General Settings

We will be on the shore for long, if we were to discuss all the settings, so I will give you the settings which I work with.
Choose “Edit” – “Preferences” – “General” … the menu bar.
This opens the “Preferences” dialog box:

In the General tab, the first thing I do is to uncheck the check for “Export Clipboard”.
This takes too much memory on our computer and has no use.

The second box is to uncheck the “Use Shift Key for Tool Swich” box.
When this is checked, you must always press the Shift key on your keyboard to navigate between the different tools of a tool button.
Thus, you will always have to press the Shift Key + L
when you want to navigate between the various Lasso tools.

If this box is unchecked, we need to press only the L button.
For me this is easier, but you can do what you want.

The next is the “Interface” tab, it is not very interesting, I might still come back here later.

The next tab is “File Handling”.

The first thing I’ve changed is “Maximize PSD and PSB File Compatibility” to Never.
When this is set to “Always” or “Ask” Photoshop will save the file again with all “layers” (Layers) merged.
I think this has no use. Unless you want to import Photoshop files in Adobe Premiere or Adobe Indesign.

The second subject I uncheck is “Enable Version Cue”.
Unless you’re in a “Version Cue” environment works, uncheck this box, this slows down your computer.

The next tab, where I’ve made changes, is “Performance”.

In the Memory Usage section I give 55% of my RAM (memory installed on your PC) to Photoshop.
I think this is enough, the more I give to Photoshop, the less I have for my other programs.
So unless you have several GB of RAM that you can still use.

The next thing you can change here is the Scratch Disk box.
If you have different drives (D, E, …), here you can use a different drive than that is used to run Photoshop.
Thus, Photoshop can use this drive’s RAM without getting stuck.
Check the Drive and click the arrow upward to set the first drive.

The next tab that I change is “Cursors”.

The only thing I change is the “Show Crosshair in Brush Tip” box.
This gives me the exact location of the center of my brush.

The next tab is where I change the “Units & Rulers” of the application.

Here I change the “Rulers” to pixels.
And this is for the simple reason that everything we do in Photoshop has to do with pixels, not inches or centimeters or whatever.

That’s it.
That’s all I change.
But of course you are free to make other changes in it.

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