Erik and I started Dear Adobe to give people a place to vent about the software they use every day. Adobe software is so varied and so robust that you find people using it for so many different purposes. Even a single program, like Photoshop, has so many different areas of expertise that no single person can claim to be expert at all facets of it.
That being said, Erik and I are web designers first and foremost, and use Photoshop as our program of choice for comping out site designs. We do love it, but as the title suggests, we have our own gripes. Below is our top five list, High Fidelity style.
- Type Styles
- Type Rendering
- Pixel Perfection (Updated! September 5th)
- Marquee on multiple layers / Measuring Tool
- Save for Web
1. Type Styles
It’s been said that the web is 95% typography, and I’m one to agree. That being said, Photoshop could do alot better in helping us layout type. Being able to switch the leading or point size of every heading is alot easier than doing so one by one. This is one of those things that’s soooo much easier to do in CSS and kills me to handle in Photoshop, but is a necessary evil. Unlike other things that are easier to handle with CSS though, this one can be remedied.
2. Type Rendering
Sensing a theme yet? I used to layout my “HTML” text with an aliasing option of None, but that’s so 20th century. Unfortunately, Photoshop renders text at small sizes kind of, how do I put this…horribly? Ok, that’s a bit harsh, but if nothing else, it renders it inconsistently from operating systems and browsers. I know this is a political issue for Adobe and Apple and Microsoft, but c’mon, let us preview text how it’s going to eventually look.
3. Pixel Perfection
Let me know if I’m wrong on this one, but is there no way to get my guides to lie perfectly on a pixel? Is there no way to create a vector object where it’s straight edges end in a pixel that is at 100% opacity? Without these, using guides and vector objects become more of a hassle than they’re worth.
Someone did let me know I am wrong! It turns out if you have Snap turned on, you can hold shift to get your guides to sit perfectly on a pixel. Additionally, Vector Rectangles and Rounded Rectangles have a ‘Snap to Pixel’ option. Thanks again Dennis!
4. Marquee on multiple layers / Measuring Tool
This is a nitpick but my god if it isn’t annoying. When I have multiple layers selected (did I mention how much I LOVE selecting multiple layers?) and move my marquee to measure something, it throws an error. I know this is to prevent me from using the marquee to try to edit multiple layers – but that’s not what I’m doing, and that’s not when to throw that error.
Using the marquee tool to measure things of course is a personal workflow habit, but it’s a habit I’ve developed in response to finding the measuring tool utterly useless. So please, let me move my marquee all willy nilly, or make the measuring tool something I can use.
5. Save for Web
This one’s simple, but touches on alot of complaints I’m seeing. Save for Web sometimes, but not all the time, is slow as balls. Sometimes it takes minutes to load, and this is on a brand new Mac Pro with plenty of RAM. The seemingly random beach ball of death is a similar issue, but atleast Save for Web is a place to start thinking about how to speed up a feature.
So that’s the rap, folks. Do you have specific Photoshop for Web Design gripes? Or better yet, any ways to deal with the problems listed about? Share ‘em in the comments. Thanks for all the Dear Adobe love, and stay tuned for our Top Photoshop features article.
- A & E.
Hi , Your blog post about text in photoshop is absolutely great. Easy to understand it and with excellent value. I just stumbled up and dugg your site to digg as good news article about text in photoshop on Tuesday . Cheers, Mike Brown , keep up the good work !
In addition to your spot-on-suggestions, I would like to be able to rearrange the order of the effects in the effects panel.
So I for example could have a gradient overlay with multiply on top of my color overlay.
Or better yet, allow me to add all the effects I need. (Triple stroke, anyone?)
And add some “Smart Styles” that changes the effects on all the layers, that have the same style applied. That would make it much less tedious to make webdesign comps.
Best,
Joey Joe Joe Junior Shabbadoo
Daniel Johnston says hi!, or something.
Nice article, thanks for sharing.
I have to point out that for #3 you are indeed wrong. When dragging a guide, just hold shift and it will snap perfectly to pixels. When creating a vector object, there is a down-pointing-arrow located on the right of the custom shape tool button. Clicking that will twirl open a list of options. Checking snap to pixels should get you the results you’re looking for; straight edges at 100% opacity.
Cheers,
Dennis
@Dennis Thank you!!!! This is going to save me so much frustration.
@Joey Joe Joe Yes, being able to rearrange styles would be great, along with your smart style suggestion. In the meantime, copy/pasting style changes isn’t TOO BAD, but yes it could be better.
@Dennis Thank you!! Fantastic suggestions. An FYI to everyone out there, make sure Snap is turned on (duh… mine is generally off) before holding shift to get your guides to be pixel perfect. And also, the ‘Snap to Pixels’ option is only available on the rectangle and rounded rectangle tool, but that’s fine by me.
Again, thanks to Dennis for pointing out this great tip, and I’ll be editing the blog entry shortly.
My #1 Save For Web gripe is the fact that you cannot, short of memorizing or handwriting, retrieve the hex code of a matte color when saving as a transparent GIF. You can’t cut and paste, and you can’t use the eyedropper tool in the Save For Web interface. What good is that eyedropper tool, anyway?
About this web site: I love the idea of it, thanks, but why do I see the same gripes over & over when you have over a thousand?
I use illustrator for all of my website layouts, it translates to CSS better and allows for more flexability. There’s numerous problems with both programs but using photoshop to layout websites is considered “the old way”
There are a lot of grossly ignorant “gripes” on this site. Suggestion: do some quality-control, otherwise this site will be a joke (maybe that’s the idea?)
OR – allow users who actually know a thing or two to answer some of these gripes…
@Duff Johnson: I agree about needing a method of correction on the gripes; there are some things here that are 100% untrue. We’re currently working on a way to clear some of these up.
[...] noted in the comments of our previous post, The ability to rearrange the order of layer styles would be right [...]
LCD Soundsystem reference, nice.
Dear Dear Adobe Website,
Can we have a “previous gripe” button? Or just make the back button work.
I move quickly and need to go back to vote on the gripe I just saw.
Cheers
Dear Guys,
Please make the following websites as a communal resource:
Dear Apple (especially for iTunes & iPhone)
Dear AutoDesk (especially for AutoCAD)
Dear Microsoft (especially for everything)
Make a bunch and begin a community, who knows this could be apart of Web 2.5, a resource for people to vent their frustrations and people of said companies take them seriously and read these things.
I think these things are great and could get off the ground and hopefully get some change and improvements.
Hey! , Your blog post about layers in photoshop is absolutely great. Easy to understand it and with excellent value. I just stumbled up and dugg your site to digg as good news article about layers in photoshop on Tuesday . Cheers, Mike Brown , keep up the good work !
I have always been annoyed by the bug when resizing text using transform. The character palette’s text size does not track with it causing crazy jumps if you try to change the text size after using transforming it.
Easily, the post is actually the greatest on this deserving topic. I agree with your conclusions and will thirstily look forward to your coming updates. Just saying thanks will not just be sufficient, for the fantastic clarity in your writing. I will immediately grab your rss feed to stay informed of any updates. Authentic work and much success in your business endeavors!