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How to Open, Duplicate, and Save Images

Before you can work on an image in Photoshop — whether you're creating a brand-new document or opening an image from disk — you must first load the image into an image window. Here are the basic ways to create an image window:

File New: Create a new window by choosing File New or by pressing Ctrl+N (z -N on the Mac). After you fill out the desired size and resolution specifications in the New dialog box, Photoshop confronts you with a stark, white, empty canvas. You then face the ultimate test of your artistic abilities — painting from scratch. Feel free to go nuts and cut off your ear.

File Open: Choose File Open or press Ctrl+O (z -O on the Mac) to open images scanned in other applications, images purchased from stock photo agencies, slides and transparencies digitized to a Kodak Photo CD, or an image you previously edited in Photoshop.

File Browse: The File Browser is a free-floating window that lets you view thumbnails for multiple images at one time. You can toggle it on or off by clicking the folder icon next to the docking well in the Options bar. Additionally, you can bring it up by choosing File Browse or pressing Ctrl+Shift+O (z -Shift-O on the Mac). After you find an image you like, double-click it to open it.

File Open Recent: A variation on the Open command, Open Recent displays a list of the images that you recently opened. Click an image name to crack open the image file without taking that tedious trip to the Open dialog box. You can set the number of files that you want to appear in this list in the File Handling panel of the Preferences dialog box.

Edit Paste: Photoshop automatically adapts a new image window to the contents of the Clipboard (provided those contents are bitmapped). So if you copy an image in a different application or in Photoshop and then choose File New, Photoshop enters the dimensions and resolution of the image into the New dialog box. You can just accept the settings and choose Edit Paste to introduce the image into a new window. Photoshop pastes the Clipboard contents as a new layer. This technique is useful for editing screen shots captured to the Clipboard or for testing effects on a sample of an image without harming the original.

File Import: If you own a scanner or a digital camera, it may include a plug-in module that lets you transfer an image directly into Photoshop. Just copy the module into Photoshop's Plug-Ins folder and then run or relaunch the Photoshop application. To initiate a scan or to load an image into Photoshop, choose the plug-in module from the File Import submenu.

After you choose the command, Photoshop launches the device's download software. If you're scanning, select the scanner settings and initiate the scan as usual; the scanned picture appears in a new image window in Photoshop. If you're transferring images from a digital camera, the camera software typically creates thumbnail previews of images in the camera's memory so that you can select the ones you want to transfer to Photoshop.

Creating a new image

Whether you're creating an image from scratch or transferring the contents of the Clipboard to a new image window, choose File New or press Ctrl+N (z -N on the Mac) to bring up the New dialog box shown in Figure 3-3. If the Clipboard contains an image, the Width, Height, and Resolution option boxes show the size and resolution of this image. Otherwise, you can enter your own values in one of six units of measurement: pixels, inches, centimeters, millimeters, picas, or points. If you're uncertain exactly what size image you want to create, enter a rough approximation. You can always change your settings later.

Figure 3-3: Use the New dialog box to specify the size, resolution, and color mode of your new image.

Press Alt (Win) or Option (Mac) when choosing File New or press Ctrl+Alt+N (z -Option-N on the Mac) to override the contents of the Clipboard. Photoshop displays the size and resolution of the last image you created, whether or not it came from the Clipboard. Use this technique when creating many same-sized images in a row.

You can also match the size and resolution of the new image to any other open image. Any images you currently have open appear at the bottom of the Preset pop-up menu. It's that simple.

Units of measure

The Width and Height pop-up menus contain the six common units of measure mentioned earlier: pixels, inches, centimeters, millimeters, points, and picas. But the Width pop-up menu offers one more, called Columns. If you want to create an image that fits exactly within a certain number of columns when it's imported into a desktop publishing program, select this option. You can specify the width of a column and the gutter between columns by pressing Ctrl+K and Ctrl+5 (z -K and z -5 on the Mac) to display the Units & Rulers preferences. Then enter values into the Column Size option boxes.

The Gutter value affects multiple-column images. Suppose you accept the default setting of a 15-pica column width and a 1-pica gutter. If you specify a one-column image in the New dialog box, Photoshop makes it 15 picas wide. If you ask for a two-column image, Photoshop adds the width of the gutter to the width of the two columns and creates an image 31 picas wide.

The Height pop-up menu in the New dialog box lacks a Column option because vertical columns have nothing to do with an image's height.

Press Ctrl+R (Win) or z -R (Mac) to display the rulers, and then right-click (Win) or Control-click (Mac) anywhere in the rulers to display a pop-up menu of units. Click the unit you want to use.

Display the same pop-up menu by pressing F8 to display the Info palette and then clicking or dragging the cross icon (next to the X and Y coordinate values) in the palette's lower-left corner. Again, just click the unit you prefer.

New image size

In most cases, the on-screen dimensions of an image depend on your entries in the Width, Height, and Resolution option boxes. If you set both the Width and Height values to 10 inches and the Resolution to 72 ppi, the new image will measure 720720 pixels. An exception occurs if you choose pixels as your unit of measurement. In this case, the on-screen dimensions depend solely on the Width and Height options, and the Resolution value determines the size at which the image prints.

Color Mode

Use the Color Mode pop-up menu to specify the number of colors that can appear in your image. Choose Bitmap to create an image consisting of only black and white pixels, and choose Grayscale to access only gray values. RGB Color, CMYK Color, and Lab Color all provide access to a full range of colors, although their methods of doing so differ.

Background Contents

The New dialog box also provides a Background Contents pop-up menu that enables you to change the color of the background for the new image. You can fill the new image with white, with the current background color (which might be white anyway, of course), or with no color at all. This last setting, Transparent, results in a floating layer with no background image whatsoever, which can be useful when editing one layer independently of the rest of an image or when preparing a layer to be composited with an image. (For an in-depth examination of the more nitty-gritty aspects of layering, see Chapter 12.)

If you do select a transparent background, you must later flatten the layers if you want to save the image to a format that doesn't support layers. (See the upcoming discussion "Saving an image to disk" for information about options that retain layers when saving.) The advantage of the Transparent setting, however, is that Photoshop doesn't create a new layer when you press Ctrl+V (z -V on the Mac) to paste the contents of the Clipboard. In the long run, you don't gain much — you still must flatten the image before you save it to some formats — but at least you needn't fuss with two layers, one of which is an unwanted background layer.

Color Profile

Pixel Aspect Ratio

Luckily, Photoshop can help. By selecting a nonsquare pixel aspect ratio or choosing any of the nonsquare video presets, you can work with a preview of the image that more accurately represents its appearance in your final film or video project. It's important to note, however, that these settings don't actually alter the pixels in your image. They simply present them to you in a way that more closely matches your specific destination. You always have the option of displaying the pixels as they appear back in "squaresville" by choosing View Pixel Aspect Ratio Correction to turn the option off. Toggling this option off can at times be helpful because it eliminates the need for Photoshop to do any scaling and provides you with a higher-quality preview.

Naming the new image

The New dialog box provides a Name option. If you know what you want to call your new image, enter the name now. Or don't. It doesn't matter. Either way, when you choose File Save, Photoshop asks you to specify the location of the file and confirm the file's name. So don't feel compelled to name your image anything in the New dialog box. The only reason for this option is to help you keep your images organized on screen. Lots of folks create temporary images that they never save, so Photoshop offers a way to assign temporary images more meaningful names than Untitled-4, Untitled-5, Untitled-6, and so on.

Opening an image

Photoshop provides a File menu command, Open Recent, which displays a list of the images you worked on in recent Photoshop sessions. Click the name of the image you want to open. You set the number of files that appear on the list by entering a value in the Recent File List Contains option box, found on the File Handling panel of the Preferences dialog box, which you access by pressing Ctrl+K and then Ctrl+2 (z -K and z -2 on the Mac). The maximum value is 30.

Also, the icon in the title bar gives you an instant hint as to whether or not your image has been edited since it was last saved. If the image has unsaved changes, the title bar icon appears faded. (Mac OS X users can also look at the red close button in the title bar; if it contains a black dot, the image has been edited since it was last saved.)

Of course, you can always open images the old-fashioned way by choosing File Open or pressing its keyboard shortcut, Ctrl+O (z -O on the Mac), to display the Open dialog box. On the PC, you also can double-click an empty spot in the Photoshop program window to open the dialog box.

The Open dialog box behaves just like the ones in other Windows and Macintosh applications, with a folder bar at top, a scrolling list of files, and the usual file management and navigation options. You can also open multiple files at one time. To select a range of files on the PC and in Mac OS X, click the first file name and then Shift-click the last file in the range. Ctrl-click (z -click in Mac OS X) to add a single file to the group you want to open. Ctrl-click or z -click again to deselect a file from the group.

The Photoshop Open dialog box also includes a few controls that most other programs lack. You can read about these options in the next sections. But first, a few other brief notes about opening files:

When you choose File Open, Photoshop displays the folder that contained the last file you opened. Similarly, when you save a file, the folder you saved to last is selected automatically.

When you open an image, Photoshop may display a dialog box telling you that the color profile of the image doesn't match the default color profile you've established. You have the option of converting the image to the default profile or leaving well enough alone. See Chapter 16 for help with this issue.

Tip When opening an image, you may occasionally encounter a dialog box warning you that some data in the file cannot be read and will be ignored. Well, it's a bunch of bunk. If this happens to you, just click OK to dismiss the warning and open the image as usual.

Viewing the thumbnail

To help you assess an image before you open it, Photoshop displays a thumbnail preview of the selected file in the Open dialog box, as shown in Figure 3-5. On the Mac, the column view found in Open dialog boxes automatically displays a preview of graphic files. On the PC, Photoshop automatically displays thumbnails for any files saved in the native format (PSD). If you're running Windows 2000, the operating system may generate thumbnails for files saved in other formats.

Figure 3-5: You can see a preview of an image if you previously saved it in Photoshop with the thumbnails option enabled.

On the Mac, the thumbnail space may appear empty, which means the file does not contain a Photoshop-compatible preview. The file may have been created by a piece of hardware or software that doesn't support thumbnails, or the thumbnail feature may have simply been turned off when the image file was saved. To generate thumbnails when saving images in Photoshop, press Ctrl+K and then Ctrl+2 (z -K and z -2 on the Mac) to display the File Handling panel of the Preferences dialog box. Then turn on the Macintosh Thumbnail check box if you're using a Mac or set the Image Previews pop-up menu to Always Save if you're using a PC. Alternatively, you can set the Image Previews pop-up menu to Ask When Saving, in which case Photoshop gives you the option of adding a thumbnail to the image inside the Save dialog box.

Previewing outside Photoshop

Mac OS X is pretty crafty about generating previews of graphic files all on its own. Depending on the file format, you can generally get a preview of a graphic file, no matter what the thumbnail saving settings were. Select an image in the Finder and press z -I to access the Get Info command. Twirl down the arrow next to the word Preview to view a miniature version of the image, as pictured in Figure 3-6. You can also open PSD files through Apple's own Preview application.

Figure 3-6: The Get Info command in Mac OS X can show previews of many different graphic file types.

Opening elusive files on a PC

The scrolling list in the Open dialog box contains the names of the documents that Photoshop recognizes it can open. If you can't find a desired document on your PC, it may be because the Files of Type pop-up menu is set to the wrong file format. To view all supported formats, either select All Formats from the Files of Type pop-up or type *.* in the File Name option box and press Enter.

If a file lacks an extension, the Open dialog box won't be able to identify it. This unusual situation may arise in one of two ways. On rare occasions, a file transmitted electronically (through the Internet, for example) loses its extension en route. But more likely, the file comes from a Macintosh computer. The Mac doesn't need file extensions — the file type identification resides in the resource fork — so many Mac users never give a thought to three-character extensions.

You can solve this problem by renaming the file and adding the proper extension or by choosing File Open As (Ctrl+Alt+O). If you choose Open As, Photoshop shows you all documents in a directory, whether it supports them or not. Just click the extension-less file and select the correct file format from the Open As pop-up menu. Provided that the image conforms to the selected format option, Photoshop opens the image when you press Enter. If Photoshop gives you an error message instead, you need to select a different format or try to open the document in a different application.

Opening elusive files on a Mac

If you can't find a document in the Open dialog box on your Mac, it may be because Photoshop doesn't recognize the document's four-character type code. The type code for a document created or last edited on a Macintosh computer corresponds to the file format under which the image was saved (as explained in the upcoming "File Format Roundup" section).

For example, TIFF is the type code for a TIFF image, JPEG is the code for a JPEG image, GIFf is the code for a GIF image, and so on. However, if you transferred a document from another platform, such as a Windows machine or a Unix workstation, it probably lacks a type code. In the absence of a type code, Photoshop looks for a three-character extension at the end of the file name, such as .tif or .jpg or .gif. But if the extension is as much as a character off — .tff or .jpe or .jif, for example — Photoshop won't know the file from Adam.

To see all documents regardless of their type code or extension, select All Documents from the Show pop-up menu in the Open dialog box, as shown in Figure 3-7. When you click on a document in the scrolling list, the Format option displays the format that Photoshop thinks the file was saved in — if it has any thoughts to offer. If you disagree, click the Format option and select the correct file format from the pop-up menu. As long as the image conforms to the selected format option, Photoshop opens the image when you press Return. If you get an error message instead, either select a different format or try to open the document in a different application.

Figure 3-7: Select the All Documents option to access any document regardless of its four-character type code.

Finding lost files on a Mac

If you know the name of a file — or at least part of the name — but you can't remember where you put it, click the Find button, enter some text in the resulting option box, and press the Return key. Photoshop searches the disk in a fairly random fashion and takes you to the first file name that contains the exact characters you entered.

If the first file name isn't the one you're looking for, click the Find Again button to find the next file name that contains your text. If you want to search for a different string of characters, click Find and enter some different text.

Using the File Browser

Opening an image is like putting on a pair of socks. The actual operation of applying socks to one's feet is relatively easy. And most of us have more socks than we know what to do with. In fact, our feet would be eternally graced by elegant, matching socks if it weren't for the fact that the darned things are so difficult to find. Washing machines, dryers, and dresser drawers harbor vast collections of socks that we'll never see again.

Images are the same way. Although easy to open, they're not so easy to find. Socked away (get it?) inside folders, on Zip disks and CDs, and among myriad digital camera cards, the common image is more abundant than lint and harder to locate than a clean dish towel.

Just as life would benefit from a sock browser, Photoshop benefits from the File Browser. Introduced in Photoshop 7, the File Browser dons a slew of new features in Photoshop CS. Expressed as a free-floating window, the File Browser shows you thumbnail previews of every image inside a selected folder, as shown in Figure 3-8. You can access the File Browser by clicking the folder icon directly to the left of the docking well in the Options bar. Clicking this icon again hides the browser if it's already open. Additionally, you can display the browser or bring it to the front by choosing File Browse or pressing Ctrl+Shift+O (z -Shift-O on the Mac).

Figure 3-8: The File Browser shows you thumbnail-sized previews of all the images inside a folder. You can also change the sorting order, rotate images, and perform a boatload of tasks way too impressive to describe in a mere caption.

Opening an image from the browser is simply a matter of navigating to its folder from the hierarchical list, known as the folder tree, located by default in the upper-left corner of the window and then double-clicking a thumbnail. But there's much more to the File Browser than may at first meet the eye. Photoshop CS introduces several enhancements including the expanded capability to add and edit auxiliary information about your images, improved batch processing capabilities, and new ways to organize and navigate files. Adobe has even given the File Browser its own menu bar. The best way to learn how it all works is to run through a list of its parts. The following paragraphs explain the items labeled in Figure 3-8, ranked in rough order of importance:

Folder tree: Adobe calls this the desktop view; I call it the folder tree because it shows folders branching off in various directions. Like the Explorer bar under Windows, the folder tree lets you dig several folders deep in search of images. Click the plus sign (or the "twirlie" triangle on the Mac) next to a folder name to view all subfolders inside it. Click a folder name to make it the so-called "current" folder and view thumbnails of the images contained therein.

Up folder: Click this icon to exit the current folder and view the contents of the folder one level up.

Folder path menu: Click here to display a menu of folders and volumes that contain the current folder. Choose any one of them to make it the current folder. This menu also gives you access to any folders recently accessed through the File Browser, as well as any folder you've deemed a favorite.

Thumbnails: The thumbnail view is where you do most of your work in the File Browser. Click a thumbnail to select it. You can select multiple files by pressing Shift or Ctrl (z on the Mac). Shift-clicking selects a range of files; Ctrl-clicking (z -clicking on the Mac) adds individual files to the selection. You can also Shift-drag to select multiple files. Double-click a thumbnail to open the image file; double-click a folder icon to view its contents. For a detailed discussion of the many other things you can do, see the upcoming section titled "Working with thumbnails."

Photeshop Preview: On the left side of the File Browser window, you'll find a scalable preview of the currently selected image. In Photoshop CS, the File Browser sports larger, higher-quality previews than were previously available. You can make a preview bigger or smaller by dragging the horizontal and vertical lines that frame it. I'll examine this in more detail in the next section, "Customizing the workspace."

PhoteshopMetadata: Of all the functions of the File Browser, this may be my favorite. Photoshop CS's new Metadata panel lets you view and edit more information about your images than you ever thought possible. By default, it's divided into three sections: File Properties, IPTC, and Camera Data (EXIF). The Exchangeable Image File format (EXIF) is a standard for appending nonpixel information — known as metadata — to an image file. EXIF is most widely used by digital cameras to describe a photograph's history, including the date and time it was shot, the make and model of the camera, the flash setting, and the focal length. In the Camera Data (EXIF) section of the Metadata panel, you may be able to find out all kinds of wonderful information about digital photographs that you shot and edited years ago.

If an image was not directly captured with a digital camera, it won't contain EXIF information. For example, copying a digital photograph and pasting it into another image does not preserve EXIF data. This doesn't mean, however, that you can't store nonpixel information inside your other images. One area where the new, improved File Browser in Photoshop CS shines is its wide-ranging capability to view, create, and edit IPTC data. IPTC stands for International Press Telecommunications Panel, but that's not important for our purposes. What is important is that it lets you enter a variety of non-camera-related properties for an image, including author name, caption and headline, related Web addresses, and even copyright information. It also helps that IPTC is a standard that can be read and edited by a number of other applications.

In previous versions of Photoshop, you could access IPTC information only through the File menu. Luckily, you now have full control over it directly in the File Browser. With an image selected, click a pencil icon or in the blank space to the right of any IPTC field to reveal a stack of text boxes in which you can enter all the IPTC information for the image (see Figure 3-9). After you have an active cursor in one of the text boxes, press the Tab key to jump down through the fields. When you've finished entering your IPTC information, press Enter (Return on the Mac) or click the check mark at the bottom right of the Metadata panel. Click the cancel icon next to the check mark to disregard any changes you just made.

Figure 3-9: One click on any of the fields in the IPTC section of the Metadata tab lets you hop from field to field and enter a variety of information.

Photeshop Keywords: Another great new organizational tool in the File Browser is the ability to assign keywords to an image or a group of images. Click the Keywords tab next to the Metadata tab to view a list of categories and descriptions designed to give you even more options for grouping your files. You can assign a description to any selected image or images by clicking the check box to the left of the description or by double-clicking the description itself. The three icons that appear at the bottom of the Keywords panel let you create a new keyword set (the equivalent of a folder), create new keywords, or delete keywords, respectively. You can also drag keywords from one keyword set to another.

Photeshop The menu bar: In Photoshop CS, the File Browser is so packed with features that Adobe decided to give it its own menu bar. From this menu bar you can access some of the commands previously available in the File Browser (but with added features), plus some powerful new options. Here are some highlights:

Automate:Chapter 18.) The Automate menu also includes the batch-processing functions, which I discuss a little later in this chapter.

Sort: By default, the File Browser sorts files alphabetically by file name. However, you can also rearrange them on-screen by date, rank, size, and other attributes by choosing a command from the Sort menu.

View: The options in the View menu let you customize what is displayed in the thumbnails section of the File Browser. You can set the size at which the thumbnails appear and whether or not you'd like certain metadata displayed next to them in the window. When View Show Rank is checked, you can apply a specific rank to individual images by clicking next to the word Rank, which appears below each thumbnail. For example, you might click next to the Rank of one image and set it to A, click another and set it to B, and so on. Then choose Sort Rank, and Photoshop will arrange them in your new order.

Rotate: Click one of these icons to rotate the selected thumbnail 90 degrees counterclockwise or clockwise. You can also press Ctrl-] (z -] on the Mac) to rotate a selected image clockwise and Ctrl-[ (z -[ on the Mac) to rotate it counterclockwise. Note that this does not change the image itself, just the thumbnail. If you double-click a thumbnail, Photoshop is smart enough to open the image and then rotate it in a separate operation. But you'll have to save this change to make it permanent. If you want to only rotate the image, choose Edit Apply Rotation from the File Browser's menu bar. This will overwrite the image with the rotated version and save you the step of opening it.

Photeshop Flag: One way to do some quick and dirty sorting of your images is by using Photoshop CS's new flag function. As opposed to the hundreds of variables you can use to classify images using metadata and keywords, the flag feature provides you with two options: Flagged and Unflagged. Select the thumbnails you want to flag and click the flag icon in the browser's menu bar. After the images are flagged, you can choose to view all images, only flagged images, or only unflagged images from the Show pop-up menu. You can also select only flagged images by choosing Edit Select All Flagged or by pressing Ctrl+Shift+A (z -Shift-A on the Mac). Flagging images is a great workflow technique for quickly separating the keepers from the throwaways.

Photeshop Search: Click this icon or choose File Search to search for images by file name, type, or even metadata. Searching by metadata can be helpful, for example, if you want to track down every image on your machine that was captured with a specific digital camera. The results of your search appear in the Search Results folder at the bottom of the folder tree.

Delete: Click the trash icon to delete one or more selected images. You can also drag files to the trash icon to delete them. To delete the images without a warning, press the Alt key (or Option on the Mac) as you click the icon or drag the files.

Progress message: The File Browser often takes a while to generate thumbnails and perform other operations. As a result, it can seem as if nothing's happening. If the browser keeps you waiting, take a peek at the progress message to find out what's going on.

Customizing the workspace

Working with thumbnails

The File Browser is a complex environment with more going on than you might imagine. And the thumbnail view is the hub of activity. You can select, rename, move, and even copy files from one folder to the next.

Photoshop generates thumbnail previews of all image files that it supports. If you saved a preview with the image (as explained in the "Saving previews" section, later in this chapter), the File Browser shows you that. Otherwise, it generates a new preview on-the-fly. This takes time, especially in the case of high-resolution or complex images. If a folder resides on a remote volume or contains lots of files — say, a few hundred — Photoshop may appear to hang for a few seconds while it gets its bearings. The progress message "Getting directory file list" tells you that work is being performed. If you're feeling impatient, you may be able to interrupt the process by switching to another folder.

Click the file name below a thumbnail to highlight the name and enter a new one. (Note that Photoshop protects the extension — .jpg, .tif, and so on — unless you specifically drag over it.) You can also drag thumbnails around in the window to reposition them as you see fit. If you have a specific sort order specified, however, it will change to Custom as soon as you manually change the position of your thumbnails.

Managing the cache

You may spend several minutes generating previews, rotating thumbnails, and ranking images inside the File Browser. And yet not a single one of these functions is saved with the image file. So how does Photoshop prevent you from losing your work? By saving a cache file that records all changes made to an entire folder full of images.

This all happens in the background without your aid or assistance, so you might assume there's no reason to worry about it. However, although Photoshop's approach works well when viewing pictures on a local hard drive, things get a little dicey when browsing images from a network or CD. Here are two possible problem scenarios:

Sharing images over a network: There is one cache file per folder and each resides in a system folder on your computer. This is called a local cache because it resides locally on your machine. And a networked version of Photoshop running on a different computer cannot share a local cache file. For example, suppose that you and a coworker are browsing through images on a server. You rotate a few thumbnails, assign a few rankings, and naturally assume that the coworker can see what you just did. But she can't because her local cache is different than yours.

Browsing images on a CD: Suppose that you start with a folder of 200 images. After giving Photoshop a few minutes to generate the thumbnails, you rotate and rank the images as you see fit. Then you burn the images to a CD, having faith that the thumbnails, rotations, and ranks will be maintained. But when you put the CD in your drive and view it in the File Browser, Photoshop starts generating the thumbnails all over again. Plus the rotation and ranks have been lost. The cache remains intact, but it's linked to the folder, not the CD. So Photoshop has to create a new cache for the CD. After you reperform your work, the CD will browse as expected from that point on — but only on this one machine. Other computers will require their own local caches.

Are you beginning to get a sense of how messy this can get? And that's not all. Any change to a folder — such as renaming or moving it — likewise breaks the link and requires you to start over.

So what's the solution? Fortunately, a very simple one. Just choose Export Cache from the File Browser's File menu, as shown in Figure 3-10. Without any additional dialog with you, Photoshop exports three cache files to the folder itself. The files are AdobeP8T.tb0, which contains the thumbnails, AdobeP8P.tb0, which contains the previews, and AdobeP8M.md0, which contains the metadata, including rotation and ranking information. From that point on, the three cache files are available to other users on a network, you can burn them to a CD, or you can keep them with a folder on the off chance you move the folder or rename it.

Figure 3-10: Choose Export Cache to save thumbnails as well as rotation and ranking data to a networked folder or to burn to a CD.

If you tend to spend days and nights combing through a seemingly endless parade of images, your cache files can grow fairly quickly. Luckily, you can delete, or "purge," the cache just as easily as you can export it. From the File Browser menu bar, choose File Purge Cache to clear the cache of the particular folder you're currently viewing or File Purge Entire Cache to clear the Photoshop cache files from your hard drive completely. The final cache-related function in the File Browser is accessed by choosing File Build Cache for Subfolders. This command tells Photoshop to prerender the cache for all subfolders within the current folder so that you may export it all together.

Batch renaming

I'm not thrilled by the way the browser lets you rename files. It makes it difficult to select the extension and can be slow when compared to renaming at the desktop level. However, Photoshop's browser gives you something the desktop doesn't — Batch Rename. This command lets you rename multiple files in one operation.

To rename a handful of specific files, click and Shift-click on their thumbnails to select them. To rename all files in a folder, choose Select All or Deselect All from the Edit menu. Then right-click (Control-click on the Mac) and choose Batch Rename (or choose Automate Batch Rename from the File Browser's menu bar) to display the dialog box pictured in Figure 3-11.

Figure 3-11: Use the Batch Rename command to rename multiple files in a single operation. You can select naming options from a pop-up menu or enter your own name.

You have the option of renaming files in the folder where they currently reside (the most common choice) or moving them to a different folder. If you click Move to New Folder, the File Browser asks you to select a destination. Note that moving means just that — Photoshop relocates the files as opposed to copying them to the new location.

You can specify up to six File Naming variables, though two or three is usually sufficient. The three Document Name options retain or change the case of the name currently assigned to the file. Alternatively, you can enter your own name into an option box. In Figure 3-11, I've chosen to give all files a lowercase extension, which is useful for changing digital photographs with names such as PIC0301.JPG to PIC0301.jpg. You can also append dates or serial numbers, as when tracking variations such as SunnyDay001.jpg, SunnyDay002.jpg, and so on. Photoshop CS also lets you specify a number other than 1 (as in SunnyDay001.jpg) as your starting number. Just enter a new number in the Starting Serial# option box.

Using the File Info command

As we've seen, an image file can contain a lot more information than the image data. On top of pixels, alpha channels, color profiles, and all the other image data you can cram into your image files, you can add a variety of reference information — where you shot the picture, who owns the image copyright, what the weather was like, relevant sonnets, and so on.

Despite the plethora of fields available to you through the File Browser's Metadata panel, sometimes you need to be able to edit and access more information than a little panel can hold. That's when you should choose File File Info from the File Browser's menu bar or press Ctrl+Alt+I (z -Option-I on the Mac) to display the File Info dialog box, shown in Figure 3-12.

Figure 3-12: You can document your image in encyclopedic detail using the wealth of options in the File Info dialog box, which is greatly improved in Photoshop CS.

Description: The options in this panel are fairly straightforward. For example, if you want to create a caption, enter it into the Description option box, which can hold up to 2,000 characters. If you select Description in the Output section of the Print with Preview dialog box, the caption appears below the image when you print it from Photoshop. You can also add a copyright notice to your image. If you choose Copyrighted Work from the Copyright Status pop-up menu, a copyright symbol ((c)) will appear in the image window title bar and in the information box at the bottom of the screen on the PC or at the bottom of the image window on the Mac. This symbol tells people viewing the image that they can go to the Description panel to get more information about the owner of the image copyright. Choose Public Domain if you want to make it clear that the work isn't copyrighted (an Unmarked image might actually be a neglected copyrighted one).

You can also include the URL for your Web site, if you have one. Then, when folks have your image open in Photoshop, they can come to this panel and click the Go to URL button to launch their Web browser and jump to the URL.

Camera Data: Following the Description options you'll find two panels of Camera Data values. This is where the EXIF information discussed earlier in the chapter is displayed. EXIF data is written by the digital camera, not the user, so these fields cannot be altered.

Categories: The Categories panel may seem foreign to anyone who hasn't worked with a news service. Many large news services use a system of three-character categories to file and organize stories and photographs. If you're familiar with this system, you can enter the three-character code into the Category option box and even throw in a few supplemental categories up to 32 characters long.

Photeshop History: If you've enabled the History Log option in the General panel of the Preferences dialog box, this panel displays the history data for the image. Otherwise, it's blank. (For complete details on setting up the History Log, see the "General preferences" section in Chapter 2.)

Origin: This panel provides some more option boxes for entering specific information about how the image came to be, including the date, the location, and a headline. Click the Today button to automatically enter the current date and time in the Date Created field. You can use the Urgency pop-up menu to indicate the editorial timeliness of the photo.

Photeshop Advanced: The Advanced panel displays all the information you've set for the image in metadata's XMP format. On a PC, file information is only saved in image file formats that support saving extra data with the file. This includes the native Photoshop (.psd) format, EPS, PDF, JPEG, and TIFF. On a Mac, file information is saved with an image regardless of the format you use. Photoshop merely tacks the text onto the image's resource fork. If you need the metadata of an image to travel with the image file, regardless of platform, application, or operating system, saving an XMP file is the way to go. XMP, which stands for eXtensible Metadata Platform, is essentially a text file containing metadata that can be assigned to an image and read by many applications. The Advanced panel lets you save this type of file with the metadata you're currently viewing. From this panel, you can also open an XMP file and use it in place of your current metadata, as well as add the information from an XMP file on top of your image's metadata. Selecting any of the categories of metadata in the Advanced panel and clicking the Delete button will clear that specific data from your image file.

You can assign your saved metadata templates to multiple files at once in the File Browser. Simply select the files to which you want to assign the metadata and choose Edit Replace Metadata (as shown in Figure 3-13) to display a submenu that contains all the templates you've saved. If you want to add metadata from a saved template but keep the original characteristics of your image (such as name, description, or source), choose Edit Append Metadata instead and select a template. One of the advantages of appending versus replacing metadata in an image is that appending adds any keywords saved in the template to the existing keywords in the image.

Figure 3-13: You can use the metadata information of any image to replace or add on to that of any other image. In the File Browser, you can also assign metadata to a group of images at once.

Duplicating an image

Have you ever wanted to try an effect without permanently damaging an image? Photoshop offers multiple undos, and you'll get a kick out of using the History palette to see before and after views of your image (as I explain in Chapter 7). But what if you want to apply a series of effects to an image independently and compare them side-by-side? And save the variations as separate files? Or perhaps even merge them? This is a job for image duplication.

To create a new window with an independent version of the foreground image, choose Image Duplicate. A dialog box appears, requesting a name for the new image. Just like the Name option in the New dialog box, this option is purely an organizational tool that you can use or ignore. If your image contains multiple layers, Photoshop will, by default, retain all layers in the duplicate document. Or you can merge all visible layers into a single layer by selecting the oddly named Duplicate Merged Layers Only check box. (Hidden layers are ignored.) Press Enter or Return to create your new, independent image. Bear in mind that this image is unsaved; you need to choose File Save to save any changes to disk.

Saving an image to disk

The first rule of image editing — and of working on computers in general — is to save the file to disk frequently. If your computer or Photoshop crashes while you're working on an image, all edits made during the current editing session are lost.

To save an image for the first time, choose File Save or press Ctrl+S (z -S on the Mac) to display the Save dialog box. Name the image, select the drive and folder where you want to store the image file, select a file format, and press Enter or Return.

After you save the image once, choosing the Save command updates the file on disk without bringing up the Save dialog box. To save the image with a different name, location, or format, choose File Save As.

You can issue the Save As command also by pressing Ctrl+Shift+S (z -Shift-S on the Mac). As for the Save a Copy command found in some earlier versions of Photoshop, that function is provided through the As a Copy check box in the Save As dialog box. By the way, if your only reason for using Save As is to change the file format, it's perfectly acceptable to overwrite (save over) the original document, assuming you no longer need the previous copy of the image. Granted, your computer could crash during the Save As operation, but because Photoshop actually creates a new file during any save operation, your original document should survive the accident. Besides, the chance of crashing during a Save As is extremely remote — no more likely than crashing during any other save operation.

If you have multiple files open, you can close them in one step by choosing File Close All. Or better yet, press Ctrl+Shift+W (z -Shift-W on the Mac). Photoshop prompts you to save any images that haven't yet been saved and closes the others automatically.

Adding an extension to Mac files

On the Mac, the Preferences dialog box includes an option that lets you append a three-character file extension to your files. (Again, this option is located in the File Handling panel, so press z -K, z -2 to get to it.) Here I have two recommendations. First, leave the Use Lower Case check box turned on. It ensures fewer conflicts if and when you post your images on the Web. Second, go ahead and append extensions to your file names.

Why add PC file extensions on a Mac? Obviously, it makes life easier when sharing images with PCs. More importantly, it's another form of insurance. If you're a Mac person and you ever find yourself using a PC, you're going to have tons and tons of old Macintosh image files that you'd like to open and reuse. With file extensions, you'll have no problem. Without them, good luck. The file extension is the only way a Windows application has to identify the file format. If there's no file extension, you have to tell the application which format to use. Although I don't question the basic record-keeping capabilities of your brain, you probably have better things to remember than what file format you used five years ago.

Saving previews

In Chapter 2, I recommended that you set the Image Previews option in the File Handling preferences panel (Ctrl+K, Ctrl+2 on the PC or z -K, z -2 on the Mac) to Ask When Saving. If you followed this sage advice, the Save dialog box on the PC offers a Thumbnail check box. On the Mac, it offers several Image Previews check boxes. For print work, I generally select the Thumbnail option on my PC and both the Macintosh and Windows Thumbnail options on my Mac. Previews consume extra disk space, but it's well worth it in exchange for being able to see files before opening them. Why save a Windows thumbnail on a Mac? If you ever swap files between platforms, it will come in handy.

The only reason not to save a thumbnail with an image is if you plan to post the picture on the Web. In that case, the file has to be as streamlined as possible, and that means shaving away the preview.

Choosing other save options

Certain save options that once upon a time were available only via the Save a Copy command now appear in the Save dialog box all the time. You also get access to these options when you choose Save As or press its keyboard shortcut, Ctrl+Shift+S (z -Shift-S on the Mac). Figure 3-14 shows the dialog box.

Figure 3-14: A look at the Save dialog box, which incorporates the old Save a Copy command as a save option.

Note that the options you can select vary depending on the image file and the selected file format. If an option is dimmed, it either doesn't apply to your image or isn't supported by the file format you chose. And if your image includes features that won't be saved if you go forward with the current dialog box settings, Photoshop gives you the heads up by displaying a warning message at the bottom of the dialog box.

As a Copy: Select this check box to save a copy of the image while leaving the original open and unchanged — in other words, to do what the Save a Copy command did in Photoshop 5.5 and earlier. The result is the same as duplicating an image, saving it, and closing the duplicate all in one step.

The whole point of this option is to enable you to save a flattened version of a layered image or to dump other extraneous data, such as masks. Just select the file format you want to use and let Photoshop do the rest for you.

Annotations:Adding Annotations," later in this chapter.

Alpha Channels: If your image contains an alpha channel — Photoshop's techy name for an extra channel, such as a mask (discussed in Chapter 9) — select the Alpha check box to retain the channel. Only a few formats — notably Photoshop, PDF, PICT, PICT Resource, TIFF, and DCS 2.0 — support extra channels.

Spot Colors: Did you create an image that incorporates spot colors? If so, select this option to retain the spot-color channels in the saved image file. You must save the file in the native Photoshop, PDF, TIFF, or DCS 2.0 format to use this option.

Layers: TIFF and PDF can retain independent image layers, as can the native Photoshop format. Select the check box to retain layers; deselect it to flatten the image.

Use Proof Setup: This option relates to Photoshop's color profile options. If the current view's proof setup is a "convert to" proof, Photoshop converts the image to the selected proofing space when saving.

ICC Profile (Win)/Embed Color Profile (Mac): If you're saving your image in a file format that supports embedded ICC profiles, selecting this option embeds the profile. The current profile appears next to the option name. See Chapter 16 for advice about working with color profiles.