Setting the environment

When we open Photoshop, by default, all the palettes that we have at our disposal are shown on the right side of the program:

On the left side of the program we have the Toolbox, which is displayed in a row, if you want these tools to appear in two rows, click on the double arrows at the top of the Toolbox.
For these lessons, I will set my toolbox in two rows, but for normal work, I love everything in a row. This gives me more room to work.

All palettes can be folded or unfolded by clicking on the double arrows pointing left or by clicking and dragging the edges of the palette.

By clicking and dragging the top edge of a group of palettes,

or you can place a paletter where ever you want by clicking and dragging the palette name.

One can close or minimize a palette respectively by clicking the X button or the _ button in the upper right of the palette.
Clicking the downward pointing arrow opens a submenu.

You can compose your own palette group by clicking and dragging all the palettes into the same group.
Suppose we have a picture where we will use only the “Swatches”, “Layers”, “Character” and “History” palettes.
Then it is unnecessary to have all these other palettes on screen.
So we drag all the pallets that we need into a group and exclude the rest of the palettes.
We can display these palettes under or beside each group.

For this course, I put my Toolbox in two rows and I use the following palettes:

If I still need another, I click “Window” in the menubar and select the palette that I want to use.

Saving the environment

If you are satisfied with your work you can save it.
Click on “Window” (Window) – “Workspace” (Workplace) – “Save Workspace” (Save Environment) in the menu bar.
This opens the “Save Workspace” dialog.
Type a name for the Workspace in the text box and click Save.

If you have customized the keyboard shortcuts, you can also check this and save.
One can change the standard keyboard shortcuts for Photoshop by clicking on “Edit” – “keybord shortcuts” in the menu bar.

If you wish to go back to this environment later, you can evoke it by choosing “Window” – “Workspace” in the menu bar and clicking “environment for course”. Or rather, the name that you have given to this.

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