Appendix C: Adobe Photoshop Tips

The following topics are provided in this section:

•	Photoshop previews

•	Photoshop native files

•	Use care when editing Photoshop files

•	Files with inactive alpha channels

Photoshop previews

Photoshop file previews are very useful, but saving them, particularly for CMYK images, can be time-consuming. Photoshop offers a Saving Files preference which allows you to “Never Save” image previews. Since the Xinet server will create previews for you automatically and much more quickly than you can from your client system, it isn’t necessary to have Photoshop do it whenever your files are in a Xinet volume.

Photoshop native files

You can leave Photoshop images in native format, including images with clipping paths, masking, layers and extra channels. Then, simply place the low resolution FPOs of these Photoshop images into layout programs. Make sure that Maximize PSD File Compatibility is set to Always in your Photoshop Preferences to ensure that you will have small previews of images inside Xinet displays.

Use care when editing Photoshop files

Photoshop allows two users to open the same file at the same time for editing. This has nothing to do with Xinet. You will see the same behavior if you use Macintosh file sharing. The end result is that whoever saves the file last overwrites previous versions of the shared file. This isn't really a bug; it’s simply the way Photoshop (and a few other applications) do things. When a user opens the file, Photoshop reads all the data, closes the file, keeping the document “open” on the Macintosh. When the user saves the file, Photoshop reopens the shared file, writes data into it, and then closes it. If another user opens and saves the file in the meanwhile, Photoshop warns that the image has been modified since you last read it.You should be aware of this danger when editing Photoshop files.

Files with inactive alpha channels

Xinet has seen reports that in some files, alpha channels appear in FPOs even when they are inactive in the Photoshop high-resolution image. If you see this behavior, there are two possible work-arounds:

•	Make sure, when you save the Photoshop files, the Channel options are set as Selected Areas instead of Masked Areas.

•	Save the file as a TIFF and then ask your Xinet administrator to turn on the two Volume Management/FPO Options: Use Spot and Mask Channels in TIFFs and Ignore Apparent Mask Channels in Photoshop Native Images.