Couple o' questions: photoshop actions and website creation

RedWylder · Jul 1, 2011

I need your all's input on a couple of things that have bouncing around my head for a bit.

1. Photoshop actions: I am new to the photoshop world. I've been using Lightroom up until recently and then I took a photoshop workshop and a lot of people were all about their photoshop actions. Are there any that you'd consider a must have or any vendors that are particularly good? Any general thoughts on this would be helpful.

2. I'm beginning the process of building a website which I suck at. A friend of mine suggested using Wix.com but I'm wondering what others have done and liked? I see a lot of nice websites and a lot of cheesy ones so any thoughts would be helpful.

Thanks for any input you have!

shmne · Jul 1, 2011

Actions are the bread and butter of any decent graphic designer. As a professional you give a quote based on an estimate of how many hours of work it will take you to complete a project, then charge the client that amount. Every hour less you work on the project, is more money you are making essentially because that allows you to spend more time on new projects. If you quote 8 hours, but end up only taking 4 because you have amazing workflow, speed, and other tricks than you just earned yourself 4 extra hours to spend on other projects. Actions can help you save some serious time.

There are actions from vendors that make photos look like cookie cutter images, and I won't suggest buying them at all. They give you a strong base to learn from, however most people end up just using the action out of the box which I do not approve of. You can google actions for photoshop and come up with a bunch of the standards.

Wix is a bit of the laughing stock of the design world, all of the components look cheesy. It offers those that don't know / can't find some basic scripts a way to create an interesting (and tacky) looking website. I have seen very many wix web pages, all of them encounter errors, all of them were free (with advertisements on them), and they were also all created by designers. HTML and CSS really isn't that difficult to learn, especially if you have the money to spring for dreamweaver. I use dreamweaver for my web development and I learned both HTML and CSS on my own before college back in middle school, as a kid I didn't find it too confusing because really the concepts are pretty straight forward. I don't remember what book I used, I think it might have been dummies though. Also, a great javascript that can be activated on any mobile platform (wix is flash, and can not) is called lightbox. I think its even free, its specifically for showing images and I do believe the most current incarnation has a special version for mobile devices.

I'm a little harsh on both of these topics, however I feel pretty strong about both cases. I find that it is in your best interest to find a web designer willing to do a 1 page html / css site because it will look better, and that learning to create your own actions is much more important than buying stock ones. Also I have a bit of a hangover so I'm sure my crankiness is coming out :lmao:

RedWylder · Jul 1, 2011

I was actually looking for just such advice. So thank you. I played around with wix and thought that it looked awful. And although I'm not a professional, I don't want to make myself look like a beginner using a cheesy website. I don't have the funds at the moment or the time to learn dreamweaver so that is probably out. I guess I need to save up for someone to design me one...

As for actions- that was what I was noticing as well-everything I came across just served to make cookie cutter images which I'm not interested in. I have learned the basics of creating an action but I'm still learning everything photoshop can do and therefore the actions I'd create will likely suck. I was thinking of a few good starter actions that will help me learn the process more.

Anyways, thanks for your advice. I appreciate the time and crankiness that went into it

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