Perhaps a bit bold move to start already with showing off my weaknesses, but I’m thinking that we all have some just like we all have our strengths. No matter how idealistic many job ads seem. One person cannot be great at everything. Repeating once again for the text scanners: one person cannot be good at everything.
I’m a pretty visual person and I get easily bothered by badly designed marketing material as well as anything else where functionality is hidden under a lot of user unfriendliness or unpleasing looks which is why I don’t like Excel so much, but that’s another story.
Today I wanted to talk about me and design programs. Especially Photoshop. I’ve become quite good friends with InDesign, because life forced me, but Photoshop and I still mostly keep a safe distance from each other. Sometimes, however, that’s not possible in the various work of a marketeer. No budget nor designers available or an idea that seems so simple that I am embarrassed to outsource it are the main reasons, why sometimes I still try to chew myself through the ways of working with that ever-so-common and loved design program. Trust me, I’d rather do anything text related elsewhere.
If there are more of you like me out there, then I’ll gladly show you, what kind of a “simple task” must have taken up at least a half hour of my workday today.
I was making web banners. Very. Basic. Banners.
Our webpage banners even come with an old Photoshop template of sorts. All I needed to do was change the text and images and prepare two separate banners with different opacity to create a nice effect when a website visitor hovers over them. That’s how our system works. Two separate .png files alternating. I won’t go here into a discussion about the the sensibility of our system, but bigger experts are welcome to share their ideas and experiences in the comments section. Would be interesting for me as well.
Back to the Photoshop work. It took me a while to discover where I can find layers in my recently upgraded version. They weren’t just openly on the right meny. They were there though. A lot of clicking on the “eyes” later as the template file had many alternative layers, I managed to find my old clear text and vague text, the same with photo versions. It has been a few years since I worked on those banners last, so I only had a faint memory that one layer or maximum two (for text and image) should be enough. After all, I was able to use the same layers and just change the opacity to create both – the vague and clear files I needed. All it took was a few needed clicks and all the prior extra clicks to find the right layers. As I said, not my strong suit. Perhaps writing it down here will help me remember it for the future.
Then I found myself with another issue – one, that seemed even sillier than opacity. I could not figure out, how I can move the text a bit. Choosing left, right and central lining just pushed the text out of my little banner all together. So I Googled. Yes, it came down to that. I guess I will always wonder why sister programs InDesign and Photoshop behave so differently, but the latter seems to have a Move button. No, not the mouse icon. Another one with a cross and arrows at each end. After discovering that, it seemed like a child’s play. The program even helped me center align automatically.
As it comes so hard to me, I really respect all the actual designers who have chewed themselves through the secrets of Photoshop and really do create such things within seconds. I did too with the latest versions, but those were just very multi-clicked copy improvements.
Anybody else here who feels like sharing their weaknesses publicly?