Mar 30th, 2012

Social (Photoshop) gradients

#photoshop #productivity #gradients

We’ve been busy designing quite a few webapps that involve social sharing. Often times we’re asked to design buttons, icons etc. to indicate what social service something is shared through. We all know a social service’s logo triggers recognition to users. Beside’s the logo’s shape, the use of the social service’s brand color helps in this recognition process. Since we found ourself color-picking the right social brand colors frequently we decided to turn these colors into gradients and share them with you!

Download the Photoshop gradients file here.

Mar 9th, 2012

9 Notes

Using keyboard shortcuts in Photoshop

#photoshop #productivity #tip

Whatever business you’re in, productivity can make or break not only your profit but also your morale. In (web)design we’re constantly looking for little productivity boosts. One thing that has proven itself to be a huge productivity boost for us, is assigning keyboard shortcuts to frequently used functions in Photoshop.

Proper layer naming in Photoshop

#productivity #photoshop #layers

Now we know there are already numerous blog posts on organizing your Photoshop layers. Most of these tutorial/blog posts talk about the need for using layer groups and how the layer structure should match the visual structure in your Photoshop file. What we like to point out in this post is the future comfort of proper layer naming on a micro level.

One PSD in multiple windows

#photoshop #tip #productivity

Dutch designer Jonno Riekwel once tweeted a great tip for working in Photoshop regarding designing detailed UI elements. He pointed out the option to open one Photoshop document and displaying it in multiple separate windows. This means you can align multiple windows next to each other (or above/beneath one another for that matter).

SuperSlicr: Ditch the Slice Tool

#photoshop #productivity #action

A superhandy action for Adobe Photoshop we’ve recently come across. Select the layers you wish to export (as a transparent PNG or JPG), use ⇧+F8 and you’re done.

Extremely sweet when exporting graphics for iOS apps. Get it at James Brocklehurst’s MightyMeta.co.uk and download it for free.