The PSD design to frontend pipeline is still one widely used in web development, and if you want to build a website and know some Photoshop, it is definitely worth looking into if you think excellent services like https://acclaim.agency/psd-to-html-conversion-service aren’t for you. In this article, we’ll teach you how to turn a PSD design into code using HTML and CSS and convert it to a full web page step by step.
#1 Extracting Images from the PSD
The first step before beginning design coding is to extract images from the PSD designs. Some parts of the design can only be done with CSS, but other parts of the design where we’ll need pictures can’t be coded, obviously, and this is why you need to extract pictures.
- The main part of the site contains a large background image that gets displayed on every page, and we will need to compress this image to reduce its large size by resorting to the option ‘save for web’ – having large images on your website will increase loading times and hurt the usability of your website longterm.
- As we said earlier, as most sites will have a fixed background and the content will appear on top of the background image, elements such as the logo will need to be extracted in PNG-24 format because this format supports transparency.
- The background of the main content on each page will also be transparent in nature and therefore we will need to extract it in PNG format. You need a high-quality extraction to ensure the content looks good and is easily readable.
- The final set of photos will contain PNG and JPEG images. Some images will be small in size, these images will be repeated (using CSS) to create textured backgrounds, while others will be text substitutes as emphasis.
#2 Creating the HTML Files
The main file (index file) will contain the bulk of the HTML code. <Doctype HTML!> It is used to familiarize the browser with the version of HTML you’re planning to use and is considered among the best-practices in the world of web design company, so make sure it is present on every HTML file you design. This follows the <head> tag. This tag contains the page title and a link to the CSS file. Finally, there is a <div> tag and this tag will contain the rest of the page elements/tags. The content on the page is divided into three sections:
- The design starts with a div tag with an id of “header” and this tag will contain the logo and the main menu items (navigation items). This is the top element of every page on your website, and it is what users get to see first. It is important to make sure the logos and the navigation menu are well-designed.
- After the header comes to the main content area. To make the HTML file structure clean, all elements will be placed in a single <div> tag. This div will contain the main content on each page, so it needs to be well-designed.
- At the end of the page, we closed the <div> tag for the content and below it, there is a div for the footer. As with the header, the footer will be repeated on every page, so you have to keep that in mind.
#3 Designing the CSS File
Before proceeding with writing the CSS code for the main content elements, there are some things you need to take care of. The first line is used to remove any default browser formats (this is called “CSS reset”), and then there are the general properties of the fonts on the site and a background image.
After preparing the basics and the outlines of the website, which will basically be the same for all the pages on your website, you need to think about the specifics of the content on each page.