Layer Semantics

One thing that really gets me about Photoshop is how little is paid attention to the semantics of layers (aka— properly naming and organizing layers). This comes in handy a lot for revisiting projects three or four months later and forgetting what a mess the PSD was. 

That is bad photoshop etiquette, especially if you’re handing off a project to another person (and trust me, I’m guilty: you don’t want to know how many times I’ve held off emailing a PSD because I was too embarrassed by my list of layers from 1 to 105.)

So how do you fix the problem of poor layer semantics. Adobe can’t really force their users into naming layers, but they could severely encourage it. Layer Search would make me want to label my layers. it’s that important.  

This is how layers should work. Travis Hines posted this on dribbble a few weeks back and it got me fired up with excitement. 

Searching for layers would be great. What would be greater is if we added search parameters to that idea.

Some basic parameters like:

• TYPE: Layer | Shape | Bitmap
• COLOR: (any color from the color coding palette)
• basic AND/OR/EXCEPT etc parameters
• only groups
• Locked/Unlocked layers

Imagine designing a website, and having all of the headings color coded red. If your designing a large page, you could search for all of the layers color coded red, and change the font size for all of the heading on the page at once. 

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Another way adobe could encourage semantics is when creating a new layer or group (excluding text layers for obvious reasons), automatically selecting the layer title for editing. I think this could be pretty controversial, and I’d like to see it happen in front of me before I say it’s an excellent idea, but it would look like this: 

This could go really well or really horribly. People who use it love it, People who don’t would now have to hit enter every time they create a new layer. That doesn’t sounds like an experience win. 

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Finally, there’s the issue of Color Coding. I’ve rarely encountered people who use the color feature to organize their layers, but it can be a really beneficial feature. 

Aside (AKA. Why is Color Coding useful) It’s difficult to understand why colors could be useful unless you think of colors in this way: Color Coding is a way to group layers in your psd that are not adjacent to each other in the layer structure. So all of the headings of a website design could be colored red, all ads in green, etc.

Color coding is great for quickly scanning your layers palette too, so if your designing a website, the header could be in read, content could be green, sidebar yellow and footer blue. It’s really up to your imagination.

Anyways, back to the idea. 

The problem is that the only way to add color is through Layer Properties (one of the most worthless dialogs in Photoshop history), or by right clicking on the eye (which no one ever does in the first place).

Oh and you can only do one layer at a time. Which is downright stupid.

The UX for color coding can be faster and easier. I’m suggesting it should be in the right click menu when click a layer on the layer palette.