The Photoshop CS4 disaster toolkit

Tools Photoshop
#1

Hello fellows.

Over the last few months, I have been working on pipelines for 2d games. So, basically, it’s Photoshop, and a few file conversion plugins/command-lines to get the files to correct shape, dimensions and bit-depth.

I worked with Photoshop CS3, and one team of artists that would follow my every recommendation. Now, I have the disastrous mixture of Photoshop CS4 and a team of artists who couldn’t care less.

And then I introduced them to Smart Objects, which they have been using everywhere (hammer and nails). So, out with the rant and in with what I wanted your guys’ opinions:

I have been getting PSDs of all sizes and shapes, with all combinations of SmartObjects inside SmartObjects inside SmartObjects. Each of these files is taking a time, from 30 seconds to 15 minutes to fully export. I’m guessing Photoshop does not work well with some commands (such as Crop and Image Size) when you have SmartObject inside SmartObject inside SmartObject.

Has anyone had similar problems with that, or has some insight to offer?

I feel that awfully slow performance is a new feature of Photoshop CS4. :laugh:

#2

Sounds nasty! We’ve done a lot of 2D games in the past for GB/GBC/GBA/DS and we’ve never exported directly from photoshop or converted PSD files. Our artists save frames out to tga/png/bmp and we have a in-house tool that’s a little like premier for sprites. In the tool we import the sprites, setup sequences and playback settings, set frame centre points and data points, collision boxes etc. Doing all that in photoshop I can imagine would be a nightmare. It might be time to rethink of your work-flow and consider a redesign your tools?

The other option is buy a baseball bat to use on artists who don’t comply with your requirements :wink:

#3

I vote for the baseball bat.

#4

I guess you can easily convert the Smart Objects to regular layers, then export them to individual trimmed images.

#5

Perfect! And rope to hang the offending artists like piñatas. :cool:

I think the problem is probably that the rasterization of the SmartObjects is being done too late in the workflow. Doing it as one of the first steps in the PSD processing would greatly reduce other Photoshop commands that are taking too long to process (specially cropping and resizing).

But as the export process goes

that is exactly the process we are trying to automate. We have a bunch of little nasty requirements and I’m trying to keep the intermediate files (tga/png/bmp) hidden so that artists will have less chance to mess them up.

I’m thinking of a perfect world where every 2d artist in my team will never touch anything but Photoshop :slight_smile:

#6

I think you need to get your artists to care!

#7

sounds like an education or culture issue – we keep both PSDs and TGAs in source control. artists are responsible for saving both and making sure the files are named correctly, in the right location, and so on.

walk softly and carry a big stick – eventually everyone gets with the program.

#8

I’m not sure I understand the problem? The time it takes to export because of the number and size of smart objects?

If so, you have two options- first, don’t allow smart objects or find a way to automatically limit their use. Or, figure out how to technically improve your pipeline so it doesn’t become an issue.