FEATUR ES YOU’VE NEVER USED I N PHOTOSHOP
SHARE & SHARE
ON BEHANCE
Want to share your latest piece or work in progress? Go
to File>Share. This handy feature generates a quick snap-
shot of your document and lets you send it off to other
applications such as Evernote (a photo gallery), Lightroom,
an email client, and some social media services. What
shows up varies by operating system and configuration, so
if you want more options, you’ll have to investigate your
own computing environment. When you choose where
you want to share, you are given the option of adding a
description before sending it off.
There’s also an option for Share on Behance, but this
service has been deprecated and now simply opens Behance
.net in your default browser.
VARIABLES
Here’s something for all of you production-minded folks:
using data to drive graphics in Photoshop! While nor-
mally in the domain of InDesign, this handy feature
(Image>Variables) allows you to use an external data
source (a tab-delimited or comma-separated text file) to
build collections of similar graphics. Within Photoshop,
you can assign different kinds of variables to the layers so
those layers are replaced with text or images, or simply tog-
gled on and off. If you’ve ever needed to generate a stack
of customized images for business cards, catalogs, market-
ing collateral, sports cards, or any other templated series,
this is your tool.
Using Variables is fairly easy. You start by editing
your Photoshop file to assign variables to the necessary
layers, create the data file containing the image names
and text you want to use, and choose where to store
the output files.
You can get fairly complicated with the replacement
information, and not all of your source images need to be
in the same location; relative paths are supported, too. [For
more on Variables, check out Dave Clayton’s “Designing in
Photoshop” column from August 2018.—Ed.]In practice, it’s easiest to create your data file in a
spreadsheet application, and then export it to a tab-delim-
ited text format. You also have to ensure that your variables
are all named exactly the same as your data columns. The
data file can contain an option for layer visibility, as well,
giving you even more flexibility for showing or hiding other
layer content, such as logos or other special indicators.
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