Section 1: Navigating the Workspace
The Photoshop work area consists of the following components: Menu Bar, Options Bar, Toolbox, Palette and Palette Well. Let’s have a closer look at each one.
Section 1: Navigating the Workspace
- The Menu Bar
- The Options Bar
- The Toolbox
- The Palettes
- Other shortcuts
- Quiz
The Menu Bar
The menu bar is the main place where all the Photoshop controls can be found. I say the main place, because almost all of the commands in Photoshop have either keyboard shortcuts or alternative toolbars/palettes.
It consists of 9 different menus:
- File - Where documents enter and leave Photoshop.
- Edit – Where documents undergo base changes
- Image – Where document properties are changes and managed.
- Layer – Where layers are managed and changes.
- Select – Where selection are managed and changed.
- Filter – From where filters are applied.
- View – Where the way a document is viewed can be changed.
- Window – Where the work area is changed and customized.
- Help – Where all help related files and resources can be accessed.
When selecting a menu we can see that some of the menu items are followed by a triple period. This indicates that a dialog box will follow the selection. Many of the commands also have the shortcut keys listed for your convenience.
The Options Bar
The Options Bar is, by default, located just below the Menu Bar. Here you can find information and options about the tool that is currently selected. The Options Bar is context sensitive, thus its content changes according to the particular tool that is selected. Some options are common between certain tools (i.e. blending mode or brush size) while others are unique to particular tools. Like most toolboxes and palettes, the Option Bar can be moved anywhere on the work area by dragging by the gripper bar on the left.
The Toolbox
The Toolbox contains the most commonly used tools in Photoshop. All the functions of the toolbox can be accessed via keyboard shortcuts, which increase productivity greatly. It would be a very good idea to learn these shortcuts during this section.
The Toolbox is divided into eight sections. Each of these sections deal with a different aspect of the document in the same basic way the Menu Bar does. These sections, from the top, are:
- Selection & moving tools
- Marquee tools (M)
- Move tool (V)
- Lasso tools (L)
- Magic wand (W)
- Crop (C)
- Slice tools (K)
- Pixel level change tools
- Healing and patch tools (J)
- Brushes (B)
- Stamp tools (S)
- History tools (Y)
- Eraser (E)
- Fill (G)
- Blur (R)
- Dodge/Burn (O)
- Path tools
- Path selection (A)
- Type (T)
- Pen (P)
- Shape tools (U)
- Document tools
- Notes
- Eyedropper
- Hand
- Zoom
- Colour tools
- Masking
- Screen modes
- Open in Imageready
Every time a new tool is selected, the options bar changes (It is context sensitive). We can now see the different options that are available for the various tools.
You will notice a small arrow next to many of the tools. This indicates that there are different variations of that particular tool. Simply click and hold on one of the tools to see more options slide out. To select one of these, move the mouse pointer to your choice and release the mouse button. We can now see the changed icon for the newly selected tool.
The Palette and Palettes Well
Palettes help you keep track of how you are modifying your image. You can have as many palettes visible as you like. All depending on how much information you need.
By default the palettes are arranged on the right side of the screen. They can be dragged into any position on the screen to suit your needs. Note that different palettes contain different palette tabs. These tabs can also be dragged and grouped together in any location that suits your needs.
A useful new feature of the palette system is the palette well. The palette well can be found on the top right of the screen. The palette well enables us to have quick access to selected palettes by simply clicking on its tab to expand it and clicking anywhere else to collapse it again. It is possible to drag any of the palettes by its tab and drop it into the palette well for easy access.
One last important feature of all palettes is the little arrow to the right of the palette tab. This opens the palette context menu. Here we can change various settings of the selected palette.
Some other important shortcuts
There are some other keyboard shortcuts that will help your productivity. These include:
- Tab – Show/hide the Toolbox and Palettes
- F – Toggles the screen mode between normal, grey background and black background
- D – Resets the foreground/background colour to it’s default state(black&white)
- X – Reverses the foreground/background colour.
Section 1 Quiz
- Where can we find additional information and settings about the current tool?
- What does the triple period behind certain menu items mean?
- What keyboard shortcut is used to hide the Toolbox and Palettes?
- What does the small arrow next to some of the tools in the Toolbox mean?
- From which menu can the work area be changed and customized?
- Hits: 350
