When the Show Only Crosshair While Painting option is selected in Preferences, the brush cursor appears at the selected diameter display (Full Size or Normal) until you press the mouse button (or press the stylus to the tablet). It then automatically switches to the crosshair and remains as a precise cursor until you release the mouse button (or lift the stylus). Experienced brush-tool-using Photoshoppers might want to experiment with this option — if you know the diameter, you might want to better focus on the center of the brush when you are, for example, painting or dodging or burning along a distinct edge.
Also found in the Cursors panel is the Brush Preview color. Click the color swatch to open the Color Picker and assign a color to use when dynamically resizing your brushes. (If you don’t have OpenCL drawing capability, the brushes can still be resized, but the color preview will not be visible.) With a brush-using tool active, press and hold down the Option+Control keys on a Mac and drag left or right; on a Windows machine, Alt-right-click and drag left or right to resize the brush — on the fly! Want to change the brush hardness? Hold down those same keys and drag up or down rather than left or right.
FIGURE 3-10: When working with a low Hardness setting, Normal Brush Tip is usually best.
Preferences ⇒ Transparency & Gamut
If you work in grayscale regularly, you might want to change the color of the transparency grid to something that contrasts with your image; perhaps pale blue and pale yellow. If you find the gray-and-white checkerboard pattern distracting in images with transparency, you can set Grid Size to None, which gives you a plain white background in transparent areas of your artwork.
Preferences ⇒ Units & Rulers
If you create web graphics rather than print images, you probably want to change the unit of measure from Inches to Pixels. Keep in mind that you can change the unit of measure on the fly by right-clicking the rulers in your image (which you show and hide with the shortcut ⌘ +R/Ctrl+R). If you regularly print at a resolution other than 300 ppi, you might also want to adjust the default resolution for print-size new documents.
Preferences ⇒ Guides, Grid & Slices
Photoshop offers Smart Guides, which appear and disappear automatically as you drag the content of one layer into and out of alignment with the content of other layers. Smart Guides (magenta in color by default) show when the content of the layer you’re dragging aligns perfectly with the edges or center of other layers’ content. See Figure 3-11. (Show/hide Smart Guides through the View ⇒ Show menu. They are active by default now.)
FIGURE 3-11: The magenta guides show how the layer aligns with other layers.
Preferences ⇒ Plug-Ins
The creative filters of the Filter Gallery are not listed individually in the Filter menu. You open the Filter Gallery, and then select the filter you need. If you would rather have the Filter Gallery open directly to the filter you need, select Show All Filter Gallery Groups and Names option and restart Photoshop.
Preferences ⇒ Technology Previews
In the Technology Preview panel of the Preferences, your options and choices will vary both with your hardware and over time. As Adobe develops new whiz-bang ideas, you can choose to play with them. Or not. Take a couple of moments (when you have time) to click the Learn More button to find out what the new technologies are all about.
Preferences ⇒ Product Improvement
Ensuring consistency: Color Settings
If one term strikes fear deep in the heart of a typical Photoshop user, it’s color management. Few aspects of the program are so misunderstood. Yet without wise color management decisions, your images won’t print accurately. For most Photoshop users, color management can be implemented with a few key choices in the Edit ⇒ Color Settings dialog box (shown in Figure 3-12), which can then be saved for future use:
Select an RGB working space. Open the Color Settings dialog box (under the Edit menu) and select your RGB working space, the color space in which you edit and create. If you primarily create web graphics, shoot in the JPEG format, send your images to a photo lab for printing, or print with an inkjet printer that uses only four ink colors (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black), choose sRGB as your color space. If you shoot Raw and print to an inkjet printer that uses six or more inks, or if you prepare artwork that will be converted to a CMYK color space, choose Adobe RGB. (If you have hardware and software to create a custom profile for your computer’s monitor, use that profile at the system level so that it’s available to all programs.)
Elect to convert images to your working space. In the Color Management Policies area of the Color Settings dialog box, choose RGB: Convert to Working RGB. This ensures that the images you see onscreen actually use your working profile.FIGURE 3-12: Choose wisely in the Color Settings dialog box for optimal printing.
Turn off the mismatch warnings. Clear the check boxes for those annoying and time-wasting warnings that pop up onscreen any time you open an image with a profile other than your working space. You’re intentionally converting to your working space — you don’t need to reaffirm the decision every time.
CMYK and Grayscale settings: CMYK (cyan/magenta/yellow/black) color mode is used exclusively with images intended for output on commercial printing presses and some color laser printers. (Don’t be fooled by the inks you purchase for your inkjet printer — the printer’s driver expects to convert from RGB, so sending CMYK color to an inkjet will produce substandard output.) Likewise, you’ll use Grayscale very rarely. If, in fact, you have an inkjet printer that is capable of printing grayscale (such as the magnificent Epson Stylus Pro 7900),