rhapsodic.org

12 Love Notes

People shouldn't use photoshop to lay out web pages any more than they should use paint by number kits to write novels.

not layout, design. like the header graphics and all that.

I've found that exporting things to jpg from Photoshop make the graphics lighter, paler, and just plain yickier. I always adjust my graphics after output to bring them back to their original splendor.

i dont mean quality of the graphics - that is fine.

i mean that i liked it in photoshop and hated it in html - even though both looked the same.

Ah. I understand.
I also still stand by my original statement.

The problem is that Photoshop is a graphics program. That means that it has all sorts of little tricks up it's sleeve to make graphics look better. Things like advanced aliasing and dithering, color balancing, font smoothing, etc., etc. HTML, was designed to do simple layout of predominantly text based data. It doesn't have any of the spiff graphical whizz-bang that a purely graphical program has. So naturally a real page won't look like a fake one.

I deal with this problem every bloody day. Graphics folks keep saying to me, that line-of-text X needs to be exactly 15 pixels long. I keep reminding them that users can specify their own fonts and colors which pretty much renders whatever decision they've made moot.

Design your page using the same tools you'd use to build it. Or print everything out and use tape and blank wallspace.

and i wouldnt design a site without photoshop. within photoshop, i can easily move around graphics and text boxes, as well as changing color schemes. i know that the text will look different in html - i am not the kind of person who needs it to look on screen the exact same way it does in print... thats silly.

but what i do need to see is if the graphics i have chosen will really sit well with the text. i have started a few layouts with the perfect graphic, only to find that the graphic does not lend itself to text flow.

using your example of writing a book and using paint - i dont come up with content using photoshop, but i do come up with how it will look. if i were to design a book (content has already been created, or will soon be finished), i would probably start with a pencil and a sticky note, just like i do with my web layouts. i would draw the alignment of headings and subheadings, as well as the cover design.

if i werent concerned with how my pages were styled, i wouldnt attach a css file to them. and they would be ugly. but because i want color and graphics and swirly/funky/cool fonts, i will start in a program that will let me create those.

very specifically, in this instance, i am talking about a header graphic that i liked one place and not another. i understand that i didnt give much information in my post.

Ah, sorry then. Just touched a nerve, I guess.

A very raw nerve.

i can tell.
its all good.

I design all my pages with crayons first. It's hard to go wrong with a nice set of Crayolas.

I draw the entire layout in photoshop, exactly how I want it to look and then I either plug it in to an existing table frame that I've made or a make a new one from scratch just for it. Using css I can get it to look similar to almost anything I can do with text in photoshop. Within reason, of course. BUT, if you're using photoshop for design, DON'T USE THE SLICES. Make the tables using your own brainpower. It's always a better set up than a peice of adobe software can come up with.

is this a record for the number of comments on one post?

sadly enough, i think so.