General Knowledge

Workspaces enable you to set the panel locations and their grouping, menu options and keyboard shortcuts. Workspaces can be customized for specific tasks, such as retouching, painting or Web related work. You can save the current workspace as a named workspace. You can do this by choosing the New Workspace command either from the Window Workspace submenu, or by clicking on the Workspace button on the Application bar and then choosing it from the pop-up menu. You can include custom settings for menu items, keyboard shortcuts and panel locations in a workspace. Photoshop ships with a number of preset workspaces plus an Essentials (Default) workspace that you can apply to revert menu items, keyboard shortcuts and panel locations to factory settings. You can rearrange panel groups or columns by dragging individual panels by their tabs, or groups by their title bars, and releasing the mouse button when a narrow, blue drop zone appears. The zone indicates where the panel will be docked. To prevet a panel docking while its being moved around, hold down Ctrl (Windows and Mac OS). To collapse docked panels to icons, right-click, Ctrl-click on a panel tab, or the panel title bar, and choose Collapse to Icons from the context menu; you can also click the double arrow on the dock bar located at the top of the panel column, or the dock bar itself. To expand icons to panels, either click the double arrow, or the dock bar itself, or right-click, Ctrl-click on it, or one of the iconized panels, and choose Expand Panels. You can reconfigure the Tools panel (Toolbar) into a single or a double-column by clicking on the double arrow at the top, or the title bar itself. You can also dock it with the panels but, unlike other panels, you cannot collapse it to an icon. You can assign keyboard shortcuts to application menu items (commands found in the drop down menus), panel menus and tools. You can open the Keyboard Shortcuts & Menus dialog by choosing Edit Keyboard Shortcuts, or Window Workspace Keyboard Shortcuts & Menus, or pressing Ctrl+Alt+Shift+K, Cmd+Opt+Shift+K. To assign a keyboard shortcut, open the Keyboard Shortcuts dialog from the Edit menu, or press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+K, Cmd+Opt+Shift+K. In the ensuing dialog, choose an item from the Shortcuts for pop-up menu. Expand the target menu and then click an item (this will open a text box). Type a shortcut. If there is a conflict with an existing shortcut, you can accept or reject or go to the conflict and change the shortcut for the conflicting command or tool. Once you are happy with a shortcut, you can click Accept and then click one of the Save buttons to save the changes in a new set (you cannot save changes in the default set).

In the Menus tab of the Keyboard Shortcuts and Menus dialog (Edit Menus or, alternatively, Window Workspace Keyboard Shortcuts & Menus), you can show, hide or color items found in the application menus and the panel menus. When you hide menu items by clicking on the eye icon, Show All Menu Items is appended to the bottom of the menu that contains hidden items. You can assign a preset color to application and panel menu items in the Menus tab of the Keyboard Shortcuts and Menus dialog (Edit Menus or, alternatively, Window Workspace Keyboard Shortcuts & Menus). You can turn off menu colors globally by unchecking Show Menu Colors in Interface preferences. By default, document windows are tabbed when you open more than one file. You can float the documents as independent windows by choosing Window Arrange Float in Window (floats current document as a window), or Float All in Windows (floats all documents as windows). When document windows are tabbed, you can drag the window tab out of a group to undock a document from a group. You can also rearrange the order of tabbed documents by dragging a tab to a new location. When document windows arent tabbed, you can consolidate all floating document windows into one tabbed window by choosing Window Arrange Consolidate All to Tabs. To create tabbed documents when the setting Open Documents as Tabs in Interface preferences is deselected, or when you have created floating windows from tabbed windows, drag the source document by its title bar to the target document, position the pointer over the foot of the target documents title bar and let go when the target document acquires a blue border (AKA drop zone). Repeat as required. The Arrange Documents button (AKA Layout button) in the Application bar allows you to arrange open documents in a number of N-Up configurations from 2-Up to 6-Up. You can also use it to consolidate all (create tabbed windows), tile or float document windows, change zoom views (Actual Pixels or Fit on Screen), match zoom and location. The View Screen Mode submenu has options for viewing a document in the following modes: Standard Screen (includes panels, title, menu and scroll bars) Full Screen With Menu Bar (includes panels, 50% gray background, and menu bar, no title or scroll bars) Full Screen (includes black background, no panels, title, menu or scroll bars) You can also use the Screen Mode button in the Application bar to switch between modes. To view Application bar, choose Window Application Bar (Mac OS). There are a number of ways of changing the background color when viewing images. You can right-click, Ctrl-click on the background (not to be confused with the background layer) and either select a preset color from the pop-up menu or define a custom color; likewise from the Interface preferences dialog. If using the Paint Bucket, you need to hold down Shift while you click on the background. You can also choose to set the border in the Interface preferences dialog. You can choose between Line, Drop Shadow or None.

You use the Rotate View tool to rotate the canvas non-destructively. When you use the tool, the canvas is rotated without affecting the image. This can be useful, for example, when painting, drawing a path or creating a mask. After using the Rotate View tool to rotate a canvas, you can restore the canvas to the original angle by double-clicking the Rotate View tool in the Tools panel or clicking the Reset View button on the Options bar. With Enable OpenGL Drawing selected in Interface preferences, the pixel grid becomes visible when a zoom level over 500% is applied to an image. You can zoom in/out in a continuous-motion by click-holding in an image with the Zoom tool. The feature requires OpenGL to be enabled in Performance preferences. OpenGL is disabled if your graphics card does not meet the minimum requirements. You can zoom out temporarily from a high magnification by selecting the Zoom tool, holding down the H key, clicking in the image and holding down the mouse button. Letting go of the mouse button will return you to the previous magnification or you can drag the marquee around the Hand tool to another area and then release the mouse button if you wish to zoom into another area. Releasing the H key will return you back to the Zoom tool. By default, the Resize Windows to Fit setting for the Zoom tool is deselected. However, if windows are resizing when you change image magnification and you want to maintain a constant size regardless of the image magnification, you need to deselect the setting. You can set the zoom level in a number of areas of the Photoshop user interface. You can set it in the Navigator panel, the Application bar or the lower-left corner of the document window. You can set incremental zoom levels between 0.05% and 3200.00%. You can pan several open documents simultaneously using the Hand tool by holding down the Shift key as you drag in the image. Provided your computer has a video card that supports OpenGL 2.0 and Shader Model 3.0 and 128 MB of RAM or more, you can use the Hand tool to flick pan or hand toss an image. When the feature is enabled and supported, you can flick the image with a mouse gesture and it will continue to pan smoothly of its own accord when you release the mouse button. It will come to rest by itself, without any intervention. To use the feature, select Enable Flick Panning in General preferences.

E
D C B

A L

A: Tools panel B: Options bar C: Menu bar D: Application bar E: Adobe Bridge button

G: View extras button H: Zoom level I: Arrange Documents button J: Screen Mode button K: Workspaces button

F: Mini Bridge button

L: Panels