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Adobe Photoshop CS4 for the Web Tutorials

Photoshop Basics / Working More Efficiently pt. 1

Subtitles of the Movie

Now earlier I mentioned Workspaces here inside Photoshop. What's a Workspace? Well, you'll recall that I dropped down this menu here up on the Application Bar and I pointed out the Geoff's Snazzy Workspace that I had created here. So what's a Workspace? Well, all the Workspace is, is a customized Photoshop Interface, or a particular arrangement of the Photoshop Interface. So in other words, what's awesome here is we can completely customize the Photoshop Interface to suit our own tastes. Let me show you kind of briefly some different ideas that you might want to try. So what I'll do here is I'm going to go and expand my Panels over on the right-hand side and just give me a second. I'm going to sort of collapse down my Window, my Document Window there just a bit. Now what I could do, for example, is I can take any of my Palettes that, of course, show up on the right-hand side and drag them out of their current Panel Group. So right now Styles is locked in there with Color and Swatches, well I could grab the tab that reads Styles, click and tear this guy out. Drag him away and now he floats inside the Photoshop Interface and I can use this top bar here to actually move him around inside the Photoshop Interface. So maybe I want him to float down here, or maybe I want him to float up toward the top left, or you know, wherever I want, right, which is kind of cool. Or, you know what I could do is I could go, you know Styles is a Panel that I never use so I may as well not have him cluttering up my Photoshop Interface so I'm going to go ahead and close him just by clicking on the X in the top corner, right. Now the cool thing here is Styles isn't gone for good. Don't forget I can always head back to my Window Menu and then look for Styles, and there he is right there, right. So they always come back to life. It's not like you're completely closing them out for good; they're always available, right, so you can certainly mess with that. Let me show you something else here. I'm going to go and grab another Panel. Maybe what I'll do is I'll grab my History. I'll fly open the History Panel there and I'll tear him away as well, so now he's going to float on his own. And then I'll go and collapse down my Actions, just by clicking on that double-headed arrow and then I go, you know, alright, History's kind of cool. We talked about the History States earlier, we know that it's sort of an uber-undo, right, well, what I want to do is I want to now take History and I want to Group it with Color and Swatches. How do I do that? Well, what I'll do is I'll grab the History tab there once again, click and drag and then drop this guy inside the Swatches Panel. Now do you see the blue frame that sort of surrounds the Swatches Panel? That tells me that I'm about to add History to the Swatches Panel Group, something like this, right? In other words, you can always mix and match and rearrange the Panels that you do want to use, you know, this sort of thing. Now let me show you something else that you can do in terms of customizing the Interface. I'm going to take History and I'll grab his tab there and I'll tear him away, so now he's floating once again, then I go, you know, I want to keep my History Panel open but I'd like him to be over on the left-hand side. So what I'll do is I'll grab the History tab here and I'll drag him over toward the left, something like this and you should see a light blue vertical line now and when I let go with my mouse now I have something like this happening, right. So in other words, what I can do is I can dock Panels over on the right, that's the default, but I can also dock Panels over on the left if I want. So again, maybe I'll take Swatches and I'll drop him into History, something like this. Again, you can completely customize however you want to work, right, it's entirely up to you. I've kind of made a mess of my Interface here, so I think what I'll do is I'll head up to my Workspace drop-down menu up on the Application Bar and I'll flip over to Geoff's Snazzy Workspace and again, as I mentioned earlier, all Geoff's Snazzy Workspace is, is a saved Photoshop Interface which looks like this. So this is just a particular arrangement that I've made inside Photoshop. If you want to go and make your own Workspace and mess around with it and kind of customize things to your own liking then you can definitely save out your own Workspace and all you do is you'd head up to your Window Menu after you've arranged the Photoshop Interface and then down to Workspace and then choose Save Workspace and as soon as I choose Save Workspace it asks me for a name. Go ahead and name your Workspace, click on Save - now I'll just click on Cancel here - and then it will get added to the list of Workspaces available to you here inside Photoshop. Hopefully all good. Now I think maybe for our purposes here I'll head back to ESSENTIALS, but again for yourself, it's entirely up to you.

Tutorial Information

Course: Adobe Photoshop CS4 for the Web
Author: Geoff Blake
SKU: 34089
ISBN: 1-936334-01-1
Release Date: 2010-02-25
Duration: 7 hrs / 105 lessons
Work Files: Yes
Captions: Available on CD and Online University
Compatibility: Vista/XP/2000, OS X, Linux
QuickTime 7, Flash 8

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