely
• tweak your typography easily
• create clean, polished graphics
• work within smaller file sizes generally

The pro's listed are simply the tip of the iceberg for both of these massive programs, each has a unique set of features that could be utilized in many ways. The two big things to consider are this, do you want to work in raster based images or vector based images? This seems to dictate how each designer chooses a favorite program over another and style has much to do with it.

For me personally I tend to stay in the Adobe Illustrator vector-based realm. I like how illustrator renders colors and shapes and I tend to simplify things in my layouts. I enjoy the use of the pen tool and pushing the limitations of it and most importantly of all I find the infinite scalability of vector objects to be a truly wonderful thing. With that said do not think photoshop is just sitting on my dock getting dusty, it gets its fair share of use for sure. Photoshop is the go to application for image editing, bar none. I use it to edit and create certain types of objects and edit photos then import them into illustrator to incorporate into a design. They work hand in hand.

So how does your workflow differ from mine? Do you create mostly in photoshop and import smart vectors? Do you tend to gauge each design and its needs and then determine which is a best fit? What is your solution, let us know in the comments.