Adobe Photoshop CS6 The Workspace

Hi, Michael Brown here again, welcome back to educator.com's Adobe Photoshop CS6 course.0000

In this lesson, we're going to go over the new Photoshop CS6 workspace and all of the various features that are different and the same.0006

OK so let's get started.0016

For any of you who are familiar with Photoshop in any regard, and I'm going to go ahead and open up Photoshop CS5 so you can see the difference, the initial thing that you see is a real visual change to the interface--it's, by default, a very dark gray.0018

This is what it's always been for the previous versions of Photoshop, a medium gray document workspace, if you see all of the outer functionality is in a light gray and as you can see, that has been changed.0038

We'll get out of CS5 and get back to where we need to go here.0053

Now this isn't cut in stone, you have adjustable options on this, but this is the way they start it now.0057

And under this Window menu up here, I want to start by showing you right off the bat one thing.0065

See the application frame down here that is checked, if I uncheck it by highlighting it, you are now looking through at your desktop.0073

This is always available and has been for the last couple of versions of Photoshop.0086

Before, you didn't have the gray background available--in CS5 they have it, now I like it because...0091

I'm going to talk briefly about colour--if you have a coloured desktop, I think we talked about this earlier in the introduction, colour affects how your eye sees, and if you have a blue background for example that's behind your image, that is altering the accuracy of the colour that you detect with your eye.0099

So neutral gray is really what you want, and so now if you've got a flower on your desktop, no problem--just go to the dropdown window and activate the application frame and now this is a singular unit and you don't have to worry about your desktop.0122

Alright, the first thing we want to look at is the new interface, and we haven't done preferences--we'll do that in the next lesson, but I'm going to jump to a preference because this coloration here is adjustable.0142

If you go in your Mac to the Photoshop dropdown menu to Preferences, if you're in a PC go to your Edit menu, dropdown all the way at the bottom of the Edit menu you will find Preferences and will go to the Interface tab, and you see under the Appearance theme here.0155

It defaults at the dark gray, you have the choice of lighter (this was the basic before) medium gray, darker gray, or jet black.0178

Personally, I like the medium gray document window and the slightly lighter gray round the outside so I'm going to change this from the default to that one.0188

There are also, which you will...I will show you as we go down through here, different screen modes, and you have the option of changing those colours as well.0200

OK, and there is also a shortcut that is not in the books...if you want to change the colour of this document workspace, which is what this is called behind the window that's open, on a Mac...Control click, on a PC right click in the gray space around and open image, and there are your choices--you can alter the tonality of document space independent from the outside just by doing that.0213

OK, that is how you change the actual coloration there.0250

Alright, so let's get started.0255

We talked about the new interface (let me put a new layer in here so we can kind of check off what we're doing) we discussed the new interface directly, let's start at the left.0257

On the left vertically, we have the Toolbar, and this obviously contains all the tools that you will use to perform the various functions that the tools do in Photoshop.0270

If you're a previous user, the only difference in appearance of this Toolbar from CS5 or previous ones is that down at the very bottom here, we have the Screenmode choices, and I'll show you what those are right now--you are in the standard screenmode right now, you have a second screenmode that removes the actual bars and allows you to move your image around as much as you want.0283

In the standard, confined workspace, when you zoom up it stops your image and doesn't allow it to go past the window, but if you go to the second one, now it not only goes underneath it, you can move your image anywhere you want on the screen behind those.0312

The third screenmode is the fullscreen mode, and it loses the other, outer pieces--don't freak out when this happens and it will when you do this the first time, you go "Oh my God where did they go?"...simply hit your tab key, and you can tab on and off all of the surrounding functions to the document window--and this occurs, by the way, in any mode, alright?0334

We'll go to the second mode, see that?0360

And the third one where you have nothing, comes right back.0363

Now, shortcut for these modes by the way...if you click and hold on that particular icon at the bottom you'll see the shortcut is the letter F...F as in Frank changes your screenmode, you can do it also here, and the third place you can do it is under the View menu...there are the three screenmodes.0366

OK, let's go back to the standard screenmode--there we are.0390

Alright, now back to the Toolbar, the Toolbar is vertical as a single column, it can be a double column if you choose by going all the way up to the top of the Toolbar at the left to these double arrows and click it, and it becomes a double column.0394

I'm not a real fan of this, you have wasted space below and you've intruded on some of the available space for the document window and I want as much space as possible for the document window, so for me personally I prefer the single column...your call with whatever way you like it--I'm going to set it back by clicking.0410

That's the Toolbar.0429

And just another little briefy...notice for each tool, at the lower right corner if you see a little triangle, that means there are sub-tools--if you click and hold you get a fly-out menu with all the sub-tools in that particular category.0430

That takes care of the basics of the Toolbar.0446

Right above the Toolbar, across the top of your document window, you see what is called the "Options Bar", and what this is very simply are the options that are available for the particular, highlighted tool.0451

If I change the tool watch the options bar...I click and different options appear which are the ones for that particular tool--they would even change if you go to a sub-tool or go to a different sub-tool, they change again.0466

Each tool, when it's highlighted, the Options bar will change accordingly, and they go with the tool.0480

That's the Options bar.0487

Above the Options bar--oh, one thing on the Options bar, the far right side of the Options bar you see this little drop down button?0492

These are all of the available workspace configurations, we'll get to that at the very end but I just want to show you that's where it is, you can customize your workspace, and it's accessible under here, or under the window workspace.0501

Alright, above the Options bar, all the way across to the top, first half, are a series of dropdown menus, and accordingly this is called the "Menu Bar".0518

All of the various functionalities for files, edits, image, layers, type, select, filter, view, window and also your help menu are under here, the Menu bar.0531

We'll deal with this in another lesson in its entirety.0544

So once again you have the interface, you have the Toolbar at the left, Options bar above that, and right above that is the Menu bar.0548

On the right side, and these are extremely important as well, these are the panels, and this is called the "Panel Dock".0556

All of the available panels for Photoshop are under the Window dropdown menu right under the extensions.0565

If you have an extended version of Photoshop you will see that there is a 3D indicated right above Actions--that would be an available panel.0573

I don't have the extended version, I don't work in 3D, so this one doesn't have it.0584

Actions all the way down through tool pre-sets, these are the available panels that can be docked over here on the right side.0589

Right now the ones that are there, are the essentials--I have a custom setup that I have done before just to show you, if I do that it changes the arrangement--I saved that as a specific, we'll go back to the essentials.0598

What the panels are basically are mini applications that afford functionality in many many degrees (we'll go over the individual ones later) but they provide you equally as much functionality as you get from the tools and your dropdown menus, very essential stuff in the panel.0614

Now, this panel can be arranged a little bit differently, notice again a double arrow over here will collapse the panels to just icons, and in this case titles in the second column (it's only icons).0630

You can adjust the width by moving your cursor to the edge until you see the double arrow--click, and you can collapse them further or expand them further.0645

In other words what you could do here if you wanted would be to take that second column and bring it out and that way it would show you the title to open a panel, click, close and click again, click and click, and if it's only an icon, click the icon, click it to close it...click to open, you could also close with the double arrow--if you click the double arrow for this column, it will open all of the panels up.0654

Alright, that's your Panel dock.0680

Across the bottom, and this is a new feature in Photoshop CS6, you see Minibridge and Timeline.0682

We talked briefly about Bridge which was the editing program. Minibridge is a...condensed version, if you will, of Bridge that you can access without leaving the Photoshop interface.0689

You click it, double click here, and it requires that Bridge is open, and there you see that there is a slight...not dumbed-down version but less features right here than you would get if you went directly to Bridge, but if you have favorites and things that you use frequently, you can very quickly access them and you can double click and away they go.0705

The Timeline feature is literally a video timeline...with Photoshop CS6 it has a new feature...really really cool, you can edit video right here in Photoshop with all sorts of functionalities for adjustments of exposure, colour, a lot of stuff.0733

Timeline resides down here, again double click and it goes away.0749

So that takes care of the panels, it takes care of Minibridge, now we'll go right to the document window.0754

The document workspace, as we've talked about, is adjustable in its tonality again, Control click or right click on the gray and you have a choice of whatever you might want to have it for--I like it at the medium gray.0763

At the upper left of the document window we'll see the title of the open document (let me open another document up here--I'll open a picture... on my desktop...let's find one--oh here is one, oh there it is that's a nice one, what the heck I'll put that up) and it's a pretty large one so it opens up and now it's in the position, and you see there is the title bar--in fact we'll use this, it's a lot more pleasant to look at.0776

In the title bar, what you see is the actual title of the image, dot, and after the dot is the format, in this case psd is a Photoshop file so it's aspindd.psd, it's at 16.7% magnification which is also reflected in the lower left hand corner, and you can change that right down here if you wanted to, let's say you wanted to go to 22%...up it comes.0807

It's a little too big, but it reflects the same in both places (I'm going to bring it right back down to the image, actually I'm going to make it a little smaller).0837

And next to the magnification in parentheses, what you see is...if it is a layered file, and in this case the layered panel is open and you see I have several layers here, the highlighted layer (as you can see that one here is in blue) that's the one that is identified up inside the parentheses.0845

It also indicates that this image is in RGB mode, and it's 8 bits per channel.0867

If I was to make an adjustment change on this image, just for fun let's go ahead and do one here--I'm going to change the exposure on the sky just slightly, notice immediately an asterisk appeared at the right side of the title bar.0874

That indicates that a change has been made, and the image has not been saved after the change was done.0891

Also, at the bottom of the window, next to the magnification, is a menu to give you different ways to view information about this document; document size, profile dimensions, efficiency, how much RAM you're using, the current tool, all sorts of stuff.0899

I like the document size, I just leave it there so I know how big my document is as a basic document and also as a saved document.0915

And then of course there is the background of the document window.0926

Now, there are two ways to present your documents.0931

You notice--I'll open up another image just so we can utilize three of them--here is another one...now we have another image open and you notice that they are opening up in a tabbed format; all I have to do is click on the specific tab to go back and forth.0934

I can also change the order of the tabs, if you have more tabs than the window size (let's just open another one, see if I can demonstrate that very quickly...find one more here...Zabriskie there you go) it didn't quite get there but, if you got more of them there'll be a little dropdown arrow that continues the list of how many there are across here.0950

Alright, so that's the tab format.0972

You can show open documents in a different fashion by going to your window dropdown menu under the Arranged tab, and you have a whole bunch of choices here; the two primary ones are, as we have here, consolidate all to tabs or float them all in windows.0974

Now, you have have them all loose and floating so that...I like to use this a lot of times when I'm working with multiple documents; it's very easy for me to just move them around, and maybe I'm taking one piece and moving it to another.0997

You can bring them back to the tabs by going to Arrange, Consolidate to tabs.1010

You can always break an individual image away from the tabbed format by grabbing its title bar and dragging it down and now it's floating.1015

If you want to re-tab it, just move the title bar up in the document workspace until you see this blue frame that appears--notice, once you see that you release and it will go right into the tab situation.1034

So that takes care of that part of the document window, let's go back to our workspace summary, and we have summed up the document window, we also talked about arranging documents and the last thing I want to talk about is customizing your workspace.1040

Now, if there are panels over here that you don't use or don't like and you want to customize for the primary panels and arrangement that you like, you can simply take a panel like this, drag it away and we'll close it, or if we want to get rid of swatches, which is already there, I highlighted it, and it's gone.1057

Styles, I don't want that one either, we'll take styles out of here--by the way the checkmarks are the active panels that you see which in this case is only layers, layers channels pass, I like to have the info panel, it appeared in the far left and if I want to change its position, grab it, drag it.1078

And I can go to the bottom, there's a line, it'll appear behind that tabbed group, and let's say I like particularly to have my layers floating, and let's say this is the arrangement of the panels, and the way I want them.1098

Now when I close Photoshop, it will reopen this way but I can also save this workspace for this specific task, and you can have different workspaces for other tasks by going to that little button I talked about at the right side of the Options window, dropping down, floor to window, workspace, going down to new workspace, and we'll call this NBtest1, and I'll save it.1114

And now if we go to that dropdown menu, you'll see that that's highlighted--that's the one I'm using, if my particular one that I most of the time use, is this one.1140

Now you have the option of flipping back and forth from different workspaces for different purposes.1153

We'll go back to the essentials.1161

So there you have how to customize your workspace, and just a real quick summary…1164

The new interface is adjustable in your preferences interface by clicking for the background adjustment; you can also adjust the various screenmodes individually, and you can adjust the document workspace with Control on a Mac, click, or right click on a PC, for that we have the Toolbar on the left, Options above it...Options bar, Menu bar at the top, Panel dock at the right, Minibridge and Timeline at the bottom.1170

You can arrange your documents in several ways, under the window Arrange menu, and you can customize the workspace for your particular needs.1200

That takes care of the lesson on the basic, Photoshop CS6 workspace; I'll see you in the next lesson.1210