Maglot

LEARNING THE PHOTOSHOP WORKSPACE

Pallettes

The Palettes are used in Photoshop to keep track of the progress of your work. They can seem a bet messy at first, and to me they are, which is why I made my own layout! That's right, you can customize the palettes, which I'd recommend ing because a lot of the palettes there are USELESS.

You can Dock and Undock these palettes by simply clicking on the palette's name tab and dragging it "out" of the palette. It will then be all by itself. You can then get rid of the palette by pressing the X button in the upper left corner of it (like any other window). To make your own palette group, just click and drag out the ones you want, and then drag them all into the same palette.

You may easily get to a palette you want by going to the WINDOWS option at the top of the screen and then choosing the palette of your choice.

You can also save your own workspace by going to WORKSPACE - SAVE WORKSPACE AS. Give it a name, and you may then load up your workspace at any time.

Below I've shown each of the palette windows and given them a brief description of what they are used for. Unlike the Toolbrush tutorial where I have each tool's location listed, I couldn't do that here because the tools cannot be moved around like the palettes can, so if you are missing one or just can't seem to find it, click on the WINDOWS menu command at the top of the screen and look for it there.


Use the navigator to zoom into and out of your image without having to select the zoom tool.	The info palette will tell you numeric values of the color you have selected and the size of your selection borders.	The color palette is just an expanded version of the color picker, which is located at the bottom of the ToolBox. You can change colors here.	Swatches are preset colors. You can add to them by picking a color and then pressing the New Swatch button. You may also delete any swatch by clicking on it and dragging it to the trashcan icon.


Styles work only on layers (not the background) and will add special effects to them. Great for text. Just click on one of the squares to activate a style, click on the white one at the top left to remove it.	The history palette will allow you do undo mistakes you've made. Every single move you make is recorded here, so if you don't like what you did, click on a previous action and it will restore the image to that move.	Actions automate tasks for you. If you want a quick wooden frame effect, you can select it here, then press the play button and it will run through the steps for you. You can also make your own actions.	Tool presets are pretty obvious. Click one of the presets to get it's effect. Not much else to it, but you are allowed to make your own presets.


Layers hold your artwork itself. You can stack up layers to achieve special effects, and change the way each layer blends with the other for even more effects.	Channels hold the color that your image is made up of. Unlike layers, these are not used to edit your pictures so don't try.	The paths keep track of your bezier curve "path objects" with are made using the Pen Tool.