Lunacy Editor: Why We Don’t Support XD and Photoshop

We create Lunacy, the Sketch alternative for Windows.

One of our most popular feature requests is the support of the XD files.

I like the Idea

I think it would be wonderful.

It’s tempting, to create a universal tool that reads all the formats.

We can adopt some cool tagline. “Borderless design” or something.

Support for the democracy. Since we launched our feature request section, we have to listen to our users.

I Have to Decline

Also, after careful thinking, I’ve found several reasons not to do it.

Reason #1. Interoperability

I also know that each tool brings its limitations.

We can feel it with Sketch already. It’s hard (almost impossible) to support anything that we can’t store in the Sketch file (such as Figma’s vector networks).

And it’s gonna be a hard task balancing the features of such advanced tools as XD and Photoshop. The latter is especially notorious for 10 ways to do exactly the same.

Reason #2. Market Share

Sketch is 90% of the UX design (citation needed, as Wikipedia likes to say). It’s the industry standard.

XD, Figma, Affinity, Framer, and dozens of other tools share the rest 10%. They are pouring tens of millions of dollars trying to cut the share from Sketch.

Reason #3. Future

Sketch is a small team that is proven to stay. For a small team, they have excellent traction.

What would be a success for a small team, is a failure for a huge public company. Adobe needs much more traction to prove a project successful.

Adobe has a record of killing seemingly successful products. I still remember ImageReady; Adobe killed it. I remember Fireworks; Adobe kills it. Will XD survive?

Reason #4. Market Gap

XD and Photoshop Already Have the Windows Versions.

There’s a market gap with Sketch. There’s none for the Adobe products.

Reason #5. Focus

Our focus is to make the best components aka symbols in the market. Icons8 has a record of combining the ready-made design assets and code. Think of Icons8 for Desktop, for Web, or Moose Photos (spoiler: All three are awaiting the big updates this summer, be it wholly new interface or AI-powered face editing).

We’d like to bring our AI and predictive analytics features to Lunacy. That’s a large task in progress.

Reason #6. Passion

It’s irrational, but we’re passionate about Sketch. I remember when I started using Sketch after Photoshop — suddenly, everything I created looked beautiful. Suddenly, I was sick of my Photoshop designs.

Lunacy is a Sketch alternative for Windows users. Saying this, I beg your pardon. Please let me know to decline this request.

About the author: Ivan Braun, UX designer, founder of Icons8