Photoshop CC Workspace Image Editing – L. Traynham

Photoshop Workspace Pt. 1 Application Bar, Menu Bar and Options Bar

MENU BAR OPTIONS BAR APPLICATION BAR DOCKED PANELS TOOLS PANEL IMAGE WINDOW

Workspace Descriptions There are THREE horizontal bars in your workspace Application Bar Menu Bar Options Bar There are also THREE VERTICAL BARS Tools panel Image Window Docked Panels You can not move or resize the 3 horizontal bars You can however move and resize the 3 vertical bars.

Application Bar This allows you to close, minimize, or maximize your main application (photoshop) open other applications by clicking a button (such as Bridge) Change a workspace Change the Zoom Level Change the screen mode Show Extras Most of these features on the application bar can also be utilized by using the keyboard shortcuts. These are a huge time saver and make navigation a breeze.

Menu Bar The menu bar is where you can find links to save files, set options, chose panels etc. Here are some of the common tasks you will choose from the menu bar: File  Save This is where you can save you files in any of the different formats available. If you not sure what format to use, it is always sage ro go with .psd or .tiff File  Save for Web Saves tour files as .png, .jpeg or .gif File  Open Opens a new file Edit  Keyboard Shortcuts Allows you to change keyboard shortcuts and menus Window  Workspace  Reset Workspace If you mess up your workspace this will allow you to reset it to it’s original state. Help  Photoshop Help When you don’t know how to do something you can come here and search for your topic in the search box.

Options Bar This bar will look different depend on which tool you have active Here you will find options for the active tool Ex: If you have the brush tool selected you will see option for the brushes

Recap So far we have reviews the 3 upper horizontal bars which are: Application Bar Menu Bar Options Bar Remember you can not move or resize these bars and you can only make them disappear when you choose the “full screen mode” Also, you can hide the options bar by choosing Window  Options, then checking Options so the bar will show.

Photoshop Workspace Pt. 2 Tools Panel, Image Window and Docked Panels

Vertical Bar Even though we will refer to these are vertical bars, they are not really bars, we will use this term so you can better understand the overall picture Imagine the area below the Application, Menu and Option Bars as a sticky area You can stick the tools panel, the image window and the docked panels to this area. Likewise you can also unstick them. Once they are “unstuck” they are floating in this and can be moved freely After you stick them to the “sticky area” they will remain there and cannot be moved again until you choose to relocate them

Moving the panels You can see that the Tools Panel, the Image window and the Docked Panels float above the sticky area and I can move them freely. To move these around click on the highlighted black box area and drag. Also note that the Image Window can only be stuck to the upper sticky area and the Tools and Docked Panels can only be stuck to the either the left or right side of the sticky area.

Moving Panels (Cont’d.) To move the panels Simply click on the highlighted area than while holding on click drag it to where you want the panels to be locate side blue vertical line appears. This area is called a drop zone, which is an area where you can move a panel. Once this line appears, release the panel will stay where you chose to place it.

Docked Panels Panels, sometimes also called palettes are small windows used to verify setting and modify images. By default panels appear in stacked groups and the right side of the screen These collections of panels, often vertical, is called a dock, which is the dark grey bar above the collection of panels The arrows in the dock are used to maximize and minimize the panels

Docked Panels Panels can be separated and moved anywhere in the workspace by dragging the tabs to new locations in the “sticky” area we discussed earlier. You can dock a panel by dragging its tab in or out of the dock area. Panels also have a panels options button which is located in the upper right corner of the panels. These are able to expanded to show more options for that panel, as well as collapsing them to save space in your work area.

Tools Panel The tools panel contains tools associated with frequently used Photoshop commands. The face of a tool contains a graphical representation of its function Ex: the zoom tool shows a magnifying glass. You can place to pointer over each tool to display a tool tip, which tells you the name or function of that tool. Some tools have hidden tools, indicated by a small black triangle in the lower-right corner of the tool. You can collapse the tool panel so it is displayed in a two column panel. You can do this by clicking the two arrows that point to the left that is located at the upper right side of the tool panel. If you click it again it will return to it’s default 1 column state.

Image Window The image window is the area in the workspace window where the file you have open is shown. Your image/file you have open will have a tab that will contain info like: The filename Actual zoom level Color mode The * at the end indicates that the image has not been saved, once you save this will disappear

Wrap Up We can float the Image window so it is above the image area and we can move it around as we want. The only place we can stick it back is the upper area. We can float the Docked panels and the Tools panel as we want, we can move them to the left or right and stick them to the left or right ( but not the upper part ). Also we can ungroup panels from the Docked panels and create our own groups which we can stick and move to the left or to the right. Remember, if you screw your workspace and you want to go back, simply choose Window > Workspace > Reset “Workspace Name “.