When I export my uv map as an image I get lost in figuring out which side is which, is there a way to label them within blender?
There isn't directly a way to notate your map in Blender that I'm aware of aside from perhaps the grease pencil, but there is something that you can do to help you visualize where the uvmap is on your object.
- In the UV/Image editor create a new image and choose color grid
- Next, unwrap your object, and use this new image as a temporary image texture.
Here is an example with a cylinder:
As you can see, it isn't too hard to determine where the grid lies on the mesh as it is numbered clearly. You can do this with any model, the color grid is with Blender by default.
What is color-mapping?
You create some materials with different colors (red, green, orange, yellow, blue, etc). You then apply the different colors to different parts of your model.
How you do that?
go into editmode
select the part of your mesh you want to assign the color to
(with the part selected) go to you materials and click assign
the color should now be assigned to the part of your mesh.
this method is pretty comon
after this, create a new image in the image-viewer
go to your render tab
scroll down to bake and select "colors" or "textures" (i dont know which of both right now^^)
you now have a colored texture, which you could for example use in Photoshop. For example you want some parts of your model to have a metal texture. Pick a color for the parts, bake the map, in Photoshop "select color" and bam, you have the perfect part oif your uv-map selected ^^