That 'distracted boyfriend' meme but with renaming layers in Photoshop vs actually doing the work

Honestly, I saw this meme floating around where the guy looks at the girlfriend, and the girlfriend is like 'actually editing the image' while the boyfriend is just renaming layers. I feel called out because I spend way too long naming layers like 'final_v3_FINAL' instead of just finishing the project. Over the last 3 days, I opened a PSD file from 2022 and realized I had 47 layers with names like 'tree' and 'tree copy 2'. What's the tipping point for you guys where you stop organizing and just start doing the thing? Has anyone else wasted hours on layer names instead of the actual photo?

2 comments

2 Comments

evan_wilson181mo ago

Disagree completely. Naming layers properly saves way more time than it costs. I wasted 6 hours last week hunting through layer masks named "Layer 37 copy 4" trying to find the one that had the skin smoothing. If you dump everything into a mess you end up redoing work or missing edits entirely. Spend 10 seconds naming them right and you never have to backtrack.

annas871mo ago

Go all in on the chaos, I say. Hard disagree, @evan_wilson18, because naming layers just makes me spend more time thinking about what to call them instead of actually editing. You waste 10 seconds per layer, times 50 layers, that's like 8 minutes of my life I'm never getting back. And honestly, if you're hunting through "Layer 37 copy 4" for 6 hours, that's a workflow problem, not a naming problem - just group your masks by eye or something. I'd rather scroll through a mess for 10 seconds than sit there debating if it's "skin_smooth_v2" or "skin_smooth_final_FINAL" every single time.