Why I love using the new artboard feature in Photoshop for web design
When designing for web apps, mobile apps, and responsive web design, I have consistently struggled with making sure all of my PSDs are organized, consistent, and up to date. While this seems like it could be an easily solved problem, it’s not. Factors such as client and internal team changes, file naming convention problems and insuring the most recent version is saved and on the server, it can become a snarly confusing mess.
If you’re like me, you’ve tried utilizing other tools such as layer comps. While some may argue layer comps is another tool that just takes training and patience, I personally can’t stand it. From my dabbling with it, it has resulted in loss of work and whole buckets of confusion when passing the PSD off to dev.
Here’s the much better, much more intuitive solution: artboards. Adobe Photoshop CC 2015 released a new artboard feature similar what Adobe Illustrator CC has had for years. Not only does it make everything neat, organized, and up-to-date, it’s easier than ever to export your files as a PDF or separate file types. While I’m ready to give the genius behind this idea a huge kiss, it does come with it’s faults:
Pros:
Files are consolidated; small tweaks to consistent design elements such as navigation can easily be applied to the rest of the templates.
It’s easy to export a PDF or PNG to send for client review
Instead of having hidden layers, you can easily show UI elements such as the dropdown display in a separate artboard
Cons:
File sizes are understandably huge. Where there used to be one template per file, there is now 10 or 20. If your computer can’t handle a file this big, it can be frustrating and slow
Buggy. Adobe, being true to its nature, released this feature with some bugs that need to be worked out. Duplicating artboards and exporting a PDF can sometimes fail.
PNG background. Be aware, when you quick export a PNG, the background is not white, it is transparent. You have to put in your own white background. It’s a fairly frustrating change of user experience compared to a typical PSD.
How are you liking the new artboard feature? Let me know in the comments section.
