My Photoshop Setup
As a designer, I find it important to have the tools I use frequently to be easily available. When creating a website, I mainly use Photoshop as my tool for creating the design. In this post I’ll show you how I have my Photoshop panels set up, and hopefully help you become more productive in your work.
Okay, lets get started.
Layers
One of the first things that bugged me with the default layout when doing website design was the small size of the layers pallet. I found myself constantly having to scroll up and down it to find the layer I was trying to select. Since I have a larger screen (A Dell 2408WFP, for those who are curious), I found that I could create a second column and use it exclusively for the Layers panel.
Type
Another thing that bothered me at first was that I kept going back and forth between the Character and Paragraph panels. Since I created space by removing the Layers panel from the far right column, I simply dragged the Character panel into its own space.
Undo
With the additional space on the right column I was able to extend the History panel a bit. This lets me go back 10 or even 15 steps in a single click, which I find myself frequently doing as I try out new ideas for a design.
Template
Although this isn’t related to the main topic of this post, I use a BlueprintCSS template for all my work. Feel free to download it below. Be sure to set your Photoshop grid to a Gridline every 80 pixels with 8 subdivisions for optimal view.
Photoshop BluePrintCSS Template
Well, that’s about it. If you have any questions about my setup, or want to share how you set up your Photoshop or designing app, feel free to leave a comment below!
(P.S. – If you noticed the small bar on the bottom of my screen, that’s GeekTool. I’ll be making a post about that soon!)