As with most programs, you click the name of a menu to reveal its commands. For both Mac and Windows, you can click and hold down the mouse button until you’re over the command you want; or you can click and release, move the cursor, and then click again. Some commands, such as Crop and Reveal All, are executed immediately after you choose them. When a command name in the menu is followed by an ellipsis (…) — the Image Size command shown in Figure 3-2, for example — you know that a dialog box will open so that you can input variables and make decisions. A triangle to the right of a command name, such as that which you see next to Image Rotation, indicates a submenu. If you click the command name, another menu appears to the right. The cryptic set of symbols to the right of some commands (for example, Image Size) is the keyboard shortcut for opening the command’s dialog box. (I show you how to assign keyboard shortcuts later, in the section “Sugar and spice, shortcuts are nice.”)
FIGURE 3-2: Some commands have submenus, and some have dialog boxes.
As you read in the upcoming section “Clearing the table: Custom workspaces,” Photoshop menus are customizable — you don’t have to see commands that you never use. You can also color-code your menu commands, making it easier to spot those that you use regularly.
When a specific command appears grayed out in the menu (in gray type rather than black), that command isn’t available. Some commands, such as Reveal All in Figure 3-2, are available only under specific circumstances, such as when part of the image is being hidden with the Crop tool. When working with Photoshop’s creative filters, you’ll find that many aren’t available unless you’re working with an 8-bit RGB (red/green/blue) image. (I cover color modes and bit depth in Chapter 5, and you can explore filters in Chapter 14.)
Your platter full of panels
Photoshop, like the other programs of the Adobe Creative Cloud, uses floating panels. The panels, many of which you see along the right edge of your screen, usually appear on top of (float over) your image window. (As you drag panels around to customize your workspace, as described later in this section, you’ll find that panels can hide other panels.) The Options bar across the top of the work area and the Toolbox (technically, it’s called the Tools panel) along the left edge of the screen are also panels.
Panels contain Photoshop features that you might need to access so regularly that using a menu command is inconvenient. (I can’t imagine having to mouse to a menu command every time I want to change tools or select a specific layer!) You don’t always need to have your panels visible. In Photoshop, press the Tab key to hide all the panels or press Shift+Tab to hide all but the Toolbox and the Options bar. (Press Tab again to show the panels.) With fewer panels visible, you provide more room for your image. You can selectively hide and show panels via Photoshop’s Window menu.
Photoshop uses expanding/collapsing panel docks. As shown to the right in Figure 3-3, clicking the double-arrow button at the top of a stack of panels expands or collapses that stack to a tidy group of icons. The Color, Libraries, and Layers panels are fully visible. The Swatches, Gradients, Patterns, Adjustments, Channels, and Paths panels — “nested” with the three visible panels — can be made visible by clicking the panel tab. The collapsed History, Properties, Character, and Paragraph panels together occupy only a tiny fraction of the screen — those four buttons to the left of the Color panel. In Figure 3-3, the Application Frame (Mac only) is deselected in Photoshop’s Window menu, allowing the program to utilize the entire screen.
FIGURE 3-3: Nesting and collapsing panels opens up the work area.
By clicking and dragging a panel’s tab when the panel isn’t collapsed, you can move it to another grouping or pull it out of its grouping and away from the edge of the screen. You might, for example, want to drag the Clone Source panel away from its buddies to make it more easily accessible while performing a complex clone operation. (The Clone Source panel is used with the Clone Stamp tool. You can specify up to five different source locations and easily switch among them.)
Many of the panels are resizable. Like an image window, you drag the lower-right corner of the panel to expand or contract it. Almost all the Photoshop panels have a panel menu from which you select various options. (The Toolbox and Options bar are the exceptions — they don’t have menus.) You open the panel menu by clicking the small button in the upper-right corner of the panel, as shown in Figure 3-4. The panel menu contains such options as thumbnail size (for example, the Layers, Channels, and Paths panels); how to display items in the panel (Swatches, Styles, and Brush among others); or even the size and content of the panel (Info and Histogram).
FIGURE 3-4: Access a panel’s menu by clicking the button in the upper right. (Clicking the double-arrow above the button expands or collapses the panel or panel group.)
The content of some panels changes automatically as you work with your image. Add a layer, and the Layers panel shows a new layer. Save a selection, and the Channels panel shows a new alpha channel. If you create a vector shape, the Layers panel gets a new layer, and the Paths panel shows the layer’s vector path. You control some other panels by loading and deleting content through the panel menus.
In a move that some may find controversial, the Preset Manager has been degraded and is no longer used to manage the content of most panels. Brushes, gradients, and patterns, for example, are now loaded (“imported”) and saved (“exported”) through the panel menus only. Other items, such as custom shapes, are managed through the pickers in the Options bar when the appropriate tool is active.
The tools of your trade
Near the bottom of the Toolbox is an ellipsis (visible in Figure 3-3, shown previously). Click that and you can customize the Toolbox to optimize it for your workflow. You can also use the menu command Edit ⇒ Toolbar.
You control the behavior of Photoshop’s tools through the Options bar. With the exception of a few path-related tools (Add Anchor Point, Delete Anchor Point, and Convert Point), every tool in Photoshop has options. The Options bar changes as you switch tools. The behavior of some tools changes when you add one or more modifier keys (⌘ , Shift, and Option for the Mac; Ctrl, Shift, and Alt for Windows). As an example of how modifier keys can affect tool behavior, consider the Rectangular Marquee and Elliptical Marquee tools:
Hold down the Shift key while dragging. Normally the marquee selection tools are freeform