Saving Assets with Adobe Generator
- Renaming layers and layer groups
- Evaluating and revising generated assets
- Generating multiple image sizes and formats from the same layer
- Preview images in a browser
When you’re preparing files for a website, often you need to create separate image files for buttons and other content. With Adobe Generator, you can easily generate a JPEG, PNG, or GIF image from the contents of a layer or layer group in a Photoshop file—simply by renaming the layer or layer group. You can append the appropriate file extension to save an image with default settings, but you can also specify quality and size parameters for the image, all determined by how you name it.
Renaming layers and layer groups
You’ll generate assets from the 13Working.psd file for a website. Initially, you’ll save only one of the buttons, so you can preview the generated image and see if it meets your needs.
- Open 13End.psd
- Choose File > Generate > Image Assets.
- In the Layers panel, double-click the Gallery 1 layer group name and rename it gallery1.jpg5.
- Rename the New Wing layer so that its new name is new-wing.gif.
- Rename the Logo layer with the new name logo.jpg5.
Once you’ve enabled Generator, it continues to be enabled for the current document until you disable it again. It’s a document-specific setting, which means it can be enabled for one PSD file you’re working in but not for another.
The JPG extension specifies that the resulting asset should be a JPEG file. The 5 specifies a quality of 50%. (See the sidebar, “Setting quality and size parameters” for more information.)
When you’re naming layers and layer groups to generate assets, it’s a good idea to use names that don’t include spaces or special characters.
You won’t see any changes in the Photoshop file itself when you generate assets. But Adobe Generator has saved the renamed layer or layer group in the specified format to a subfolder alongside the source PSD file. So, in this case, the assets you’ve generated have been saved to the Lesson13/13Working-assets folder.
If you generate an asset from a layer group, the group is flattened to produce the resulting image.