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How to make panels in Photoshop

Notarealsignguy

Arial - it's almost helvetica
It doesn’t matter where they break, you can just pre-seam all the panels on a table and lay it in one shot.
How do you figure? What if your break is 2" in front of a door jamb? You just roll with it when you could have eliminated an overlap altogether?
 

Mr. Signboy

New Member
How do you figure? What if your break is 2" in front of a door jamb? You just roll with it when you could have eliminated an overlap altogether?
Ahh, I get what you mean. I was thinking of a box truck when I wrote that.

For the original post, trying to make a wall wrap, why not just tile in the rip and save yourself the trouble?
 

Adam Vreeke

Knows just enough to get in a lot of trouble..
Another way to do it would be to make sure your layer is not a background (if layer says background with a lock right click layer and layer from background). From there you have your full image size and then change the canvas size ctrl + alt + C on windows. Change your canvas size to the size of your tile, be sure it is canvas size and not image size, image will automatically clip your image where canvas will not. Go to window > properties, this window allows you to change your x y coordinates. Start at your 0,0 mark save as your preferred file type, once done in properties tab move your x coordinate the size of your canvas and resave. rinse and repeat until you are all done, no need to delete and ctrl z, no need for any extra layers just a few boom boom booms and your done.
 

Adam Vreeke

Knows just enough to get in a lot of trouble..
As long as we are talking about our favorite shortcuts:

Alt + Shift +click and drag object - copies object with alt, shift makes it keep it straight.
Ctrl + D (transform again) makes last adjustment again. This and above make setting multiple up a dream, have one up, alt shift drag over, then ctrl d until you get your row, highlight row, alt shift drag for column then ctrl d it down and your donezo's.

highlight object and Ctrl + F, this copies selected object and places is directly on top.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk

EDIT: Above shortcuts are for Illustrator.
 
Last edited:

Stacey K

I like making signs
As long as we are talking about our favorite shortcuts:

Alt + Shift +click and drag object - copies object with alt, shift makes it keep it straight.
Ctrl + D (transform again) makes last adjustment again. This and above make setting multiple up a dream, have one up, alt shift drag over, then ctrl d until you get your row, highlight row, alt shift drag for column then ctrl d it down and your donezo's.

highlight object and Ctrl + F, this copies selected object and places is directly on top.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk

EDIT: Above shortcuts are for Illustrator.
OMG...Alt + Shift + Drag is my new favorite shortcut!!!! Works in Flexi!!!:notworthy:
 

Notarealsignguy

Arial - it's almost helvetica
Poor Flexi/illy users, corel it's just ctrl + click to move straight.
E and C are for centering vertically and horizontally.
ctrl b to alight bottoms, l r & t are for respective sides.
Now if only I knew the key to not align edges, but butt them together. Like putting one panel just past the selected one. Is that even a command?
Arrange commands get tied to alt 1-6, so weld is alt 3, trim alt 2, combine is left mouse wheel and break apart is right...
I love my keyboard shortcuts!
step and repeat with 0 as the spacing. Not a shortcut but it's 1 click if you leave the docker up
 

Notarealsignguy

Arial - it's almost helvetica
Ahh, forgot one, turn off all snap to's except for center, draw your X for drilling patterns, group the mounting holes, then just click and hold on the X, drag it around, and hit space bar everywhere you want to drop one. Grouping the holes allows them to still have a relevant center, combining them shifts center to all combined parts. If only find and replace did what it said instead of just 'find and modify'.
You lost me burton. I try to keep my sign sizes to a few options to maximize layouts and combine different orders together. I have a hole pattern and shear marks setup for the various sizes that I drop over them, bump them all together and print. It makes nesting (if that's the right term?) them on a 4x10 or 4x8 sheet nice and clean with little to no waste and minimizes shearing. It's kind of lazy but pretty efficient. 48x36, nope, you have to live with 48x32 so I can do 3 in one shot with 2 cuts.
 

Notarealsignguy

Arial - it's almost helvetica
Well custom channel letters need holes in less predictable spots, drawing holes on the pattern is less useful than a cross, since if you rip the center away on a cross, you can visualize center, but on a circle it's...less easy, especially if you make 1/8" holes and the drill skitters across the pattern and that hole is now ripped off and bunched up. Making the file for the letter you need circles, then at some point you need to generate the pattern, so now X's. Yes I should have a library of hole sizes with X's centered on them and place them all at once. Do I? Nope. At least now I feel even dumber for not having one so I may just get started on it.
You game sounds legit, as long as your customer base drinks the koolaid and lets you set the rules. We just waste and price out accordingly, though I be my competition would sell 3 32" panels from a sheet as 3 3' panels and not tell the customer up front. I always like to give the option, and most folks take it, especially my construction guys ordering coroplast. "I need 7 3x3's" "no you don't, why don't I sell you 16 2'x2's for less?"
For me nesting is to tetris, where you're stacking blocks. Just that nesting implies different sizes/shapes/orientations(trans squares and the like)/etc
Oh I get what you're saying. I do the same, .25 circle with cross hairs to mark where to punch. I agree, you need the x, it's hard to center on a circle by itself.
 

Mr. Signboy

New Member
Poor Flexi/illy users, corel it's just ctrl + click to move straight.
E and C are for centering vertically and horizontally.
ctrl b to alight bottoms, l r & t are for respective sides.
Now if only I knew the key to not align edges, but butt them together. Like putting one panel just past the selected one. Is that even a command?
Arrange commands get tied to alt 1-6, so weld is alt 3, trim alt 2, combine is left mouse wheel and break apart is right...
I love my keyboard shortcuts!
you can just make a macro that will align things however you want and asign it a hot key. When I used Corel I would make a macro for every common thing I did, some of them were 4-5 functions all in one hotkey, (Select > change to spot color>rotate 90deg) I'm now learning illy and having the remake them all (adobe calls them Actions)
 
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