I have been working with PHP/MySQL as a hobby for close to a couple of years now, I have been working with photoshop for a very long time, I know CSS & HTML well enough to write without any reference, so, I would not consider myself someone who's very new at this. I have recently started developing websites professionally - (only person working on the project).
I have seen the power of Joomla and how you can make a website ready for your customer in a matter of hours(if not minutes). I find it very hard to make layouts that remotely look like the themes on joomla. I find making even simple layouts a very cumbersome process and takes a lot of time to get a good enough output.
I have a feeling I may not be using the right tools or workflow for the job.
What I wanted to findout was, as part of the industry :
How do, you, make your website when you do it from scratch?
What are the tools that you use?
What is your workflow?
Just noted a few things I know already, for your reference(You can skip this if you like)
I have seen the export for web for Photoshop that exports CSS - but (as far as I know) exports only absolutely positioned webpages so they need to be beaten and fixed if you want to use them for example for joomla.
I have used the SiteGrinder plugin for Photoshop that exports HTML/CSS. It looks promising but haven't tried it extensively.
One of the tools that save loads of time is FireBug. This makes it easy to edit html and css on the fly and get the page looking exactly as you want it.
Recently stumbled upon fireworks. But haven't explored it much.
Thanks! :)