Adding Artboards to your Photoshop workflow properly

Hi there, this video is all about Artboards. To get started with, we'll show you the kind of, just the basics, but just quickly. Then we'll step into some more of the fun professional advanced stuff. So hang around. 

So to create an Artboard, we're going to create a new document any which way. All you need to do is, we're going to be doing a social media update pack. So we're going to create a template for new Twitter profile, Instagram profile, and Facebook profile photos. Plus updating all the cover photos for it. Then looking at the actual posting images and different sizes. For all the different platforms, all in one file, that's the perk of Artboards. 

We're going to start with Facebook, and their profile photo at the moment is 180 pixels squared. Because we want this to be Artboards, we're going to turn that guy on. Click 'Create'. And you my friend, have a document with an Artboard. Artboards are kind of distinguished by these little groups here. Let's say you didn't do that, most people don't, they do it the-- how do I do it once I've got a file thing? So let's say we started it without turning it into an Artboard. To turn this into an Artboards file, all you need to do is have your layer selected. If you've got multiple layers, just select them all. Then go to the fly out menu in the Layers panel, and choose this one here, it says 'Artboard from Layers'. Whatever you have selected, it will use that size. It will appear down here, you might have to retype it in if you've got something kind of spilling off the edges here. 

Now naming your Artboards is a lot more important than it is naming layers, it's going to save us time. Because Artboard is all about doing kind of lots of work at once. And then, next time we have to do it, it's super quick and easy. So although I'm kind of lazy with my layer naming, Artboard naming is different. So I give it the project name, the date, the platform it's going on to, and potentially the size, just so you know what normally goes into an Artboard name, pretty nerdy. 

So this is for my Photoshop Essentials update. So whenever I release a course, I go through and update all of my profiles everywhere. So this is Photoshop Essential, it's done in July, 2019. And then this one is Facebook profile. Why does it look so long, and all these hyphens? That's just me, you might use underscores, you might use codes. Like this is quite long, you might use like 07-19. You can get fancy with it, but that works for me. I'm going to click 'OK'. 

So let's say we want to add another Artboard. There's two ways, both of them require you going to the Artboard Tool. So grab the 'Artboard Tool', he's hiding secretly underneath the Move Tool. If you want to just duplicate this-- I'm going to duplicate this one because I need this fella to be my profile for Instagram. So all I did is double clicked it here, and I'm going to double-- this is where you rename it, double click it in your Layers Panel. So this one is all the same, except this is Instagram. Another way to add them is using this tool, you can go up here and where it says Size, if you've got this selected and you pick iPhone 6, it's going to change what you have selected, which might be what you want. 

I'm going to undo. Let's say we want to add this little '+'. Then I want to add iPhone6, say you're doing a Web design or an App development, you need the iPhone size 6. A bit slow with updating these, anyway iPhone 6 is a bit old. But if you click anywhere randomly you get an iPhone6 size. Deleting an Artboard, just click on it. The easiest way, when you're working with Artboards, is to click the name rather than trying to click the edge, and hit 'Delete' on your keyboard. 

Now I'm going to add a few graphics, I'll show you a few extra things. I'm going to bring in an image. We're going to go to 'File', and we're going to go to 'Place Embedded'. It's going to go wherever we have selected. I got this Artboard selected at the moment. And in your '09 Artboards' folder, grab 'Daniel Scott'. It's a Smart Object. I'm going to kind of scale it to something like that. Hello, me. Say I need to do my Twitter profile now. If I go to my technique here, 'Artboard', click on it. Now I want to duplicate it, it just kind of makes a new one. What I want to do is actually just-- because I'm going to use a lot of the same elements, I want to duplicate it. 

Easiest way is to hold down the 'Option' key on a Mac, or the 'Alt' key on a PC when you're clicking that '+'. Now I'm using the one on the right, you can undo, use the one in the bottom, it depends on your workflow. I'm going to go across that way. You can see it brings through both the name, which is cool, but also any images that are on there. So this one here is now Twitter. 

Another way of doing it, is 'Artboard Tool' again, and just holding down the 'Option' key on a Mac, 'Alt' key on a PC, and just dragging the name. I said, drag the name. Makes a duplicate as well, bringing along everything. You can see, mine there freaked out a little bit. Artboards are weird, Artboards are-- they've been around a while. I find the best kind of way of dealing with them is making sure there's a good bit of distance behind them. You can see, I'm just using the Artboard tool and dragging them. It's because of really cool Smart Guides, to make sure they're all lined up. But I find, a better distance means they don't end up overlapping and jumping ship into this other Artboard. 

If you're finding them tough move them apart a little bit, and then when there, all I did was I turned the Eyeball on and off. And it kind of came back to life. That doesn't happen very often, just in this video. I'll leave it in. If you need to move a bunch of them, say you want to move them all down, you can just 'Shift' click them all as well. They will kind of look like they're highlighted. You can 'Shift' click them in your Layers panel as well, then just move one of them, and they all come along for the ride. 

All right, so that's the kind of introduction to Artboards. Let's get into the next video. We'll get into some more hard core stuff. It's hard core as Artboards get. I'll see you there.