|
Photoshop has so many different work areas and tools that it can become confusing,
or even intimidating, to use Photoshop in a production environment. Fact is, there
are only three particular zones or areas that you really need to become familiar with:
Tools, Menus, and Palettes. Setting up your workspace for efficient production will create
a more pleasing experience, allowing you to focus on the main objective: getting
your work done.
Over time, you’ll develop a workflow that is comfortable for
you. Everyone has different workspace needs, depending on
their experience with Photoshop and the type of work they
are doing. Here I’ll show you some ways to
tailor your basic workspace to achieve the greatest possible
efficiency and comfort.
Creating your own efficient production
environment will take just a little
experimenting. It’s kind of like learning
how to use to a Wacom tablet; you
have to put away the mouse for a
few hours, but once you become
comfortable with the tablet, it creates
a more productive experience.
Most of the time, my physical office is
pretty well organized. OK, sometimes
it appears to be organized chaos. But
the fact is, it’s fairly well constructed for
productive work. When I’m working
in Photoshop, retouching or creating
montages, setting up the working
environment for production is actually
much easier than it is in my physical
office. Because it’s so important to
focus on the task at hand when you’re
working in Photoshop, I’ve designed
the following methods to eliminate
what I call “Visual Confusion”—the
state of having too many things to look
at when I’m working in Photoshop.
|
|
Personalizing Your Window
Setups
The typical or default window setup
in Photoshop (Windows > Workspace
> Default Window) is handy, in that it
shows us many of the palettes that we’ll
eventually use. Unfortunately, having
all of those windows open all the time
during production can take up too much
real estate on the monitor. It can be a little
frustrating trying to find the window you
need hidden behind another window,
or even inadvertently trying to create
a new layer in the History or Channel
palette instead of the Layers palette.
|
|
The “Docking Well” (as nicknamed by
Adobe guru Julieanne Kost), located in
the upper right-hand corner of the Option
Bar, is officially known as the Palette Well.
It is a real life saver, as you can arrange
and position your most active palettes
here, clearing them from your monitor,
and then bring specific palettes out to
your work area as you need them for a
particular project or type of workflow.
When you’re finished with that project,
you can easily send the palettes back to
the Palette Well for the next assignment.
|
|
Let’s take a look at a simple and clean,
but powerful, window workflow setup.
When we’re finished with this setup, we’ll
have only a few windows on the screen
work area, the palettes used most often
will be positioned in the Palette Well, and
this setup will be saved as a starting or
primary workspace. Then, you can configure
various custom window workspaces for
different types of image processing.
|
|
The Basic Workspace
Starting with the Palette Well on
the right side of the Options Bar,
let’s bring out the resident palettes.
Click and drag the tab that bears the
name of each palette to move the
window onto the screen work area.
|
|
Next, clear these windows from the
screen by selecting the red button (Mac)
or red X (Windows). The default palettes
include Layer Comps, Tool Presets,
Brushes, Color, Swatches, and Styles.
|
|
At this point, you need to decide which
will be your primary working palettes.
For my basic workflow, I’ll use Channels,
Layers, Actions, History, Histogram, Info,
and Paths. Except for the Histogram
and Info palettes (which I want on my
screen almost all the time), I’ll move
the remaining palettes to the Palette
Well. Then, I’ll dock the Histogram and
Info window together and position
them in the bottom lefthand corner.
Collapse a palette by double-clicking on
the forward tab that bears its name.
|
|
You can move a palette to the Palette
Well by either selecting the tab that
bears its name and dragging the tab to
the Well (look for a black outline around
the Palette Well, then drop ’em in) or
selecting “Dock to Palette Well” from
the fly-out menu. Docking the Info and
Histogram palettes together works the
same way: move the Info tab onto the
Histogram tab, look for the black outline,
and then let go of the mouse to dock.
|
|
The length of the Palette Well is controlled
by your monitor resolution settings. To
make a longer Palette Well, increase
the resolution of your monitor. On the Mac, open System Preferences
and select “Displays.” Here you can
change the monitor resolution. On the
PC, right-click on the desktop to bring
up the Display Properties option, click
on the Settings tab, and then use the
slider to set your monitor resolution.
|
|
Once you have set up the primary
window workspace, you can save it by
selecting Window > Workspace > Save
Workspace and entering a name. You
can now access (or even delete) any
saved workspace under the Window
> Workspace menu directory. Once
you have selected a workspace and
quit Photoshop, the same workspace
will automatically be in place the
next time you open Photoshop.
|
|
You can access the Tool Presets palette
quickly from the upper left-hand
corner of the Options bar. Also, the
Brushes palette is always available
by clicking on the Brush Palette icon
in the Options bar anytime you’re
using a tool that uses a brush.
|
|
Alternate Workspaces for
Specific Types of Work
You can use the Save Workspace
command to save workspace
environments for specific types of
projects, such as Masking, Retouching,
or Color and Tonal corrections.
For Masking, bring out the Channels,
Layers, Paths, and History palettes,
dock the Layers with Paths and the
Channels with History, and save
this as your Masking Workspace.
|
|
Retouching should include the Layers
and Actions palette. Finally, for Color
Control, you can use the Histogram and
Info window in the upper right-hand
corner, along with the Layers palette
for creating Adjustment Layers and the
Channels palette docked with Layers.
Arrange your palettes on your monitor
in a way that is most comfortable for
your working environment. If you have
dual monitors, it is certainly possible
to use the second monitor just for the
palettes. However, if you’re processing
multiple images and working from
Bridge, you might find that it works
better to use the second monitor for
the Bridge window.
|
|
Don't miss the next Photoshop tip on Graphics.com. Get the free Graphics.com newsletter in your mailbox each week. Click here to subscribe.
|
|
