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I regularly slice web designs provided in PSD format. As a site-builder, I don't need to create graphics—I only rearrange the layers, hide ones and show others, pick colors, widths, heights, and so on. What tools are there to do that job?

I know Adobe Photoshop, but it's a very expensive tool for a site-builder who doesn't want to draw and have the many fancy features, but open the PSD dependably (GIMP mostly fails at this point unfortunately), and slice it to build the website template. There are lots of image viewers can open PSD files, I know, but those application are not what I'm looking for—I haven't found one allows me to deal with layers.

viam0Zah
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7 Answers7

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There is Paint.NET which is getting better over time. You can open PSD files with a plug-in.

Plugin: http://psdplugin.codeplex.com/

Paint.NET http://www.getpaint.net/

jgallant
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    My main problem with the PSD plugins is that I never can be totally sure that I see it in the "pixel-exact" same way as the designer intended it. – viam0Zah Apr 27 '09 at 16:09
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Adobe Imageready used to come with Photoshop for slicing. That was replaced with Fireworks

Adobe has free trials of all their products ;)

Chad Grant
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    Don't know why this was marked down. It's true: http://www.adobe.com/downloads/ And Fireworks/ImageReady _were_ designed for slicing images and light-weight editing. – Calvin Apr 22 '09 at 13:49
  • Thanks, it seems the reasonable choice in an available price. It has some convenient addons in a webdesign context. – viam0Zah Apr 27 '09 at 16:06
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Try looking at Photoshop Elements. http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshopelwin/

Daniel A. White
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  • Photoshop Elements is the consumer-grade version of Photoshop. It's basically a simpler, less-featured version of Photoshop (like a Photoshop Lite). – Calvin Apr 22 '09 at 13:47
  • It should be able to open psds. It used to. – Daniel A. White Apr 22 '09 at 14:19
  • I gave it a try, and it opened the PSDs smoothly. It is much cheaper than Fireworks, but its audience rather the people looking for a smart photo editing tool. – viam0Zah Apr 27 '09 at 16:12
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Have a look at Paint Shop Pro (http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite/us/en/Product/1184951547051) - it handles PSDs quite well from what I remember and it's competitvely priced at arounf $80

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I realize that this is an old thread, but wanted to update it a bit:

Anyone who considers getting Photoshop Elements based on this thread should know that Elements (at least v. 10.0) doesn't support layer groups, which will probably limit your ability to properly slice a psd file.

Pixelmator (v.1.6.7), another common "lite" alternative to Photoshop, supports groups, but has other issues, for instance in dealing with text layers.

CKN
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I know this question is pretty old but I wanted to post this answer in the hope that it will help someone else looking for an answer. This is one of the top posts that came up while I was looking for a solution.

Adobe has free web app called Creative Cloud Extract that gives you read-only access to PSDs. Click here to learn more about what you can do and how to use it. You just need to sign up for a free Adobe ID if you don't have one already.

Creative Cloud Extract is a free new feature in Creative Cloud Assets that helps you explore a PSD directly in your browser, including layers and layer compositions. It particularly benefits web designers and developers who can share PSDs, unlock design information, and download production-ready assets. Using Extract, you can perform the following actions with a PSD file in the browser:

  • Copy text and CSS
  • Get color, gradient, and font information
  • Measure distances between elements
  • Save optimized image assets for production

I think this is the most reliable way to view PSDs outside of using one of Adobe's paid products. As others mentioned, third-party programs might not be able to properly open PSD files. Since it is an official Adobe product and since Adobe created Extract with developers in mind, I can be reasonably sure that it will be fully compatible with any PSD created from Photoshop.

An even better option is Brackets, a open source code editor. The latest version actually comes with a preview version of Extract that is built into the editor. One of the coolest features I discovered is that you can open a PSD and while typing CSS code, it will give you hints based on the currently selected layer. You can also select a layer with an image, or a group of layers, and it will give you the option to generate an image (from the selected layers) as soon as you are typing code where an image path is expected (for example the src attribute of an img element).

Cave Johnson
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I think the more affordable Fireworks can also work, in my experience however the only reliable way to open the PSD as the designer intended was using photoshop. Using other programs caused minor differences.

TomHastjarjanto
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