Introduction
When you go on a road-trip vacation, you need two things to make the trip a success-good navigational aids (maps), and an understanding of how to measure distances between two points on a road map (1 inch equals 100 miles). When you are working with Adobe Photoshop, one of the keys to making the journey a success is to understand the navigational and measurement aids available. Photoshop lets you choose a measurement system to fit a specific project. For example, if you're working on images destined for the Web or a monitor, you'll be using pixels as a measurement system.Conversely, if you're outputting to paper, or possibly a 4-color press, you'll likely choose inches or picas. Selecting between different measurement systems does not impact the quality of the final image; only how you measure distance. Trust me on this one; understanding how to measure distance helps to make the journey an enjoyable experience (I know from experience).Having problems squinting at the small details of a photographic image? Using the Zoom tool is a great way to gain control over a document. Zooming into a section of a document makes touching-up the fine details just that much easier. In addition, the Info palette gives you up-to-date information on the exact position of the cursor inside the document, as well as detailed color information that can be indispensable in color-correcting an image.The ability to create text, and even audio annotations, gives you the capacity to record document information that might be vital to the processing of the image, and pass it on to anyone who opens the document. Photoshop's navigation and measurement systems are more that just information; they represent control of the document and control of the creative process.