8 Ways To Design Sites Faster In Photoshop

8 Ways To Design Sites Faster In Photoshop

It is difficult to remain organised as a web designer. Not only are you juggling several tasks at once, but you are also likely dealing with tight deadlines and difficult customers. You may also be hopping around from brand to brand, continually learning new brand rules and trends. You can learn graphic design online through Blue Sky Graphics online graphic design course.
Fortunately, there are many methods to improve the efficiency of your process. To assist you, we have compiled a list of eight suggestions to keep you sane throughout your web design profession.

1. Keep your files in order.

Keeping your files organised is one of the simplest things you can do to maintain your sanity. Creating and keeping a consistent folder structure will make it much easier to locate your stuff. When you organise one folder differently than another, it becomes difficult to find the Final-Final-logo.ai file.

To Design Sites Faster In Photoshop
To Design Sites Faster In Photoshop

When organising your files, it is critical to use consistent file name standards. Versioning comes into play here. Some designers utilise dates, while others use version numbers and yet others use round numerals. This will vary according to your industry and personal tastes, but it is a smart practise. Versioning allows you to quickly track which file is the most recent, which is particularly useful if you have older versions stored for reference.

2. Recognize your framework

We did not realise how to effectively use an existing framework until we were many years into the design career. Bootstrap and Foundation are presently the two heavyweights in the framework industry, but Google’s Materialize will undoubtedly give them a run for their money in the near future.

Foundation includes a responsive grid, as well as style for buttons, fields, typography, navigation, and many more features to make your life simpler. By incorporating Foundation’s built-in grid into your PSDs, you will make it simpler for the developer to execute your ideas in a more pixel-perfect manner than if you do it on your own. Photoshop has a handy guide layout tool that not only makes it easy to create grids, but also connects them to the art-board for easy file restructuring and relocation.

Frameworks are also a useful starting point for button style, forms, and so on, and they help demonstrate the possibilities and limits of the design techniques you may use. This will not only provide you with a fantastic starting point for your design, but it will also assist promote a more friendly cooperation with your developer.

3. Arrange your layers according to the content section.

When working with sophisticated web design PSDs that include a plethora of folders, layers, smart objects, and so on, it is easy for things to get disorganised. When layer 2,455 comes around, you realise you need some kind of structure in your PSD. This is why I suggest arranging your PSD into parts.

My folders typically contain Nav, Hero, Intro, Packages, Benefits, Footer, and so forth. I also colour label these folders in a rainbow pattern to make them easier to find. This makes it simple to update parts and modify your PSD.

4. Remember all of the keyboard shortcuts you often use.

This is a major in terms of efficiency. Memorize any key commands that you find yourself utilising often. If you know all of the major keyboard shortcuts, your productivity will skyrocket.

Saving, font size and leading, layer ordering, save for web, and opacity are just a few examples. Photoshop also allows you to build custom shortcuts. The most essential command to remember in my opinion is saving your work. Because of Adobe’s erratic crashes, it is best to save often rather than risk losing any of your work.

5. Make use of CC Libraries

Libraries are one of the greatest features that Adobe has introduced since the release of CC. If you have never heard of them, you should check out this fantastic lesson on how to utilise them.

With the touch of a button, libraries make it simple to alter colours and text styles. They also aid in the storage of brand icons, which can be readily changed in one location and have changes reflected rapidly across PSDs. This is especially useful for headers and footers on your website, where you are likely to make minor changes during the project.

6. Save pictures and vectors as smart objects.

Despite the fact that it may increase the size of your project, maintaining your pictures and vectors in smart object format will make it simpler for future designers to modify your PSDs. Consider this: the client returns with modifications that involve re-cropping a hero picture and making minor changes to a vector icon. This is easier to do if the PSD contains the full-resolution picture rather than a reduced, rasterized version. Vectors, as opposed to rasterized visuals, are also simple to modify when they are smart objects from Illustrator.

Another advantage of having pictures in smart object format is that you may save them as PSDs and then insert them as smart objects into your project. Using a placed picture PSD allows you to easily apply adjustment layers and changes inside a separate, confined photo file instead of cluttering up your source file. Using smart objects as library graphics adds to the excellent mix. Not only may vector objects be readily edited, but library graphics will update throughout all apps.

7. Create and follow a style guide.

Many companies will provide you with a basic style guide to follow when it comes to fonts, colours, pictures, icons, drawings, and so on. This is a useful resource, but it will not always keep you consistent with your website-specific style. I have greatly increased my efficiency by developing web style guidelines for each site on which I work.

8. Encourage inter-departmental cooperation

Many individuals who seek professions in marketing production (designers, developers, copywriters, etc.) are introverted, making it difficult to go outside of one’s comfort zone when it comes to cooperation. It is also difficult to quit your area of expertise, particularly when it is easier to connect to individuals in your profession. Even though it is sometimes difficult or uncomfortable, exiting your bubble and frequently working with individuals from different departments may significantly enhance the quality of your designs as well as your productivity.