Producing A Quality Photoshop File
Photoshop has been around for over two decades. People love using Photoshop for photo manipulation, retouching, image editing, and mocking up websites and user interfaces. People also use Photoshop for print design work. Photoshop is an industry standard piece of software that gives you professional results. The way that you work with Photoshop can either be productive or counterproductive. Using keyboard shortcuts is a great way to save time. However, if you follow some simple rules for creating your files, you can save a lot of time and frustration for other users.
You can’t just assume that when you create a Photoshop file, that you’ll be the only one that ever uses it. It’s important to keep this in mind when creating your files, because you never know who’s going to have to open up the file and use it later. If you follow some simple guidelines, you’ll make it easier on yourself and others to work with your Photoshop files. Producing a quality, editable Photoshop file from the beginning is a win-win situation for everyone involved.
Start With High Resolution
Even if you don’t need high resolution at the time, you never know when you may need it. Even if you are working on something beautiful that is intended for the web, some clients may want to reuse elements, such as images and text effects for their printed materials. If you build the Photoshop file as a print-ready file in the beginning, and then save it for the web as your last step, you’ll always have the print resolution file handy. This will ensure crisp, quality graphics and images in your Photoshop files at all times, and you don’t have to go back and redo anything. All it takes is changing how you start, and how you export your files at the end. When you consider the time it would take to redesign it over again, or hunt for the print resolution images again (assuming you didn’t apply any effects to the images), the time it takes to use a little forethought is much less than the time of having to redo something or recreate effects.
Name your layers
I know this takes an extra split second to do, but that split-second extra can end up saving you a couple minutes for every task. For small Photoshop files without a lot of layers, this may not be important. However, getting into the habit of this will force you into naming your layers. You’d be surprised how often you intend for a Photoshop file to be small and simple, but when you get into it, it can become complex rather quickly. Name your layers something specific and descriptive. When your Photoshop files become complex, you’ll be able to quickly scan through your layers and find what you need. Sometimes, the previews aren’t big enough to help you figure out what’s on that layer.
Organize your layers
When you build a new Photoshop file, put everything that is related to one object in an organized stack. Stacking your layers in the order of visibility will enable you to judge where that part of the layer is. Dragging and ordering your layers in an intelligent way will make it easier to find which layer you’re looking for.
Group layers that make up an object
If you have a complex Photoshop file, chances are that you have different sections that make up different pieces of your design or artwork. If everything is broken down into different chunks, it is smart to have all the pieces that make up that chunk placed within a group. This will place all of those pieces, no matter how large or how small, into a manageable group. Also, place alike items in a group, too. You can compress and expand the group simply by clicking the arrow next to the folder in the layers panel. This also makes it easier to navigate all of your layers. If you’re not working on that specific section, you can compress that folder so that you don’t get to see all of the layers. It makes it easier to work on other areas of your project if you don’t have to worry about 50 layers from another section. This will keep you from having to sift through layers that you’re not working on.
To Group Photoshop layers into a folder, hold Shift and click on all of the layers and go up to Layers> New> Group From Layers. Then, you can even name the group. Grouping layers can be efficient, especially when you need to apply the same effects to all of those layers. You can group them together and run filters on that group. You have to convert that group to a Smart Object, first, but that leaves the group completely editable for the future.
Use smart objects whenever possible
Smart objects make it easy to keep parts of your Photoshop file editable. For example, you can place text within a Smart object. When you apply effects to that text, it is applied to the Smart object, leaving it the actual text unharmed. When you convert text to smart objects for future users, it makes it easy for them to go back and change a word. You know as well as I do that clients change their minds more than Madonna changes her wardrobe, so performing this tiny step can save someone else from having to go back and redo everything over again.
Use Smart filters whenever possible
In the latest few versions of Photoshop, they’ve enabled the feature of having smart filters. This is essentially filters that are applied to a Smart object. Using Smart filters means that someone that uses the Photoshop file after you, can easily go back and double-click the Smart filter layer and make adjustments when needed. If you don’t use Smart filters, that person may have to re-create the same affects over again from scratch. If you didn’t make any kind of notes about the steps that you took in order to create that effect, that person may spend hours trying to figure out how you did it. It takes two seconds to convert a layer to a Smart object before you run filters on it. Save yourself and others a lot of time and frustration.
Use vector shapes whenever possible
In the last few versions of Photoshop, they’ve enabled the ability to create vector shapes. No, I’m not talking about paths, but real vector shapes with a fill and a stroke, just like in Adobe Illustrator. Working with shapes isn’t quite as easy as with illustrator, but it is still nice to have this feature. Let’s say that someone has to go back and resize your work. If you didn’t create an object using vector shapes, and they have to increase the size of that object, it will look pixelated. This means they’ll have to re-create that design all over again at a larger size. If you create it using vector shapes, they simply select all the parts that make up that shape and scale it to be larger.
Conclusion: Quality Photoshop Files
If you want to save yourself and others a lot of extra time and work, then it is important to produce quality Photoshop files. If you take the time to build a good Photoshop file as you go, then you’ll get into the habit of producing quality Photoshop files consistently. You won’t have to worry about doing things over again, or wasting valuable time. You’ll easily be able to edit files and make changes, saving a lot of frustration.
