Adobe Photoshop

**pealo86** · 03-09-2010, 10:11 AM

When I design a website, I include any sub-page designs in the same .psd file as the initial homepage design. This means that if the client wants me to change say, the header, I only have to change it once in the psd rather than having to open each page design as a separate psd and change each of them.

I've only recently started using slices to export each element of the design rather than flattening the image and chopping it up with the marquee tool.

However, this means that I've ran into trouble, if I slice up the whole homepage, what do I do about the elements in the sub pages that aren't in the homepage?

Does anyone know of a way to 'group' slices? Say having a group of slices for the homepage, and another group of slices for a sub page. And then to be able to turn one layer of slices on and another off.

Is this possible? I think it is in Fireworks but I no longer use that unfortunately.

**chrishirst** · 03-09-2010, 10:23 AM

Use layer groups.

**pealo86** · 03-09-2010, 10:31 AM

I probably didn't explain properly.

I use layer groups to group the elements of each page that is included in the psd, I'll have the main elements of the design and then have appropriate layer groups for any content that is within each page, e.g. home content, about us content etc.

Some elements in the homepage folder may overlap those in the about us folder, which means things will get a little messy when it comes to adding slices to the document as the slices themselves may have to overlap.

**chrishirst** · 03-09-2010, 10:39 AM

So you don't have a "common" group at the very bottom of the stack, then a group for each page with the unique elements/layers in it so you can just turn off the page(s) you don't want to see.

**pealo86** · 03-09-2010, 11:29 AM

That is what I do yes (if I'm understanding you correctly).

My problem is that Photoshop keeps generating auto slices and therefore diving up any slices that overlap.

For instance, If I was to have the 'home' and 'about' layers both turned on at the time time, certain elements would overlap each other which is a pain for when I'm using the slice tool.

If there was someway to stop Photoshop from using auto-slices then it would be so much eaiser! It's not looking possible though