Photoshop.CS.Bible [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

The Photoshop Desktop

After the launch process is complete, the Photoshop desktop consumes the foreground. Figure 2-2 shows the Photoshop CS desktop as it appears on a PC when an image is open and all palettes are visible. Figure 2-3 shows the same scenario as it appears on a Mac running Mac OS X.

Figure 2-2: The Photoshop CS desktop as it looks on a PC with a 17-inch screen.

Figure 2-3: The Photoshop CS desktop as it looks on a Mac running Mac OS X.

Many of the elements that make up the Photoshop desktop are well known to folks familiar with the Windows or Macintosh environments. For example, the menu bar provides access to menus and commands. You can drag the title bar to move the image window. And the scroll bars let you look at hidden portions of the image.

Other potentially less familiar elements of the Photoshop desktop work as follows:

Image window: Like any halfway decent product, Photoshop lets you open multiple documents at a time. Each open image resides in its own window. On the Mac, click the green zoom button in the upper-left corner of the title bar to resize the window to fit the image.

Also worth noting on the Mac are the special boxes in the lower-left corner of the image window (see Figure 2-3). The magnification box tells you the current view size, and the information box can tell you important things about image size and computer resources. (To see the information box, you may need to increase the horizontal size of your image window by dragging it from the lower-right corner.)

Status bar (Windows only): Just above the Windows taskbar sits Photoshop's status bar, which provides running commentary on the active tool and image. (If the status bar doesn't appear on your screen, choose Window Status Bar.) The left end of the status bar features the magnification box and the information box, both of which are described in the preceding paragraph.

Toolbox: The toolbox icons provide one-click access to the various Photoshop tools. To select a tool, click its icon. Then use the tool by clicking or dragging with it inside the image window.

The bottom four rows of the toolbox contain controls for changing your paint colors, entering and exiting the quick mask mode, changing the screen area available for image display, and switching to Adobe ImageReady (which ships with Photoshop).

Floating palettes: Photoshop CS offers a total of 16 palettes, two more than Version 7. (This number excludes the toolbox and the Options bar, which are technically palettes as well. It also excludes the File Browser, which was a palette but is now a window.) Each palette is said to be "floating," which means that it's independent of the image window and of other palettes. Palettes can be grouped together or dragged apart to float separately according to your tastes. For more information on palettes, see the upcoming section "The floating palettes."

Docking well: The gray bar at the end of the Options bar is the docking well. You can drag palettes to the well to save screen space but still keep the palettes easily accessible. For more information, see "Rearranging and docking palettes" later in this chapter.

The information box

The information box is Photoshop's way of passing you a memo marked FYI. No biggie, nothing to fret about, just a little bit of info you might want to know. As an unusually obliging piece of software, Photoshop likes to keep its human masters informed on the latest developments.

Document size

By default, the information box contains two numbers divided by a slash. The first number is the size of the base image in memory. The second number takes into account any additional layers in your image.

Photoshop calculates the first value by multiplying the height and width of the image (both in pixels) by the bit depth of the image, which is the size of each pixel in memory. Consider a typical, full-color, 640480-pixel image. A full-color image takes up 24 bits of memory per pixel (which is why it's called a 24-bit image). There are 8 bits in a byte, so 24 bits translates to 3 bytes. Multiply that by the number of pixels and you get 640 480 3 = 921,600 bytes. Because there are 1,024 bytes in a kilobyte, 921,600 bytes is exactly 900K. Try it yourself — open a 640480-pixel RGB image and you'll see that the first number in the information box reads 900K. Now you know why.

But it's the second value, the one that factors in the layers, that represents the real amount of memory that Photoshop needs. If the image contains one layer only, the numbers before and after the slash are the same. Otherwise, Photoshop measures the opaque pixels in each layer and adds approximately 1 byte of overhead per pixel to calculate the transparency. The second number also grows to accommodate paths, masks, spot-color channels, undoable operations, and miscellaneous data required by the image cache.

Now obviously, it's not necessary that you be able to predict these values (which is lucky, because predicting the second value is virtually impossible). Photoshop asks no help when calculating the values in the information box and will summarily ignore any help you might care to offer. But it's a good idea to know what's going on as you start piling layers on top of an image. The larger the preview numbers grow, the more work Photoshop has to do and the slower it's likely to perform.

Image position

If you want to position a picture precisely on a page before printing, use the Print with Preview command in the File menu (skip to Chapter 18 for details). To get a rough idea of the current image position, however, click and hold on the information box. Photoshop displays a pop-up window showing the size and placement of the image in relation to the paper. The preview also shows the approximate placement of crop marks and other elements requested in the Show More Options section of the Print with Preview dialog box.

You can also Ctrl-click (z -click on the Mac) the information box to see the tile sizes. Photoshop uses tiles to calculate pixel manipulations. If you confine your work to a single tile, it will probably go faster than if you slop a little over into a second tile. But who cares? Unless you're some kind of tile-reading robot, this technical information is rarely of any practical use.

Click the right-pointing arrowhead next to the information box to display a pop-up menu of seven options. The first option — Document Sizes — is selected by default. This option displays the image-size values described in the preceding section. You can find out what information the other choices provide in the next few sections.

Image color profile

If you work regularly with many different color profiles, you may find the Document Profile option handy. When you select this option, the name of the current color profile appears in the information box. Chapter 16 tells you everything you need to know about color profiles.

Document measurements

Similar to Alt- or Option-clicking the information box, selecting Document Dimensions gives you a quick readout of the width-by-height measurements of your document. The unit of measurement is set in the Units & Rulers panel of Photoshop's Preferences dialog box.

Memory consumption and availability

When you select Scratch Sizes, Photoshop changes the values in the information box to represent memory consumption and availability. The first value is the amount of room required to hold the currently open images in RAM. The second value indicates the total amount of RAM that Photoshop has to work with. For the program to run at top efficiency, the first number must be smaller than the second.

In the old days, the number before the slash was generally equal to between three and five times the size of all open images, including layers. But thanks to the advent of multiple undos, this value can grow to more than one hundred times as big as any one image. This is because Photoshop has to store each operation in memory on the off chance that you may want to undo to a previous point in time. For each and every action, Photoshop nudges the first value upward until you reach the ceiling of undoable operations.

The second value is simply equal to the amount of memory available to your images after the Photoshop application itself has loaded. For example, suppose Photoshop has 100MB of RAM at its disposal. The code that makes up the Photoshop application consumes about 15MB, so that leaves 85MB to hold and edit images.

If the second value is bigger than the first, all is happiness and Photoshop is running as fast as your particular brand of computer permits. But if the first value is larger, Photoshop has to dig into its supply of virtual memory, a disk-bound adjunct to RAM. Virtual memory makes Photoshop run more slowly because the program must swap portions of the image on and off your hard disk. The simple fact is, disks have moving parts and RAM does not. That means disk-bound "virtual" memory is slower than real memory.

To increase the size of the value after the slash, you have to get more RAM to your images in one of the following ways:

Purchase more RAM. Installing an adequate supply of memory is the single best way to make Photoshop run more quickly.

Quit other applications so that only Photoshop is running.

Quit Photoshop and remove any filters that you don't need from the Plug-Ins folder (which resides in the same folder as the Photoshop CS application). Don't throw the filters away, just move them to a location outside the Plug-Ins folder so they don't load into RAM when you launch Photoshop.

Choose Memory & Image Cache in the Preferences submenu and increase the Memory Usage value as explained later in this chapter.

Operating efficiency

When you select the Efficiency option, Photoshop lists the amount of time it spends running operations in RAM compared with swapping data back and forth between the hard disk. A value of 100 percent is the best-case scenario. It means Photoshop never has to rely on scratch files. Low values indicate higher reliance on the hard disk and, as a result, slower operations. Adobe recommends that if the value falls below 75 percent, you should either assign more memory to Photoshop or purchase more RAM for your computer.

The Efficiency option is a reality check. If it seems Photoshop is dragging its feet, and you hear it writing to your hard disk a little too often, you can refer to the Efficiency rating to see whether performance is as bad as you suspect. Keep in mind, hearing Photoshop occasionally write to disk is not, in and of itself, cause for concern. All versions of Photoshop since 3.0 automatically copy open images to a disk buffer in case using virtual memory is later warranted. In fact, this is the reason Adobe added the Efficiency option to Version 3.0.1 — to quash fears that a few sparks from your hard drive indicated anything less than peak performance.

Photoshop operations timing

If you select Timing, the information box tells how long Photoshop took to perform the last operation (including background tasks, such as transferring an image to the system Clipboard). Adobe may have added this option to help testing facilities run their Photoshop tests. But built-in timing helps you as well.

For example, suppose you're trying to decide whether to purchase a new computer. You read a magazine article detailing the newest super-fast system. You can run the same filters with the same settings on your computer and see how much slower your results are, all without picking up a stopwatch.

At the risk of starting interoffice feuding, the Timing option also provides you with a mechanism for testing your computer against those of coworkers and friends. The Timing option serves as a neutral arbitrator, enabling you and an associate to test identical operations over the phone. Like Efficiency, Timing is a reality check. If you and your associate own similarly configured computers and your Timing values are vastly different, something's wrong.

The active tool

Choose Current Tool, and Photoshop displays the name of the active tool. Why do you need such a condescending option? Surely you're not so far gone that you need Photoshop telling you what you already know. Adobe's intention is not to drum you over the head with redundant information but to offer a helping hand if you find the tool configuration confusing. Also, on the PC, the tool name serves as a companion to the tool description to the right of it in the status bar. Now you see not just what the tool does, but what the tool is.

Still, my guess is that this option will prove as rarely useful to everyday image editing as Timing. Use it if you're having problems when first using Photoshop CS and then set it back to Document Sizes, Scratch Sizes, or Efficiency. The original three options continue to be the best.

The tools

When multiple tools share a single toolbox slot, you select the tool you want from a menu-style list, as shown in Figure 2-4. A tiny triangle in the lower-right corner of an icon indicates that more tools lurk beneath the surface. You can click the triangle and then click the name of the tool you want to use. Or, to do the job with one less click, just drag from the icon onto the name of the tool and then release the mouse button.

Figure 2-4: Drag from any tool icon with a triangle to display a pop-up menu of alternate tools.

Also, when you hover your cursor over a tool, Photoshop tells you the name of the tool and how to select it from the keyboard. If you find the tool tips irritating, turn to "General preferences" to find out how to turn them off.

Rectangular marquee (Chapter 8): Drag with this tool to enclose a portion of the image in a rectangular marquee, which is a pattern of moving dash marks indicating the boundary of a selection.

Shift-drag to add to a selection; Alt-drag (Win) or Option-drag (Mac) to delete from a selection. The same goes for the other marquee tools, as well as the lassos and magic wand. As an alternative to using these time-honored shortcuts, you can click mode icons in the Options bar to change the behavior of the selection tools.

Elliptical marquee (Chapter 8): Drag with the elliptical marquee tool to enclose a portion of the window in an oval marquee.

Single-row marquee (Chapter 8): Click with the single-row marquee to select an entire horizontal row of pixels that stretches all the way across the image. You can also drag with the tool to position the selection. You rarely need the single-row marquee, but when you do, here it is.

Single-column marquee (Chapter 8): Same as the single-row marquee, except the single-column marquee selects an entire vertical column of pixels. Again, not a particularly useful tool.

Move (Chapter 8): Drag to move a selection or layer. In fact, the move tool is the exclusive means for moving and cloning portions of an image. You can also Ctrl-drag (Win) or z -drag (Mac) selections with any tools except the shape, path, and slicing tools, but only because Ctrl (z on the Mac) temporarily accesses the move tool.

Lasso (Chapter 8): Drag with the lasso tool to select a free-form portion of the image. You can also Alt-click (Win) or Option-click (Mac) with the lasso to create a straight-sided selection outline.

Polygonal lasso (Chapter 8): Click hither and yon with this tool to draw a straight-sided selection outline (just like Alt-clicking or Option-clicking with the standard lasso). Each click sets a corner point in the selection.

Magnetic lasso (Chapter 8): As you drag with the magnetic lasso tool, the selection outline automatically sticks to the edge of the foreground image. Bear in mind, however, that Photoshop's idea of an edge may not jibe with yours. Like any automated tool, the magnetic lasso sometimes works wonders, and other times it's more trouble than it's worth.

Magic wand (Chapter 8): Click with the magic wand tool to select a contiguous area of similarly colored pixels. To select discontiguous areas, click in one area and then Shift-click in another. Deselect the Contiguous tool option and click once to select similar colors throughout the image.

Crop (Chapter 3): Drag with the crop tool to enclose the portion of the image you want to retain in a rectangular boundary. Photoshop tints areas outside the boundary to help you better see which image areas will go and which will stay when you apply the crop. The crop boundary sports several square handles you can drag to resize the cropped area. Drag outside the boundary to rotate it; drag inside to move it. Press Enter or Return to apply the crop or Escape to cancel.

Slice: The slice tool and its companion, the slice select tool, come into play when you're creating Web graphics. You can cut images into rectangular sections ? known as slices ? so that you can apply Web effects, such as links, rollovers, and animations, to different areas of the same image. Drag with the slice tool to define the area that you want to turn into a slice.

Slice select: If you don't get the boundary of your slice right the first time, click the slice with this tool and then drag one of the side or corner handles that appear. Or drag inside the boundary to relocate it.

Press Ctrl (Win) or z (Mac) when the slice tool is active to temporarily access the slice select tool, and vice versa.

Healing brush (Chapter 7): The clone stamp tool (also known to longtime Photoshop users as the rubber stamp tool) has always seemed like a miracle worker when removing unwanted elements from images. Although excellent results were possible, you still had to be careful that the texture and shading of the cloned area matched the area you were replacing. Although the healing brush tool seems at first use just like the clone stamp tool, its special "healing" process lets you clone details from one area without obscuring the texture and shading of the other.

Patch (Chapter 7): Similar to the healing brush, the patch tool lets you use the same "healing" technology by making selections and dragging them to new locations. It's generally useful for healing larger areas of the image.

Brush (Chapter 5): Drag with the brush tool to paint soft lines. If you're thinking that sounds kind of dull, wait until you learn about the multitude of settings available to you in the Brushes palette.

Pencil (Chapter 5): Drag with the pencil tool to paint jagged, hard-edged lines. Its main purpose is to clean up individual pixels when you're feeling fussy.

Clone stamp (Chapter 7): This tool copies one portion of the image onto another. Alt-click (Win) or Option-click (Mac) the part of your image you want to clone, and then drag to clone that area to another portion of the image.

Pattern stamp: The pattern stamp tool lets you paint with a pattern. Either choose a preset or define your own pattern using Edit Define Pattern and then paint away.

History brush (Chapter 7): The history brush reverts portions of the image to any of a handful of previous states throughout the recent history of the image. To specify the state that you want to revert to, click in the first column of the History palette. It's like an undo brush but way, way better.

Art history brush (Chapter 7): Like the history brush, the art history brush paints with pixels from a previous image state. But with this brush, you get a variety of brush options that create different artistic effects.

Eraser (Chapter 7): Drag with the eraser tool to paint in the background color or erase areas in a layer to reveal the layers below. Alt-drag (Win) or Option-drag (Mac) to switch to the Erase to History mode, which reverts the image to a previous state just as if you were using the history brush.

Background eraser (Chapter 9): The background eraser rubs away the background from an image as you drag along the border between the background and foreground. If you don't wield this tool carefully, though, you wind up erasing both background and foreground.

Magic eraser (Chapter 9): The magic eraser came from the same gene pool that produced the magic wand. When you click with the magic wand, Photoshop selects a range of similarly colored pixels; click with the magic eraser, and you erase instead of select.

Gradient (Chapter 6): Drag with this tool to fill a selection with a gradual transition of colors, commonly called a gradient. You can click the gradient icon in the toolbox and select a gradient style from the Options bar.

Paint bucket (Chapter 6): Click with the paint bucket tool to fill a contiguous area of similarly colored pixels with the foreground color or a predefined pattern.

Blur (Chapter 5): Drag with the blur tool to diffuse the contrast between neighboring pixels, which blurs the focus of the image. You can also Alt-drag (Win) or Option-drag (Mac) to sharpen the image.

Sharpen (Chapter 5): Drag with this tool to increase the contrast between pixels, which sharpens the focus. Alt-drag (Win) or Option-drag (Mac) when this tool is active to blur the image.

Smudge (Chapter 5): The smudge tool works just as its name implies; drag with the tool to smear colors inside the image.

Dodge (Chapter 5): Drag with the dodge tool to lighten pixels in the image. Alt-drag (Win) or Option-drag (Mac) to darken the image.

Burn (Chapter 5): Drag with the burn tool to darken pixels. Press Alt (Win) or Option (Mac) to temporarily access the dodge tool and lighten pixels.

Sponge (Chapter 5): Drag with the sponge tool to decrease the amount of saturation in an image so the colors appear more drab and eventually gray. You can also increase color saturation by changing the Mode setting in the Options bar from Desaturate to Saturate.

Path selection (Chapter 8): Click anywhere inside a path to select the entire path. If you click inside a path that contains multiple subpaths, Photoshop selects the subpath under the tool cursor. Shift-click to select additional paths or subpaths. You also use this tool and the direct selection tool, described next, to select and manipulate lines and shapes drawn with the shape tools.

Direct selection (Chapter 8): To select and edit a segment in a selected path or shape, click it or drag over it with this tool. Press Shift while using the tool to select additional segments. Or Alt-click (Option-click on the Mac) inside a path or shape to select and edit the entire object.

Horizontal type (Chapter 15): Also known simply as the type tool, click with this tool to add vector text to your image.

Vertical type (Chapter 15): The vertical type tool behaves just like the horizontal type tool, except that your text is oriented vertically in the image.

Horizontal type mask (Chapter 15): As you might expect, this tool creates horizontal type. The twist is that the type appears not directly in the image but rather as a mask, with an active selection around the shapes of the letters.

Vertical type mask (Chapter 15): Combine the verticality of the vertical type tool with the maskiness of the horizontal type mask tool, and you have — what else? — the vertical type mask tool. Use it to create an active selection of vertically oriented text.

Pen (Chapter 8): Click and drag with the pen tool to set points in the image window. Photoshop draws an editable path outline — much like a path in Illustrator — that you can convert to a selection outline or stroke with color.

Freeform pen (Chapter 8): Drag with this tool to draw freehand paths or vector masks. Photoshop automatically adds points along the path as it sees fit. If you select the Magnetic check box in the Options bar, the freeform pen morphs into the magnetic pen. Deselect the check box to return to the freeform pen.

Add anchor point (Chapter 8): To insert a point in a path, click a path segment with this tool.

Delete anchor point (Chapter 8): Click a point to remove it without interrupting the outline of the path. Photoshop automatically draws a new segment between the neighboring points.

Convert point (Chapter 8): Points in a path come in different varieties, some indicating corners and others indicating smooth arcs. The convert point tool enables you to change one kind of point to another. Drag a point to convert it from a corner to an arc. Click a point to convert it from an arc to a sharp corner.

Rectangle (Chapter 14): One of the five vector drawing tools, this tool draws rectangles filled with the foreground color. Just drag to create a rectangle; Shift-drag to draw a square.

Rounded rectangle (Chapter 14): Prefer your boxes with nice, curved corners instead of sharp, 90-degree angles? Drag or Shift-drag with the rounded rectangle tool.

Ellipse (Chapter 14): You look pretty smart to me, so you probably already figured out that you drag with this tool to draw an ellipse and Shift-drag to draw a circle.

Polygon (Chapter 14): By default, dragging with this tool creates a five-sided polygon. Controls available in the Options bar enable you to change the number of sides or set the tool to create star shapes.

Line (Chapter 14): Drag with the line tool to create a straight line. But before you do, travel to the Options bar to set the line thickness and specify whether you want arrowheads at the ends of the line.

Custom shape (Chapter 14): After you draw a shape with one of the other drawing tools, you can save it as a custom shape. Thereafter, you can recreate that shape by selecting it from the Options bar and then dragging with the custom shape tool. You also can choose from a variety of predefined shapes when working with the custom shape tool.

Notes (Chapter 3): Use this tool to create a little sticky note on which you can jot down thoughts, ideas, and other pertinent info that you want to share with other people who work with the image — or that you simply want to remember the next time you open the image. After you create the note, Photoshop displays a note icon in the image window; double-click the icon to see what you had to say.

Audio annotation (Chapter 3): If you prefer the spoken word to the written one, you can annotate your images with an audio clip, assuming that you have a microphone and sound card for your computer. As with the notes tool, an audio icon appears in the image window after you record your message. Clicking the icon plays the audio clip.

Eyedropper (Chapter 4): Click with the eyedropper tool on a color in the image window to make that color the foreground color. Alt-click (Win) or Option-click (Mac) a color to make that color the background color.

Color sampler (Chapter 4): Click as many as four locations in an image to evaluate the colors of those pixels in the Info palette. After you set a point, you can move it by dragging it to a different pixel.

Measure (Chapter 12): The measure tool lets you measure distances and directions inside the image window. Just drag from one point to another and note the measurement data in the Info palette or the Options bar. You can also drag the endpoints of your line to take new measurements. And by Alt-dragging (Win) or Option-dragging (Mac) an endpoint, you can create a sort of virtual protractor that measures angles.

Hand (Chapter 2): Drag inside the image window with the hand tool to scroll the window so you can see a different portion of the image. Double-click the hand tool icon to magnify or reduce the image so it fits on the screen in its entirety. When the hand tool is active, you can click buttons in the Options bar to display the image at the actual-pixels, fit-on-screen, or print-size view sizes.

Zoom (Chapter 2): Click with the zoom tool to magnify the image so you can see individual pixels more clearly. Alt-click (Win) or Option-click (Mac) to step back from the image and take in a broader view. Drag to enclose the specific portion of the image you want to magnify. And finally, double-click the zoom tool icon inside the toolbox to restore the image to 100-percent view size.

You can modify the performance of any tool but the measure tool by adjusting the settings in the Options bar. To change the unit of measurement used by the measure tool, double-click the ruler or choose Edit Preferences Units & Rulers (Photoshop Preferences Units & Rulers in Mac OS X) to display the Units & Rulers panel of the Preferences dialog box. Then select the unit from the Rulers pop-up menu. Or even quicker, right-click (Win) or Control-click (Mac) the ruler or click the plus sign in the lower-left corner of the Info palette and select a measurement unit from the resulting pop-up menu.

The toolbox controls

Well, that pretty much wraps it up for the Photoshop CS tools. It was a breathtakingly dull tale, but one that had to be told. The excitement isn't over yet, though. Gather the kittens and hold onto your mittens as we explore the ten controls that grace the lower portion of the toolbox:

Foreground color: Click the foreground color icon to bring up the Color Picker dialog box. Select a color and press Enter or Return to change the foreground color, which is used by the pencil, paintbrush, airbrush, gradient, and shape tools.

Background color: Click the background color icon to display the Color Picker and change the background color, which is used by the eraser and gradient tools. Photoshop also uses the background color to fill a selected area on the background layer when you press the Backspace or Delete key.

Switch colors: Click the switch colors icon to exchange the foreground and background colors.

Default colors: Click this icon to return to the default foreground and background colors — black and white, respectively.

Marching ants: Click this icon to exit Photoshop's quick mask mode and view selection outlines as animated dotted lines that look like marching ants, hence the name. (Adobe calls this the "standard" mode, but I think marching ants mode better describes how it works.)

Quick mask: Click here to enter the quick mask mode, which enables you to edit selection boundaries using painting tools. The marching ants vanish and the image appears half covered by a translucent layer of red, like a rubylith in traditional pasteup. The red layer covers the deselected — or masked — portions of the image. Paint with black to extend the masked areas, thereby subtracting from the selection. Paint with white to erase the mask, thereby adding to the selection.

Standard window: Click this icon to display the foreground image in a standard window, as shown earlier in Figures 2-2 and 2-3. Every image appears in the standard window mode when you first open it.

Full screen with menu bar: If you can't see enough of your image inside a standard window, click this icon. The title bar and scroll bars disappear, as do all background windows and the Windows taskbar, but the menu bar and palettes remain visible, as shown in Figure 2-5. (You can still access other open images by choosing their names from the Window menu.) A light gray background fills any empty area around the image.

Figure 2-5: Click the middle icon at the bottom of the toolbox to hide the title bar and scroll bars.

Absolute full screen: If you still can't see enough of your image, click the rightmost of the image window controls to see the photo set against a neutral black background. (You can't change the color of this backdrop — it's always black.) The menu bar disappears, limiting your access to commands, but you can still access many commands using keyboard shortcuts. Only the toolbox and palettes remain visible.

As noted in the tool tips, pressing the F key lets you cycle through the standard window, full screen with menu bar, and absolute full screen modes. If you need access to a menu command when working in the absolute full screen mode, press Shift+F to display the menu bar. Press Shift+F again to hide it.

You can hide the palettes but leave the toolbox and Options bar on screen by pressing Shift+Tab. Press Shift+Tab again to bring the palettes back. (Pressing Tab while the standard palettes are gone hides the toolbox and Options bar.) If the rulers are turned on, they remain visible at all times. Press Ctrl+R (z -R on the Mac) to toggle the ruler display off and on.

Go to ImageReady: Click this icon to switch to ImageReady, Photoshop's companion Web graphics program.

The Options bar

Spanning the width of the Photoshop window, the Options bar (labeled back in Figures 2-2 and 2-3) contains the major controls for the tools in the toolbox. You establish tool settings by selecting check boxes, clicking icons, and choosing options from pop-up menus in the bar. In other words, think of the Options bar as just another floating palette, albeit a long, skinny one. (Longtime Photoshop users will remember that the Options bar was once a floating Options palette.) However, you use different tactics to hide, display, and relocate the Options bar than you do a regular palette:

Choose Window Options or double-click any tool icon in the toolbox to toggle on the display of the Options bar. (You should see a check mark to the left of the command when the Options bar is visible.) Choose Window Options again to toggle off the display of the Options bar. You also can press Tab to toggle on and off the display of the Options bar and all other palettes.

By default, the Options bar is docked at the top of the program window. Drag the vertical handle at the left end of the bar to relocate it. If you drag the Options bar to the top or bottom of the window, the bar becomes docked again.

Unfortunately, you can't change the size or shape of the Options bar.

Tool presets

Let's say you frequently make 3--4-inch prints on your printer. This probably also means that you frequently set the crop tool for those specific dimensions. If you use the crop tool for some other purpose, however, the next time you want to make a 3--4-inch print, you'll have to reenter those measurements. Tool presets let you save specific tool settings so that you can quickly access them without having to do a lot of typing and tweaking.

Start by selecting a tool and adjusting the settings until they're perfect. Set up the ideal gradient and direction settings for the gradient tool, a frequently used tolerance for the magic wand, or a combination of font, size, and alignment options for the type tool. Here are ways you can save those settings as a tool preset:

Choose Window Tool Presets to display the Tool Presets palette, which is stashed in the docking well by default. Then click the new tool preset icon at the bottom of the palette (labeled in Figure 2-6).

Figure 2-6: Click the current tool icon in the Options bar or choose Window Tool Presets to display options for creating new tool presets.

Click the current tool icon in the Options bar; then click the new tool preset icon below the flyout menu arrow in the upper-right corner of the drop-down palette.

Choose New Tool Preset from either the Tool Presets floating palette menu or the palette menu accessible from the drop-down palette in the Options bar (shown in Figure 2-6).

Any of these methods will take you to a small dialog box where you can enter a descriptive name for your tool settings. Some tools also have a check box where you can choose to include or exclude a particular setting from the preset, such as the color for the brush tool or the pattern for the pattern stamp tool. Click OK, and your newly named group of tool settings will appear in the list. From here on out, clicking the preset will load that group of settings into the Options bar. If you're having a hard time finding a preset, make sure the Current Tool Only option is checked; this will make presets for only the current tool appear in the list.

Whether you access the Tool Presets menu from the Options bar or from the Tool Presets palette, you can choose from the following additional options:

Rename Tool Preset and Delete Tool Preset let you perform those functions on the currently selected tool preset.

Sort By Tool is active only if the Current Tool Only option is unchecked; it groups the presets in the list by tool.

Show All Tool Presets and Show Current Tool Presets toggle off and on the Current Tool Only check box.

There are three options for viewing the list: Text Only, which lets you see the most options on-screen at one time; Small List, which adds a small icon; and Large List, which gives you the icon along with larger text.

Reset Tool and Reset All Tools are carryovers from Photoshop 6, letting you restore either the current tool or all tools to their default settings. This has no effect on your collection of tool presets.

Reset Tool Presets, Load Tool Presets, Save Tool Presets, and Replace Tool Presets all let you deal with groups of presets. Reset takes you back to the default set of tool presets, giving you the option to append the default set to the current set or to replace it entirely with the default set; Load gives you access to previously saved groups of presets; Save lets you save the group of presets to disk for future use, and Replace wipes out the current group of presets in favor of the presaved group of your choice.

Preset Manager takes you to Adobe's gift to the obsessively organized: the Preset Manager dialog box. Here you can store and manage all of your preset collections, as I explain in the next section.

The Preset Manager

Tool presets are the latest addition to the Preset Manager, a nifty innovation introduced in Photoshop 6. This handy tool lets you organize and store presets in eight categories: Brushes, Swatches, Gradients, Styles, Patterns, Contours, Custom Shapes, and Tools. In addition to choosing Preset Manager from the palette menus of the Tool Presets, Brushes, Swatches, and Styles palettes, you can always access the Preset Manager dialog box (shown in Figure 2-7) by choosing Edit Preset Manager. Then choose a category from the Preset Type pop-up menu.

Figure 2-7: The Preset Manager dialog box lets you store and organize presets for eight categories.

If you click the right-pointing arrowhead to the left of the Done button, a pop-up menu appears with some of the same options found in the Tool Presets palette menu. For example, you can choose to replace the current preset collection with another or return to the default collection. To append a collection, click the Load button. Alternatively, click a collection name in the pop-up menu, in which case you have the choice of appending or replacing the current collection with the new one. In addition, you can click a preset and then click Delete to remove the preset or Rename to change the preset's name. If you want to dump or rename a bunch of presets, Shift-click them and then click Delete or Rename. To select all presets, press Ctrl+A (z -A on the Mac). If you press Alt (Option on the Mac), you get a scissors cursor with which you can click a preset to delete it.

Aside from being able to delete or rename a batch of presets at one time, the best reason for bothering with the Preset Manager is to create a new preset collection out of presets from an existing set or sets. Load the collection that you want to use as a basis for the new set. Then Shift-click to select presets for the new set — or press Ctrl+A (z -A on the Mac) to select all presets — and click Save Set. Give the collection a name and store it in the suggested folder.

Note that you can't overwrite any existing preset files. Also, after you add a new preset, you must save it as part of a collection, either through the palette menu or the Preset Manager. Otherwise, Photoshop deletes the preset if you replace the current preset collection with another.

The floating palettes

When you first launch Photoshop, all the palettes appear either on screen or in the docking well except for two: the Character and Paragraph palettes. These two palettes don't appear automatically; you must choose Character or Paragraph from the Window menu or click the Palettes button in the Options bar while a type tool is active. Other than that, these palettes look and behave just like the other palettes, which look and behave much like they have since Version 3. Each palette contains most or all elements labeled in Figure 2-8. (Note that on the Mac, the close button is positioned on the far left side of the title bar.) Some palettes lack scroll bars, others lack size boxes, but that's just to keep things from getting too predictable.

Figure 2-8: Most palettes include the same basic elements as the Layers palette, shown here.

Many palette elements are miniature versions of the elements that accompany any window. For example, the close box and title bar work identically to their image-window counterparts. The title bar lacks a title — I have a lobbyist in Washington working on getting the name changed to "untitled bar" as we speak — but you can still drag it to move the palette to a different location on screen.

Four elements are unique to floating palettes:

Palette options: Each floating palette offers its own collection of options. These options may include icons, pop-up menus, slider bars, you name it.

Palette menu: Click the right-pointing arrowhead to display a menu of commands specific to the palette. These commands enable you to manipulate the palette options and adjust preference settings.

Palette tabs: Click a palette tab to move it to the front of the palette group. (You can also select the palette commands from the Window menu, but it's more convenient to click a tab.)

Collapse box: Click the collapse box to decrease the amount of space consumed by the palette. If you previously enlarged the palette by dragging the size box, your first click reduces the palette back to its default size. After that, clicking the collapse box hides all but the most essential palette options.

Figure 2-9: The Color palette shown at full size (top), partially collapsed (middle), and fully collapsed (bottom).

Rearranging and docking palettes

Photoshop makes it easy to regroup palettes to suit the way you work. You can dock palettes to each other or to the Options bar. You're king of the palette hill, as it were.

To attach a floating palette to the Options bar, as shown in Figure 2-10, drag the palette tab to the docking well. After you dock the palette, you see just the palette tab in the Options bar. Click the tab to display the palette, as shown in the figure. When you click outside the palette, the palette closes automatically.

Figure 2-10: Attach palettes to the Options bar by dragging them to the docking well.

In addition to docking palettes in the Options bar, you can dock palettes to each other. Drag a palette tab to the bottom of another palette and release the mouse button when just the bottom of the other palette appears highlighted, as shown in the left side of Figure 2-11. The dragged palette grabs hold of the other palette's tail and doesn't let go. Now you can keep both palettes visible but move, close, collapse, and resize the two as a single entity, as shown in the right half of the figure.

Figure 2-11: Drag a palette tab to the bottom of another palette (left) to dock the two palettes together (right).

Place your cursor over the border between two stacked palettes until you see the double-headed arrow cursor. Then drag down to enlarge the upper palette and shrink the lower one. Drag up to enlarge the lower palette and shrink the upper one. The overall size of the docked palettes doesn't change.

Alt-drag (Win) or Option-drag (Mac) the border to resize the upper palette only.

Still not happy with your palette layout? You can shuffle palettes at will, moving a single palette from one group to another or giving it complete independence from any group. To separate a palette from the herd, drag its tab away from the palette group, as demonstrated in the left column in Figure 2-12. To add the palette to a palette group, drag its tab onto the palette group, as shown in the middle column. The right column shows the results of the two maneuvers I made in the first two columns.

Figure 2-12: Dragging a palette tab out of a palette group (left) separates the palette from its original family (middle). Dragging a palette tab onto another palette group (middle) adds that palette to the group (right).

The Reset Palette Locations command (Window Workspace Reset Palette Locations) makes it easy to restore your palette setup to the neat and tidy defaults. But you can also take this concept one step further and save your own custom palette arrangements. This makes it easy for multiple users to share the same Photoshop application; if your wacky coworker can't function in the application unless the toolbox is moved to the right side of the screen, you can choose Window Workspace Save Workspace, name the workspace Wacky's Workspace (or whatever you desire), and click Save. From now on, you can access this saved workspace in the Window Workspace menu. And when Mr. or Ms. Wacky gets promoted above you and finally has his or her own computer, you can choose Window Workspace Delete Workspace and choose from a pop-up list of all saved workspaces.

Tabbing through the options

I mentioned earlier that you can hide the palettes by pressing Shift+Tab and that you can hide the palettes, toolbox, and Options bar by pressing Tab. But this keyboard trick doesn't work if an option box is active.

For example, suppose you click in the R option box in the Color palette. This activates the option. Now press Tab. Rather than hiding the palettes, Photoshop advances you to the next option box in the palette, G. To move backward through the options, press Shift+Tab. This trick applies to the Options bar as well as to the standard palettes.

To apply an option box value and return focus to the image window, press Enter or Return. This deactivates the palette options. If an option box remains active, certain keyboard tricks — such as pressing a key to select a tool — won't work properly. Photoshop either ignores the shortcut or beeps at you for pressing a key that the option box doesn't like.

While you're working in the image window, you can return focus to the Options bar from the keyboard. When you press Enter or Return, Photoshop displays the Options bar, if it's not already visible. If the Options bar offers an option box for the active tool, Photoshop highlights the contents of the option box. You can then tab around to reach the option you want to change, enter a new value, and press Enter or Return to get out.