Spent 2 years layering textures wrong, a client's zoom call tipped me off

I do a lot of digital background art, and I always flattened my texture layers at the end to keep the file size down. Last Tuesday a client asked me to tweak the light on a wall in the middle of a live screen share, and I had to admit I couldn't just adjust it because the texture was baked in. That moment of silence on the call made me realize I'd been destroying my own flexibility for the sake of a cleaner layer stack. Now I keep the texture groups intact and just hide the ones I don't need, it takes up more space but saves me an hour of redoing work. Has anyone else had that sudden 'oh no' moment mid-demo about a workflow habit you thought was pro?

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ryanburns25d ago

Same thing happened to me with a website mockup once. Client pointed at a hover effect mid-call and I realized the state was just a flattened screenshot. Now I keep a side file with all the interactive layers live, just in case the zoom gods decide to punish me again.