1. File sizes that won’t crash our computers
Our average Photoshop file with the typical assortment of typography, photos, and fonts with 4 simple artboards (basically the responsive design for ONE layout) usually totals over 500MB. Conversely, a Sketch file that contains an entire web design (80+ artboards) weighs in at a lean 79MB.
2. Sketch “speaks Web,” natively
I used to pride myself on my unique ability to convert leading to line height, kerning to letter-spacing, etc. (or at least, when I inevitably forgot them, I took pride in my commitment to Googling the translation formulas rather than “winging it”). None of that applies working in Sketch; all measurements are “written in web speak” so there’s no confusion. I can’t tell how many times I’ve recreated buttons in Photoshop because resizing them skewed the border-radius. IN SKETCH THIS ISN’T A THING.
3. Sketch symbols mean more consistent designs
On the whole, Sketch rocks when it comes to creating responsive and consistent assets — and the plugin community adds great features on top of the good native offerings. For example, the Dynamic Button plugin allows you to change button copy while keeping button padding consistent, just like it would in code. With the Anima App Auto-Layout plugin, the distances between objects will stay the same … just like in HTML/CSS.
4. Measuring’s way easier
In any Sketch file, select an element and hold down the OPTION key. You’ll immediately be able to measure the distance between items. Although I prefer to get into the file and measure things myself, the Sketch Measure brings a world of possibilities to the table when it comes to creating annotated mocks in the blink of an eye; check out this Medium article for a great rundown.
5. Version control via the Plant.io plugin
Here’s something we developers understand: The importance of version control.
The Plant plugin allows multiple people to work on the same file at the same time. Syncing assets and overriding changes in Sketch is instant, unlike Creative Cloud libraries, which take much longer to sync.
6. Easily export icons and other assets
From your source file, you can click on any graphic and in the bottom right, choose to export the file at any resolutions (2x, 3x, etc.) or file size (PNG, SVG, etc.)
So much better than Photoshop, which forces devs to deal with double-size documents.