Looking for Help with Creating a Lorcana Card Editor in Photoshop

1. For manual editing, simply creating a different layer for each element would be enough. Any text layer can easily be edited. For graphics, using linked Smart Object layers would allow easy graphics replacement using Layer > Smart Objects > Replace Comntents.

2. You can organize layers in the Layers panel using layer groups (folders) and layer colors. There is a search feature in the Layers panel so that you can quickly locate all layers of a certain type, name, etc. Layer comps let you save specific combinations of layer visibility and state.

3. To automate this, you can use the Variables feature so that hundreds of cards can be automatically generated by setting up a Photoshop template with text and graphics placeholders, folders on your desktop containing the content, and a spreadsheet file that tells Photoshop which content replaces which layers.

4. As in a word processor, you can keep text consistent by using paragraph styles and character styles to define type specifications and then apply them in one click; and the other way this is efficient is that if you edit a style, all applied instances of the style are updated.

5. The best export format is always the one required by the specific service or client you are delivering to. If these cards are going to be printed on a press, then you must ask the printing service about their delivery requirements, and this is not the same everywhere. Some will require that you hand off a PDF file exported using a specific PDF/X preset. Some might require converting all images to a CMYK TIFF file pre-converted to a specific CMYK color profile that matches the printing conditions on their press. The only way to know is to ask them.

I agree that it might be more efficient to produce the cards in Adobe InDesign. Some aspects of high volume print production are more powerful in InDesign, such as a much better ability to manage hundreds of linked image files, and to manage items that appear on all pages (using parent pages and styles). And of course, Photoshop needs a separate document per printed page, while InDesign is naturally capable of handline a large number of pages so that maybe all of the cards could be produced from a single InDesign document.

Please post screenshots or sketches to clarify. 

I don’t know what »Lorcana Card Editor« is and I expect (some) others may be unfamiliar with it, too. 

1) Smart Objects 

2) Smart Objects, Layer Comps, … 

3) I doubt there is one for your specific task, but you can probably amend/combine/… existing ones. 

4) If you use certain fonts for certain elements what more do you need? Please explain what you mean. 

5) For printing you need to check with your pront service provider; firstly you naturally need to know the actual target CMYK Space, but handling of black texts and graphics (if such exist in the design), impositioning etc. also need to be clarified.

Depending on the designs it seems possible that you might be better off using Indesign to more easily maintain and output vector and type data for printing at least.