I’ve been making planner stickers since 2013. In that time I’ve used both Photoshop and the Silhouette Studio (free) software to make planner stickers. So which software is better?
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Silhouette Studio Software
Silhouette Studio is program which you can download for free from the Silhouette America website.
I use Silhouette Studio Version 3.8 – all tutorials I record use version 3.8. There is a version 4 of the software but it’s relatively new and has a few kinks to sort out. I personally prefer to use version 3.8 which can be downloaded here.
Note that it is a large program that will slow down your computer and take a while to boot up. So if your hard-drive is near capacity you may want to delete old files first.
If you want to make printed and kiss cut stickers, Silhouette is the way to go – you HAVE to use that program if you want to cut stickers using a Silhouette machine – Photoshop was not designed for sticker making and is not compatible with the Silhouette Studio software (unfortunately).
There are other machines you can use to make stickers such as:
But these are just as expensive (if not moreso – the Brother Scan N cut is double the price of a Silhouette machine!). Both of these alternative machines also aren’t readily available in Australia (where I live), so the cost of shipping one of those heavy machines to Australia is ridiculously expensive.
The Silhouette have a design store where you can download templates. The other machines you can use for cutting stickers are not as popular. Silhouette also have a design store where you can download templates to speed up your workflow.
I didn’t want to buy a machine when there was very few reviews about it (at least there weren’t many reviews a few years ago when we bought our machine, there’s probably more reviews floating around out there on the internet by now).
That being said, the silhouette software has some issues:
The silhouette software is unfortunately unavoidable if you sell printed & cut planner stickers. I feel like a lot of people gloss over how frustrating it can be set up the cut settings and some of the quirks of the software including:
- If you have a laptop it’s a huge battery guzzler
- The software takes a very long time to load (about 3 times the amount of time it takes to load Photoshop)
- There’s no layers menu like there is in Photoshop so if you want to move one layer you may accidentally select another and move it as well (when you didn’t want to)
- You have to print to PDF, there’s no option in the drop-down save menu to choose PDF as a file format (like you can in Photoshop)
- If you want to undo something, it registers zooming in and out and moving around the design (e.g. moving left to right) as a step that you also want to undo. So if you zoom out to see how a design looks from a distance, and decide you want to change the size, color, etc, of a design element, when you go to undo, it can take a while because it undoes the zooming in and out as well as the actual part of the design that you want to undo (in Photoshop it just undoes the design aspect, not the zooming in and out)
- It’s easy to accidentally ungroup text layers. So if you write a phase like ‘meal plan’ it’s easy to accidentally ungroup them and end up with each letter as a separate cut e.g. ‘m’ then ‘e’ so you’d have to move each of those layers separately. And if you want to change the phrase, you’d need to re-type it and re-align/re-position it on your sticker design. It only takes about 10 seconds to do, it’s just a bit annoying
- When you’re going to select multiple layers it’s hard to choose only certain layers if you have a few layers stacked on top of one another i.e. text on top of a shape on top of another shape or an outline border
- The silhouette uses SVG files and they’re very large file size so the more you have, the slower your computer will run. I recommend storing them using cloud storage. I use Backblaze to backup my computer.
- Setting up cut lines takes a long time to figure out in the beginning – you don’t need to worry about cut lines in Photoshop – you can cut wherever you like when you print out the stickers!
But it does have some good elements as well:
- The software is free
- It’s a fairly straightforward program to learn how to use
- It’s great for making individual sticker designs and keeping them in the one Silhouette file. If I want to make an individual sticker it involves a lot of layers in Photoshop’s layers menu and the layers menu can get a bit cluttered
- You can use any fonts that you’ve downloaded (just like you can in Photoshop)
- The Silhouette Design store has a lot of templates you can download and use straight away in your designs (note that most of them require you to pay for a licence if you want to use them for commercial use). There’s no templates designed for sticker making in Photoshop so you have to make everything from scratch
- Once you get the hang of the software, it is really quick and easy to make a lot of stickers in a short amount of time (once you know what you’re doing!)
Using Photoshop for making stickers
When I first started making stickers in 2013, I started making them in Photoshop. I use Photoshop almost every single day so I figured why not stick with what I was familiar with rather than learning how to use a new software. At the time I had no interest in making printed and kiss-cut stickers. I was bootstrapping my Etsy shop (which started out as a hobby and at the time was still a hobby) so I also wasn’t interested in paying for the Silhouette machine.
When I got my sister hooked on all things planning (so much so that she expanded her business from party supplies to planner supplies) and she joined the planner craze, she didn’t want to cut stickers by hand and paid for the Silhouette machine. So since then I learned how to use the Silhouette software. I focus on the design side and she does the printing and cutting.
If you don’t have Photoshop, you can purchase and download it here (my affiliate link).
Pros and cons of using Photoshop for making stickers
- Photoshop but has more options – you can do more filters and effects to create more custom looking stickers
- I find it easier to create printable planner stickers using Photoshop, as I don’t need to worry about setting up cut lines
- Photoshop is a paid software requiring a subscription, however you can do so many other things with the software including making seamless repeating patterns, printables, labels, wall art, business branding such as logos and Etsy shop banners
- I make patterns to use in my stickers using Photoshop, so it’s easy to transfer the files between different templates within the same software, rather than saving the file, closing down Photoshop, opening up Silhouette Studio and bring the pattern into the Silhouette software. Having both Silhouette Studio and Photoshop open at the same time with slow your computer down so much so that it’s basically un-usable and it may even crash from being over-loaded
If you want to try Photoshop, you can download it here. I’ve shared quite a few tutorials on how to use the various tools in Photoshop including:
- How to create a new file in Photoshop and how to resize (without distorting!)
- How to use the color tools in Photoshop
- How to color match anything in Photoshop (step by step tutorial)
- How to make a planner bookmark (DIY Page Markers Tutorial)
- How to change the colors of a pattern overlay in Photoshop
- How to make a stripe pattern in Photoshop (video tutorial)
- How to make a checkerboard pattern in Photoshop (video tutorial)
- How to use clipping masks in Photoshop
- How to use shapes in Photoshop
There’s also the free graphic design video tutorials library.
So which software is better for making stickers?
Neither is necessarily better – it really depends what you want to use the software for. I prefer to use Photoshop for making printable stickers. I used the software to make planner stickers for a couple of years before I started using Silhouette Studio, and still have all of the templates set up so I can making stickers in a matter of minutes 🙂
However, if I’m making a sticker collection where I don’t use the same colors for every sticker (i.e. I don’t use the rainbow colors I typically use and instead make a themed kit such as this donut kit), then I prefer to use the Silhouette software as it’s quicker to change out the colors.
If you want to make printed and kiss cut stickers, Silhouette is the way to go – you HAVE to use that program if you want to cut stickers using a silhouette – Photoshop was not designed for sticker making and is not compatible with the Silhouette Studio software (unfortunately).
Want to learn how to make your own planner stickers? Click here for step by step tutorials!
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