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Version control and sharing for design

Version control and sharing for design

Owned by Dana Ayotte
Last updated: Jan 28, 2015 by Justin Obara

We have started an informal review of designer version control web apps to determine if they will satisfy the needs of our design community.  We will capture any issues on this wiki page as well as things we like.

Pixelapse

PIxelapse website

 

NOTE: Pixelapse was acquired by Dropbox http://blog.pixelapse.com/post/109225261685/pixelapse-dropbox

What we like:

  • being able to track history of changes
  • activity feed feature to show progress over time
  • ability to comment on design files
  • ability to view files without downloading, in a viewer that seems pretty decent
  • a free account gives you unlimited storage space (can't have private projects but we don't need that anyway)
  • can share/view/store working files (e.g. .ai .psd and etc.), without having to convert (Supporting most file formats that are used by designers)
  • automatic syncing similar to dropbox for collaborators
  • Ability to give access to all revisions or just to milestones for the reviewers

Issues:

  • no search functionality at all (can't search for keywords, other designers, etc)
  • if a project is shared with another user, there is no easy way for the 2nd user to link to the source user's other projects
  • no direct way to request to be added to another user's project
  • following a project did not result in any kind of notification of changes made to that project
  • can't seem to follow users
  • the site is a bit slow at times
  • when older revisions are selected on the Dashboard, the latest revision is shown
  • some of the functions and links don't seem to be working, such as Image Inspectors, profile names, project numbers
  • confusing navigation

 

LayerVault

LayerVault website

What we like:

  • clear directory structure/ easy navigation
  • being able to track history of changes
  • ability to easily move between different versions and mark specific ones as revisions
  • directly open local files from the web browser (makes it very efficient)
  • ability to view files without downloading, in a viewer that seems pretty decent with color picker and ruler
  • easily create project presentations from files across projects/ ability to also drag and drop local files to the presentation
  • automatic syncing 
  • the site is quite fast and responsive

Issues:

  • it is a closed community, and only available for people whom you share your document with
  • no open free accounts only paid accounts
  • the file formats it supports is limited, i.e. it doesn't support InDesign, .indd format
  • uploading files only works in Chrome browser
  • there is an option for annotation, however, I don't know how to make it work
  • If the organization is deleted there is no option to recover deleted files or undo

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