Photoshop Interface

This tutorial, geared towards Photoshop novices, gives an overview of the many interfaces in Photoshop. You will practice working with the toolbox, palettes, the option bar, and tool presets.

Photoshop's toolbox contains all the tools available to you. The toolbox contains fly-out or sub menus that can be viewed by holding your mouse button down on a tool. Whenever you see a little arrow on the bottom right of the tool in the toolbox, it means that there are additional tool choices.

Finding the tool you would like to use can be difficult if you aren't familiar with the toolbox. View all the fly-out menus in the toolbox. In the image in the link, you will notice letters beside each tool. The letter to the right of most of the tools is the shortcut key that enables you to access that tool quickly.

This button at the bottom of the toolbox allows you to switch to Image Ready conveniently. With this button, you do not have to save your current document then open it back up in Image Ready.

In Photoshop, there are many palettes or windows, which are used repeatedly during the editing process. Each palette can be made visible by going to Window > palette name. Those already with a check mark by them mean they are currently visible. They can also be turned off using this same method.

Most of the palettes are nested or grouped with many items. Each item can be removed from the group by clicking and dragging its tab to a desired location on your screen. A palette's size can be adjusted by clicking and dragging on the bottom right corner of the palette.

At the top right corner of the screen, there is a palette well, which is pictured above. Palettes in this well can only be viewed on at a time, however they can free up screen space, which can be very helpful on computers with small resolutions. Palettes can be added to this well by clicking and dragging on a palette's tab to the well or by clicking on the little triangle in the top right hand corner of the palette and selecting Dock to Palette. To remove an item from the well, click and drag its tab out of the well.

In Photoshop 7 and above, workspace configurations can be saved. To save a workspace, which includes the position of all open palettes and movable dialogs, go to Window > Workspace > Save Workspace. A window will then appear asking you to name the workspace before you save it. An unlimited number of workspace configurations can be saved, possibly setting up custom workspaces for particular types of work.

Each palette contains an options menu, which can be accessed by clicking on the little arrow at the top right hand corner of the palette. Palettes also contain a ton of context menus. Experiment by right clicking on just about anything and you'll get a menu of relevant commands.

The options bar contains settings for each tool in the toolbox. The options bar is content sensitive; it changes depending on which tool is selected. The options bar can be easily accessed at the top of the screen. This is the only place where tool options are found, except for text and brushes, which there are palettes with options in addition to the options bar.

For example, select the text tool from the toolbox. Notice that text options are now visible in the options bar. For more options, click the palette button () on the right side of the options bar. The text palette will appear with additional features (Tracking, Kerning, Vertical Scale, etc.).

For another example, select the brush tool. Click on the palette button again. The brushes palette will appear docked to the palette well, unless it had been removed from the palette well. The brushes palette offers more options than any other tool in Photoshop. The palette offers lots of options for creating custom brushes as well as many new preset brushes. Clicking on any of the properties on the left side of the Brushes palette will display options for that property on the right side.

Although tool presets are not apart of Photoshop's interface, they utilize tools from the toolbox. Tool Presets, in Photoshop 7 and above, allow you to save time by saving and reusing custom sets of tool options. This comes in handy if you use a tool to do different kinds of tasks and want to switch easily between the tool options you use for each task.

To create a tool preset, select a tool and change the tool's options in the options bar. Next click on the Tool Presets button at the left side of the options bar. This will bring up the Tool Preset picker. In the Tool Preset picker, click on the New Tool Preset icon. In the dialog box that comes up, name the tool preset and click OK to save it for future use.