Don’t be like that Art Director with the shitty file, be considerate and thoughtful when you design, you never know who could end up with your files.
Story Time. You just got a legit ass advertising job and you can’t wait to work on your first project. You think of all the awesome things you can create, really show off those college skills you paid so much for. But no. You aren’t creating something from scratch — you’re taking over the Art Director’s file. Excited to see their thinking and how they work, you quickly open Photoshop and the file. Minutes later (after everything has finally loaded because the file is over a 2 gbs for one email template), all you see is a unnamed, cluttered layers panel with no rhyme or reason for order, just there. Yeah, the final product looks legit — I mean how did he do that sweet background flare!? Seriously, how did he do it? You have no idea, it’s flattened and duplicated a few times. This will be fun, looks like you’ll be cleaning up the file longer than the edit will take.
This makes me feel like a design teacher, but it’s so true. As much as you want to ignore them and think that naming is a waste of design time — don’t. Decide the best
Order. Create Groups. Color Code.
A smart object is basically a linked asset to the original image, vector or whatever! The biggest life saver when you've
Try creating Smart Objects, duplicating your original, anything — just don't do anything that you can not easily undo.
