Web Designers and Photoshop

Every web designer out there will be having a fair knowledge of Photoshop and its functions. For more than a decade now, Photoshop remains as the No.1 design tools for graphic and web designers across the globe. This powerful photo editing tool from Adobe is a staple of the design world. There are only a few programs out there which can challenge the capabilities of this excellent software in terms of features and functions.

New Photoshop Features

However, the new features of Photoshop in full, are always more than what one can learn. We know Photoshop is a powerful tool, so naturally, it is complicated too. New features and functions are being added to it on a regular basis, so it is essential for the users to keep themselves updated. To help Photoshop users, in this article, we will explore some of the best Photoshop tricks from the experts. Using these methods may help you enhance the workflow, make designing easier, and also can save your time in designing the best possible websites.

Photoshop tricks for the design geeks

These tips are ideal for any designers ranging from beginner to experts. Each of these is chosen based on the inputs from multiple web design. 

To improve the workflow, you need to first set up the Photoshop too in such a way that it works exactly the way you want it for the particular project. Work gets easier and uncluttered with an adequately tuned tool.

  • Workspace streamlining
  • You can access the following path as:
  • Window – Workspace – Graphic and Web.
  • It will tune the existing tools for the specific web designing requirements and make the task easier. Next, you can access:
  • Edit  – Preferences – Units & Rulers.

From here, you can choose the measurements in terms of pixels to be set as the default measure for all the upcoming documents. To customize the rulers for each document, just click on the document and choose the desired measurement case to case.

  • Setting up workspace

 Next, go to Preferences – Performance – History & Cache

Click on the Web/UI Design tab. It will change the default cache settings, which will favor the small files you create with multiple layers. In case of web design, you may mostly work with such smaller files. There, you can also customize the number of history states to be kept. With this, you can go back many steps to undo something and start again.

  • Keyboard shortcuts

While using computers, knowing the keyboard shortcuts will help us to execute the task faster and easier. For example, you can use the combination keys of ‘Ctrl+Alt+2 or +3 to create instant h2 or h3 headings while creating a blog post like this. This shortcut is much faster than going to the editor toolbar for doing so.

Similarly, as listed by www.eterpro.com experts, there are many short-cut keys for Photoshop too, which will help you perform faster. Knowing how to perform various actions on this action-rich platform with simple keystrokes will make your task easier. There are many cheat sheets online for common shortcut keys for Photoshop. From the first point onwards, make it a habit of using keyboard shortcuts to get practice and later make it a habit for quick work.

  • Name layers and group them

On using Photoshop for web design, you will be creating a large number of layers for sure to get into the final design. Not only the elements added are formed as layers, but the modifications as adjusting contrast or brightness to get counted as a layer. For this reason, it may be ultimately quite confusing to understand which layer and which stage you want to access once the project is advanced.  In fact, there are many options to make it less cluttered. Let’s explore some possibilities.

The primary way is to group and name each layer. Just double-click on any layer, and you get the option to custom create any name for it as you like. This way you can easily segregate each layer.As an alternative way, you can try to pick up several of the layers at a time by holding down the Ctrl key to pick each layer or press Shift to mark the neighboring layers. To group them, you can use Ctrl+G.You can also right-click on the layers of choice and give the group option. By using any of these methods, your work layers become more organized and easy to access later.

Some other handy Photoshop tricks for web designing also include:

  • Custom filtering the layers
  • Creating a grid layout
  • Importing color swatches
  • Keeping the custom shapes saved for instant future access
  • Switching between the background vs. foreground colors
  • Changing opacity
  • Trying out sample color
  • Undo multiple steps at a time on Photoshop
  • Change the brush size dynamically
  • Open different images as layers for more effective access and edit
  • Copy the CSS directly out of the Photoshop

 

Using these techniques will further shorten your learning curve, and help achieve a lot of things in an easier and user-friendly manner. Knowing Photoshop in-depth can further help you complete your tasks much faster, bring more charm and finish to your websites, and also help you deliver the latest trends by  changing technology.