Website designing requires various steps to be followed and the designing on Photoshop conversion into HTML or CSS format to design the website. You design a high-quality pixel-perfect mockup in Photoshop of what exactly your website should look like and you need to convert the same into an HTML format that makes the responsive design a breeze. While there are companies that are specializing in converting PSD designs into HTML/CSS but here are few steps for the beginners to learn and have expertise in designing websites using HTML.
Here are few ways how you can convert PSD to HTML:
- Slice the PSD: Divide the layers into several pieces which will help your page to load faster if the PSD is in sliced version. A single PSD takes plenty of time to be downloaded. There are many slicing options available in Photoshop namely, Normal, Fixed Size, Fixed Aspect Ratio, and Slices from the Guides. After PSD slicing, save the version into save for the web. Build an eye-catching website design that has elements such as header, footer, sidebar, and navigation which is placed in sequence. You need to group layers logically such as grouping header, content, footer, etc. in one group. It will help to create the expected HTML document from the PSD file. Using the PSD templates you can create designs of the website to later convert PSD to HTML. There are many free Photoshop templates which is helpful in making PSD website templates. PSD website templates have free high-quality designs to convert PSD to HTML template. Designers use several layers to represent one image. Usually to avoid several layers merging into one you need to make layers differently for different ones.
- Know your Tools: Converting a website design from PSD to HTML requires expertise in front end development. Converting is not just about coding in HTML, adding spices of CSS, and a bit of JavaScript for good measure. Converting pages require extensive knowledge of not just HyperText Markup Language and CSS but also jQuery and JavaScript. Add some background images in the header and footer. If you are not sure that you cannot code, you can seek help from automated PSD to HTML conversion tools. Although you cannot expect pixel-perfect conversion here.
- Create a directory folder: It is a good habit of organizing and managing data. Categorize in the following ways : Create a main folder with a website name to store all the images under the main folder. Make a separate folder for CSS files or style sheets.
- Plan the layout: It is important to analyze the design first by considering the Photoshop layout and identify the sections that are unique. Look for all such elements that need to be incorporated in the website design and then plan accordingly to create the HTML layout.
- Write HTML: After creating the required folders and analyzing or planning out the website elements, it is time to create an HTML page. You can also use an HTML page builder like Adobe Dreamweaver and PSD to HTML converter online. Start from the top part i.e. Header followed by slideshow, content, and footer. Focus on them elaborately. Style the navigation with a height, width, and gradient an apply a cascading styling sheet here. You should not directly create a website using HTML as the designs or images may not be appropriate if the design of a website in Photoshop is not done. There will be a problem with lay outing.
- Create Style Files: When you complete the HTML shell, put some styles into CSS. Use the Bootstrap framework to increase the scope of styling and personalization. You can create files with HTML editor and save them in the CSS folder. Provide information of font style, size, image position, background color, margins in the style sheet.
- Create a web design set: The next step is to create set of designs by collecting all the elements together. You need to edit that on Dreamweaver and after that rely on quick layout of HTML with CSS to get a strong foundation. Now, all the images are set into the main position.
- JavaScript interaction: Once you are done with HTML and CSS, you need to take into consideration JavaScript which makes use of jQuery and frameworks related to that. jQuery is a library that organizes and put extraordinary layouts. This makes it easier to code in front end. The two listed frameworks allow easy hands on HTML elements with JavaScript and functions.
- Responsive Design: You need to ensure that the pages loading speed is good when you are converting PSD into HTML. Google gives great importance to user experience and helps your website to rank better with better user experience. If the website is designed mobile friendly then it is an added benefit and along with that you need to code in the HTML keeping I mind the speed and loading of images before the page is fully displayed. At the same time, you need to keep the size of the image as low as possible without compromising the quality. In short, you need to convert PSD into responsive HTML to make your website rank better and easy to load while browsing for which you can use responsive HTML templates.
- Search engine friendliness: The ultimate goal of the website is to make your website search engine friendly. For this, you need to make sure you are converting the pages from PSD that you are coding into HTML is made search engine friendly.
So, these are a few steps that you need to make sure to follow the steps and what you need to take care while converting PSD into HTML and PSD to CSS. The main motto is to do the process quickly and taking care of all such aspects before designing and converting. This was the guide for the entire process of conversion.