Essential Criteria for a Real Web Design Application
July 27th, 2010 — No Comments
Type rendering seems to be Jason Santa Maria’s main complaint with current software used for web design and many would agree, myself included.
I would also like to add to his list of a what a web design app should consist of is an accurate (and easy) way to reproduce CSS effects such as the many different types of border styles. Basically we’re in agreement that CSS should play a more integral role earlier on in the design stage.
So why not build a desktop app for web design around WebKit? I’m not talking about an in-browser AJAX toolkit for dragging elements around and changing fonts, but an actual desktop application built with WebKit as the core to its display.
It’s clear whoever creates a piece of software blending both a graphics editor with the concept of designing in a browser (with WebKit) could have a very bright future. Who knows, Adobe could do it. Stranger things have happened.
Let me know what you thing by sending me an @tkenny reply on Twitter.
Read more...HTML and CSS Layers in Photoshop?!
July 20th, 2010 — No Comments
Hands up if you’re a web designer who uses Photoshop and ever thought that this might be a possibility? Yeah, me neither. John Nack, the Principal Product Manager for Adobe Photoshop, has put forward an idea of Photoshop gaining the ability to include actual rendered HTML and CSS (via WebKit) elements within a .psd file. The main reason why I think this could be a great idea and has a lot of potential is we’ll finally be able to render elements and text as they will be seen in the browser.
On the other hand however, you will need to create the elements with HTML and CSS in the first place before using them in Photoshop so why not just design in the browser? This could be useful but if you’re going to create something in HTML and CSS so it can render as it would in a browser will you not have to create everything within HTML and CSS due to the vast differences between the way Photoshop renders elements (especially text) differently?
I’m interested what you think of this idea. Personally I think it’s great to see Adobe reaching out to web designers which isn’t something they traditionally do or have ever done as far as I know. I don’t think they’ve paid paid us much notice judging from the last few updates of Photoshop so it’s certainly encouraging. Send me an @tkenny reply on Twitter with your thoughts.
Read more...Build Working Concepts to Communicate your Ideas more Effectively
December 21st, 2009 — 11 Comments
The general convention in web design is to present static images of designs to clients but what happens when you have an idea that can’t be visually presented in this form? Perhaps it is some form of interaction or animation that can breathe extra life into the design.
Read more...Advanced Photoshop Techniques that you may not be aware of
October 22nd, 2009 — 73 Comments
Photoshop is one of the most widely tools used for web design. Most web designers don’t use all of the great things that Photoshop can do. It’s easy to get stuck in your ways but instead you should be looking to further improve your skills and learn new techniques to improve your web design work, work flow and productivity.
The following are advanced Photoshop techniques that can help with your day to day use of Photoshop.
Read more...Quick Tip: Create New Keyboard Shortcuts in Photoshop to Increase Productivity
August 4th, 2009 — 2 Comments
Let’s just start off by saying that Adobe haven’t exactly put as much effort into keyboard shortcuts as they could have. You’re all familiar with the claw right? This is a reference to the complex nature of the ‘save for web’ shortcut Cmd + Alt + Shift + S (Ctrl + Alt + Shift + S on a PC)Â in Photoshop. Thankfully someone at Adobe must have realised that their keyboard shortcuts weren’t exactly innovative and included a way of assigning your own, located in Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts…
Create Shortcuts for Common Tasks
One of the most frequently and repetitively used feature of Photoshop are the layer styles. Rather bizarrely, there’s no keyboard combination for copying or pasting layer style to and from layers.
Another great example is cropping. Just about every other image editing software includes a keyboard shortcut for crop so why doesn’t Photoshop?! It’s a strange one for sure.
You can even go as far as creating a shortcut to invoke a filter. Creating shortcuts for specific functions can improve productivity if it is something you use multiple times a day so the point is that if it’s something you use a lot, and it doesn’t have a keyboard shortcut, create one.
BONUS: One problem creating new keyboard shortcuts is when using another machine that has the default configuration can be frustrating. Fortunately Bittbox have found a way to sync Photoshop settings between multiple computers. Very handy if you’re using different computers at home and at work.
Read more...View Photoshop Files in Safari
June 30th, 2009 — 3 Comments
A quick and little known tip is that you can view Photoshop files (.psd) in Safari. This is great for previewing a design in a browser without having to constantly save out to a jpg. As you can see in the image below is a .psd of a mock up of Inspect Element’s 404 page loaded into Safari. Now you can easily and quickly save your work in Photoshop and switch to Safari to see your work, how want to see it, in a browser.
Unfortunately this is a Mac OS X only feature. I had hoped that Safari 4 on Windows would support it but no luck. A quick search reveals that there doesn’t seem to be a plugin that can replicate this functionality in Firefox which is a shame. Hopefully someone out there is developing one, or planning to!
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