Dreamweaver CC 2014.1 offers a new feature that is pretty neat, especially if you are used to designing your web pages in Photoshop and then converting those comps to HTML and CSS. It’s called Extract and all you need is a PSD file to import into Dreamweaver and use the Dreamweaver extract function.
In the past, when you’d create a PSD comp of a website, you then had to manually write down the details like colors, fonts, sizes, and so on. Later on, Photoshop added an export function to let you export your files to Fireworks where you could get the CSS, colors, fonts, sizes and so on. Then there was an option to generate image comps or copy the CSS from your layers.
But the Dreamweaver Extract function is more than all that. You can now open the layered PSD file in the Extract feature in Dreamweaver and then capture the colors, fonts and gradients as CSS that you can import right into your Dreamweaver file.
Note there are still some things missing, like rounded corners and box shadows, but it’s definitely a lot easier to import a PSD comp into Dreamweaver than ever before.
So What is Hard About the Extract Tool?
For me, the hardest thing about it is using the CSS it gives me and not continuing to tweak things. I will go in and change the CSS so that it’s formatted differently (read: I change the indents).
Assuming I can get over needing obsessive levels of control over how my CSS looks, I think I will enjoy using Dreamweaver Extract.
