When theming, do you use the "slices" feature of Photoshop/Fireworks?

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stephthegeek's picture
I use Photoshop, and use the slice tool
28% (13 votes)
I use Photoshop, and do NOT use the slice tool
30% (14 votes)
I use Fireworks, and use the slice tool
19% (9 votes)
I use Fireworks, and do NOT use the slice tool
6% (3 votes)
I use another graphics program and use a similar slice tool
2% (1 vote)
I use another graphics program and do NOT use a slice tool
15% (7 votes)
Total votes: 47

Comments

How about 'all of the

Bevan's picture

How about 'all of the above'. I prefer Illustrator to all of the above, though not for everything. Sometimes I use slices (in AI and elsewhere), sometimes I don't, depending on what I'm doing. Often I get files in FW/PNG, GIMP, PSD and other formats and I use the respective application rather than converting.

I don't have a preference and don't consider any one tool to be significantly better than others. Each tool has it's good and bad points, but most of the time the best tool is simply the one you know best.

Bevan/

No slices for me

elv's picture

When slices were introduced I already didn't like them, but at least they were relevant because all we had was table based layouts with tiny bits and pieces. My feeling is that nowadays with css and a "bulletproof" approach almost every image is a background image so slices are less often useful. Example: I need menu tabs to be higher than the visible part to accommodate with font resizing, so I can't just slice my mockup. The transparency can also be tricky with slices.

I try to use CSS sprites as

ipwa's picture

I try to use CSS sprites as much as I can, and the slices feature isn't really useful for that.

--
Nicolas

instead of the slices tool,

JurriaanRoelofs's picture

instead of the slices tool, I have a layers folder in photoshop called "export channels" containing black squares with a 0% fill, so they just mark of the area on the design that I used to export the graphics below that square.

That way you can just grab a graphic and copy it to your sprite image or copy it to a new canvas and save for web :)


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Could you post an example

inlikealion's picture

Could you post an example file of this technique? Sounds interesting, but I'm having trouble visualizing exactly what you mean. Thanks!

Currently I do a mixture of moving graphics from my design comp into a temporary new file where I can expand it into sprites or accommodate for transparency, drop shadow, etc... or turning off other layers and cropping the design to that element, saving out, then undoing the crop.

Export Area Tool in Photoshop

pixelwhip's picture

I use the exact same techniques. I wish Photoshop had the 'Export Area' tool that Fireworks has. There is so much wasted time creating temp files from a 'copy merged' just to export a background image.

A mix of all

cattlecall's picture

Agree with Bevan, all the tools have their strength and use of the slice tool depends on the need. I mainly rely upon the slice tool simply for image export and ignore the code.

Fireworks is great for rapid prototyping, but for higher quality output (especially with keylines) I rely on Photoshop or Illustrator.

Just slices

jberghem's picture

I use Fireworks and it's slice tool. I always export only the slices never any (X)HTML or CSS. I always code by hand. This way I know the code will always be valid and clean. I'm still working on finding the most efficient way for designing drupal themes with Fireworks but I don't think I'll let Fireworks generate code for me. The time spent to change the code to make it clean and valid usually takes me more time that hand coding from scratch. I have however noticed that CS4 writes pretty good code.

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