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Ask HN: Do you know Photoshop?

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Re: Ask HN: Do you know Photoshop?

#71

I have thought about making video tutorials on how to use Photoshop to create practical design elements. Ie, how to make a button or how to design a header. Something every programmer making their own webapp could use that doesn't really require much Photoshop knowledge. Would there be any interest?

Yes, I tend to get discouraged at the photoshop hurdle.

Re: Ask HN: Do you know Photoshop?

#72
In my experience, photoshop designers (who don't know how to code) often make poor design choices. I've found myself scratching my head more than a few times when trying to convert a mockup to html/css because of a designer who has a poor understanding of the browser as a design environment.

Re: Ask HN: Do you know Photoshop?

#73

Played around with it for a while, but because I currently don't have a way ($$$) to get Photoshop (nor do I really need it), I use Paint.NET for most of the things I do. For the few things for which Paint.NET is not good enough I use GIMP ;). And of course Inkscape for vector graphics.

I am in the same boat. I downloaded the Photoshop and Illustrator trails. The programs are great, but I would use them so rarely, that I couldn't justify the purchase prices. So, Paint.net and Inkscape for me!

Re: Ask HN: Do you know Photoshop?

#74

I strongly dislike Photoshop for mockups and think that using it is indicative of poor practice. In my experience it leads to premature optimisation of styling over basic design, tends to lock down designs too soon and gives no real insight as to usability. A Photoshop mockup is inherently static and turning it into a clickable prototype generally requires a great deal of duplicated effort. My preferred tool is Keyno…

I read the title, then read the questions and didn't understand.

I use a pen and paper or a tablet for mockups.

I edit images in Pixelmator.

I don't use art editing tools for mockups.

Re: Ask HN: Do you know Photoshop?

#76
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might as well have pirated it because you are violating the agreement by installing OEM on a different computer.

What do you mean a different computer? This was a copy that was never installed. I bought it from one of those online OEM shops. It wasn't zipzoomfly.com, but something like that.

OEM is to be installed on new equipment from manufacturers that have an OEM agreement with Adobe per the license. It doesn't matter that nobody else has used that copy. Just speaking from my experience searching in vain for legitimately cheap copies of CS.

Re: Ask HN: Do you know Photoshop?

#77
post #51

Picasa's UI was done entirely using Photoshop files. Layer names=widget names, etc. Our small-company team loved it. But at Google, I found very few engineers who wanted to touch Photoshop, ever. Biggest issue with using Photoshop in your actual production pipeline: "programming in the large" - you can't do code reviews or merges on PSD files, not nearly as easily as .cpp files. So as a team gets big, it is very hard…

Thanks for sharing. I've wondered for a long time what UI toolkit was used to make Picasa!

So you create the UI elements as PSDs and then export to some image format when building? Or do you actually interpret the PSD files in code itself?

Re: Ask HN: Do you know Photoshop?

#78
For a small game I'm working on, Photoshop has actually become part of the build process.

The artwork is saved in largish PSD files and I have a script which generates the required AppleScript to open each one, scale down the images to the required formats (for ex, retina-display and non-retina display), occasionally exporting different layers into different output files.

Re: Ask HN: Do you know Photoshop?

#79
PhotoImpact can do about 90% of what you can do in photoshop and it's much easier to learn/use.

Not to mention a fraction of the price. There's a free trial, give it a shot.

Re: Ask HN: Do you know Photoshop?

#80
post #51

Picasa's UI was done entirely using Photoshop files. Layer names=widget names, etc. Our small-company team loved it. But at Google, I found very few engineers who wanted to touch Photoshop, ever. Biggest issue with using Photoshop in your actual production pipeline: "programming in the large" - you can't do code reviews or merges on PSD files, not nearly as easily as .cpp files. So as a team gets big, it is very hard…

Thanks for sharing. I've wondered for a long time what UI toolkit was used to make Picasa! So you create the UI elements as PSDs and then export to some image format when building? Or do you actually interpret the PSD files in code itself?

During development, you can use PSDs directly. For shipping it all gets compiled to squeeze out overhead bytes. There's a parallel text file to describe hierarchy and extra properties. Sort of clunky, but it works.
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