{"id":15709,"date":"2009-02-05T14:39:24","date_gmt":"2009-02-05T14:39:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.adobe.com\/jnackdev\/2009\/02\/feedback-please-managing-complex-psds.html"},"modified":"2009-02-05T14:39:24","modified_gmt":"2009-02-05T14:39:24","slug":"feedback_please_managing_complex_psds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/2009\/02\/05\/feedback_please_managing_complex_psds\/","title":{"rendered":"Feedback, please: Managing complex PSDs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">Designers&#8211;and Web designers in particular&#8211;create some of the most complex, intricately layered Photoshop compositions possible.&#160; How could we make the management &amp; navigation of these files more efficient?  I&#8217;d love to get your take on the following ideas:<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">&#160;<\/p>\n<ul style=\"margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<li><strong>Layer panel search\/filtering<\/strong>:\n<ul style=\"margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<li>Photoshop could offer a small search field at the top of the Layers panel.&#160; As you&#8217;d type in text, PS would narrow down the display of layers (e.g. typing &quot;b-u-r-r..&quot; would hide everything but the layer called &quot;burrito&quot;).&#160; Searching would also find <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.adobe.com\/jnack\/2008\/10\/per-layer_metadata.html\">custom tags<\/a> applied to layers.&#160; Hiding layers in the list would have no effect on the appearance of the document.<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>Separately, PS could offer  buttons on Layers that would let you filter the view so that you could, say, show only type layers, or only type layers and bitmap layers, etc. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li><strong>Layer sorting<\/strong>: Photoshop would offer the ability to sort the Layers panel by layer type, layer name, etc.  <\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li><strong>Symbols<\/strong> (i.e. reusable objects that enable &quot;edit one, update many&quot;): Photoshop already supports this concept to some degree via Smart Objects.&#160; You can convert a layer to be an SO, then duplicate the object, edit one copy, and have both copies update.&#160; The interface could be made clearer, however (e.g. through adding a Symbols panel for managing objects). <\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li><strong>Linked files<\/strong> (place a file, update it externally, and have all placed copies updated in PSDs):  Again, Photoshop already supports linked files in a couple of ways.&#160; If you double-click a Smart Object placed from Illustrator, PS will open a copy in AI.&#160; You can also choose Layer-&gt;Smart Objects-&gt;Replace Contents&#8230; to have an SO replace with a file on disk.&#160; Oh, and video layers are always linked to external files.&#160; The raw materials for a traditional linking implementation are there, but PS would need to add things like a Links panel.<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li><strong>Type styles<\/strong>:&#160; As you can in Illustrator and InDesign, you could assign a style to type layers in Photoshop, and when you changed the style definition, PS would update all layers that have the style attached.<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li><strong>Other<\/strong>?&#160; Anything I haven&#8217;t mentioned?&#160; Anything you like in other apps? <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">&#160;<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">To gather feedback I&#8217;ve created a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.surveymonkey.com\/s.aspx?sm=gR4VkjxyIaMQKWM2Wp_2fusA_3d_3d\">very quick survey<\/a>, and of course your comments (below) would be most welcome. (And in the interests of sharing ideas freely, you can <a href=\"http:\/\/www.surveymonkey.com\/sr.aspx?sm=T_2fIJmeIU9PKjpBjQByGurCjXkKbzd7f_2b9qv9wfb4COE_3d\">browse others&#8217; responses<\/a>, too.  Note that I can&#8217;t edit\/reply inline to suggestions posted via the survey.)<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">&#160;<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">Thanks<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">J.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Designers&#8211;and Web designers in particular&#8211;create some of the most complex, intricately layered Photoshop compositions possible.&#160; How could we make the management &amp; navigation of these files more efficient? I&#8217;d love to get your take on the following ideas: &#160; Layer panel search\/filtering: Photoshop could offer a small search field at the top of the Layers [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15709"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15709\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}