Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers Tutorials
Photoshop Foundations / Customizing the Workspace
Visitors to VTC.com will be able to view all introductory videos for each training course.
Free Trial Members will gain access to first three chapters for each training course.
Full Access Members have full access to VTC.com�s entire library of video tutorials.
Learn More
Subtitles of the Movie (Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers / Photoshop Foundations / Customizing the Workspace)
As we saw in another movie, there are three basic views that you can use in Photoshop: Standard, Full Screen Mode with Menu Bar and Full Screen Mode. Windows users have always had the advantage of a gray background to hide their Desktop. But until CS4, Mac users had their Desktops visible when they were in the Standard Screen Mode. Now on a Mac, if you go to Window, Application Frame and have it toggled on as I do, you'll have this nice, gray background that hides your Desktop. If you toggle it off, then all the icons that are on your Desktop will appear and given that that would be like giving you a glimpse into my closet, I'm not going to toggle it off because my Desktop is messy and distracting. So if you want this nice, gray background and you're on a Mac, make sure that the Application Frame is toggled on. I prefer the Standard Screen Mode as my basic working mode. Full Screen Mode to me is less convenient because when I zoom in, part of the image becomes hidden and I don't have the scroll tabs that I would get in the Standard Mode. Full Screen Mode without the Menu Bar, and notice you'll get a warning dialog that explains that the panels will be hidden and that you can reveal them by pressing tab or going over to the sides of the screen and that you'll need to press F to Escape. So let's take a quick look. I come over to the sides and hover my cursor, then my panels appear and the same will be true over here for my Toolbox. I'll use the shortcut Control or Command Minus so that I can see the entire image. Full Screen Mode without Menu Bar can be a nice way of presenting your images to others or checking them yourself for impact. It's not a good general working space so I'll press F again to get back to my working space. No matter what view you use, get in the habit of using most of the available space for your image. That way you can see more detail in your image and the more detail you can see, the more accurate your adjustments will be. It makes no sense whatsoever to be working on your image and having it be tiny like this with all this wasted monitor space. Photoshop has made the panels very adjustable so you can choose which items to have visible, which to have handy as icons and which you don't use often enough so that you can leave them off. By default, you'll initially be in the Essentials Workspace but there are a number of other default workspaces that Adobe has provided for you. Color and Tone is a more helpful workspace to most photographers but it's still not exactly the way I want it. For example, I want to be able to see the History Panel quickly and it's not visible anywhere here. I'll come up here to Window and toggle History on. Now, it's opened over here but it's taking up a lot of space. I could click and toggle it closed so it's just an icon and I can turn it on and off when I want it, but if I opt to leave it as an icon up here, I'd suggest that you add other panels to it to that you use infrequently, such as Actions perhaps. To do that, click and drag the tab out and just put it where you want and you see it automatically becomes an icon. Click on it and you have access to the panel, click to close it. Again, I could redock it by clicking and dragging it over here. For the History Panel, I'm going to put it in between these two panels, these two spaces. I've click and I've dragged in between and you can now see where my cursor is pointing there is a blue line. When I let go, the History Panel appears there. A single or double click, depending on which panel, will help make panels that are currently compressed visible. For any panel that's not currently visible at all, remember that you can always come up to the Window Menu Item and toggle it on. For example, if I toggle on Brushes. If you decide that you don't want something open anymore, you can close an individual panel with a Close Command or Close Tab Group to completely remove it. I don't generally use paths so I'll click on Paths, come over to its fly-out menu and say Close because I only want to close Paths, not the entire tab group. So now I've left Layers and Channels but gotten rid of paths. If I change my mind and want it back, all I have to do is toggle it on from up here in Window. When you have the interface set up the way you like it, come up here to Window, Workspace, Save Workspace and give your workspace a name, preferably one that you'll recognize. You can chose whether it should remember the keyboard shortcuts if you've customized them or any other changes in the menus and click Save. You'll see that the icon up here has changed to indicate your new name for your workspace. Now you can quickly toggle among other workspaces and come back to your preferred working space with a single click. That makes it really easy to work in different workspaces. Take a few minutes and customize your own individual workspace. That way if you end up changing the workspace and you want to get back to the way you had it that was convenient, it's really easy to do it.
Tutorial Information
| Course: | Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers |
| Author: | Ellen Anon |
| SKU: | 34036 |
| ISBN: | 1-935320-74-2 |
| Release Date: | 2009-09-23 |
| Duration: | 8.5 hrs / 112 lessons |
| Work Files: |
Yes |
| Captions: | No |
| Compatibility: |
Vista/XP/2000, OS X, Linux QuickTime 7, Flash 8 |
VTC Sign up & Benefits
- Unlimited Access
- 81,350 Video Tutorials (14,200 free)
- Video Available as Flash or QuickTime
- Over 715 Courses
- $30 for One Month Access
- Multi-User Discounts Available
