Photoshop 6 for Windows Bible- P3 doc

The view size You can change the view size — the size at which an image appears on screen — so you can either see more of an image or concentrate on individual pixels.. Each change in vi

Rearranging and docking palettes

In the past, you’ve been able to regroup palettes to suit the way you work Now you

also can dock palettes to each other or to the Options bar You’re king of the palette

hill, as it were

To attach a floating palette to the Options bar, as shown in Figure 2-8, drag the palette

tab to the docking well After you dock the palette, you see just the palette tab on the

Options bar Click the tab to display the palette, as shown in the figure When you

click outside the palette, the palette closes automatically

If you don’t see the docking well, you need to raise your monitor resolution The

docking well isn’t accessible at monitor resolutions of less than 800 pixels wide

Also, if you undock the Options bar, any palettes attached to it hide themselves

To redisplay a hidden palette, choose its name from the Window menu

Figure 2-8: Attach palettes to the Options bar by dragging them to the docking well.

In addition to docking palettes in the Options bar, you can dock palettes to each

other Drag a palette tab to the bottom of another palette and release the mouse

but-ton when the other palette appears highlighted, as shown in the left side of Figure 2-9

The dragged palette grabs hold of the other palette’s tail and doesn’t let go Now you

can keep both palettes visible but move, close, collapse, and resize the two as a

sin-gle entity, as shown in the right half of the figure

When you dock a resizable palette to another resizable palette, you can resize the

palettes like so:

✦ Place your cursor over the border between two stacked palettes until you see

the double-headed arrow cursor Then drag down to enlarge the upper paletteand shrink the lower one Drag up to enlarge the lower palette and shrink theupper one The overall size of the docked palettes doesn’t change

✦ Alt-drag the border to resize the upper palette only

Still not happy with your palette layout? You can shuffle palettes at will, moving a

single palette from one group to another or giving it complete independence from

any group To separate a palette from the herd, drag its tab away from the palette

group, as demonstrated in the left column in Figure 2-10 To add the palette to a

palette group, drag its tab onto the palette group, as shown in the middle column.The right column shows the results of the two maneuvers I made in the first twocolumns.

Figure 2-9: Drag a palette tab to the bottom of another palette (left)

to dock the two palettes together (right)

Figure 2-10: Dragging a palette tab out of a palette group (left) separates the palette

from its original family (middle) Dragging a palette tab onto another palette group(middle) adds that palette to the group (right)

If you ever completely muck up the palettes — or a palette somehow gets stuckunder the menu bar — choose Window ➪ Reset Palette Locations

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Tabbing through the options

I mentioned earlier that you can hide the palettes by pressing Shift+Tab and that

you can hide the palettes, toolbox, and Options bar by pressing Tab But this

key-board trick doesn’t work if an option box is active

For example, suppose you click inside the R option box in the Color palette This

activates the option Now press Tab Rather than hiding the palettes, Photoshop

advances you to the next option box in the palette, G To move backward through

the options, press Shift+Tab This trick applies to the Options bar as well as to the

standard palettes

To apply an option box value and return focus to the image window, press Enter

This deactivates the palette options If an option box remains active, certain

key-board tricks — such as pressing a key to select a tool — won’t work properly

Photo-shop either ignores the shortcut or beeps at you for pressing a key the option box

doesn’t like For more information on shortcuts, read Chapter D on the CD-ROM

While you’re working in the image window, you can return focus to the Options bar

from the keyboard When you press Enter, Photoshop displays the Options bar, if

it’s not already visible If the Options bar offers an option box for the active tool,

Photoshop highlights the contents of the option box You can then tab around to

reach the option you want to change, enter a new value, and press Enter to get out

Navigating in Photoshop

All graphics and desktop publishing programs provide a variety of navigational tools

and functions that enable you to scoot around the screen, visit the heartlands and

nether regions, examine the fine details, and take in the big picture And Photoshop

is no exception In fact, Photoshop’s navigation tools would make Magellan drool

(were he inclined to edit an image or two)

The view size

You can change the view size — the size at which an image appears on screen — so

you can either see more of an image or concentrate on individual pixels Each change

in view size is expressed as a zoom ratio, which is the ratio between screen pixels

and image pixels Photoshop displays the zoom ratio as a percentage value in the title

bar as well as in the magnification box The 100-percent zoom ratio shows one image

pixel for each screen pixel (and is therefore equivalent to the old 1:1 zoom ratio in

Photoshop 3 and earlier) A 200 percent zoom ratio doubles the size of the image

pix-els on screen, and so on

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Actual pixels

Photoshop calls the 100-percent zoom ratio the actual-pixels view This is the most

accurate view size because you can see the image as it really is Reduced view sizesdrop pixels; magnified view sizes stretch pixels Only the actual-pixels view displayseach pixel without a trace of screen distortion

You can switch to this most accurate of view sizes at any time using one of the lowing techniques:

fol-✦ Choose View ➪ Actual Pixels

✦ Press Ctrl+Alt+0 (That’s a zero, not the letter O.)

✦ Double-click the zoom tool icon in the toolbox

✦ Click the Actual Pixels button, which appears on the Options bar when thezoom tool is selected

Fit on screen

When you first open an image, Photoshop displays it at the largest zoom ratio (up

to 100 percent) that permits the entire image to fit on screen Assuming you don’tchange the size of the image, you can return to this “fit-on-screen” view size in one

of the following ways:

✦ Choose View ➪ Fit on Screen

✦ Press Ctrl+0

✦ Double-click the hand tool icon in the toolbox

✦ Select the zoom tool and then click the Fit on Screen button on the Options bar

Strangely, any of these techniques may magnify the image beyond the 100-percentview size When working on a very small image, for example, Photoshop enlargesthe image to fill the screen, even if this means maxing out the zoom to 1,600 per-cent Personally, I prefer to use the fit-on-screen view only when working on verylarge images

Well, actually, I almost never use the fit-on-screen view because it’s too arbitrary.Photoshop does the best job of previewing an image when you can see all pixels —that is, at 100-percent view size Short of that, you want the screen pixels to divideevenly into the image pixels This means view sizes like 50 percent or 25 percent,but not 75 percent or 66.7 percent And you never know what it’s going to be withthe fit-on-screen view

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Print size

You can switch to yet another predefined view size by choosing View ➪ Print Size

This command displays the image on screen at the size it will print (You set the

print size using Image ➪ Image Size, as I explain in Chapter 3.)

When the zoom tool is active, you also can click the Print Size button on the

Options bar to turn on the print-size view

In practice, “print-size” view isn’t particularly reliable Photoshop assumes that your

monitor displays exactly 72 pixels per inch, even on the PC, where the accepted screen

resolution is 96 pixels per inch But it’s all complete nonsense, whatever the

assump-tion Monitor resolutions vary all over the map And high-end monitors let you change

screen resolutions without Photoshop even noticing

The long and the short is this: Don’t expect to hold up your printed image and have

it exactly match the print-size view on screen It’s a rough approximation, designed

to show you how the image will look when imported into QuarkXPress, PageMaker,

InDesign, or some other publishing program — nothing more

The zoom tool

Obviously, the aforementioned zoom ratios aren’t the only ones available to you

You can zoom in as close as 1,600 percent and zoom out to 0.2 percent

The easiest way to zoom in and out of your image is to use the zoom tool:

✦ Click in the image window with the zoom tool to magnify the image in preset

increments — from 33.33 percent to 50 to 66.67 to 100 to 200 and so on

Photoshop tries to center the zoomed view at the point where you clicked (or come as close as possible)

✦ Alt-click with the zoom tool to reduce the image incrementally — 200 to 100 to

66.67 to 50 to 33.33 and so on Again, Photoshop tries to center the new view

on the click point

✦ Drag with the zoom tool to draw a rectangular marquee around the portion of

the image you want to magnify Photoshop magnifies the image so the queed area fits just inside the image window (If the horizontal and verticalproportions of the marquee do not match those of your screen — for example,

mar-if you draw a tall, thin marquee or a really short, wide one — Photoshopfavors the smaller of the two possible zoom ratios to avoid hiding any detailinside the marquee.)

✦ If you want Photoshop to resize the window when you click with the zoom

tool, select the Resize Windows to Fit check box on the Options bar Thecheck box appears only when the zoom tool is the active tool

✦ Turn off the Ignore Palettes check box on the Options bar if you want shop to stop resizing the window when the window bumps up against apalette that’s anchored against the side of the program window Turn theoption on to resize the window regardless of the palettes The palettes thenfloat over the resized window.

Photo-To access the zoom tool temporarily when some other tool is selected, press andhold the Ctrl and spacebar keys Release both keys to return control of the cursor

to the selected tool To access the zoom out cursor, press Alt with the spacebar.These keyboard equivalents work from inside many dialog boxes, enabling you tomodify the view of an image while applying a filter or color correction

The zoom commands

You can also zoom in and out using the following commands and keyboard shortcuts:

✦ Choose View ➪ Zoom In or press Ctrl+plus (+) to zoom in This commandworks exactly like clicking with the zoom tool except you can’t specify thecenter of the new view size Photoshop merely centers the zoom in keepingwith the previous view size

✦ Choose View ➪ Zoom Out or press Ctrl+minus (–) to zoom out

The General panel of the Photoshop 6 Preferences dialog box (Ctrl+K) includes anoption called Keyboard Zoom Resizes Windows If you select this option, Photoshopresizes the image window when you use the Zoom commands (Despite the setting’sname, it applies when you choose the zoom commands from the menu as well aswhen you use the keyboard shortcuts.) To override the setting temporarily, press Alt

as you press the keyboard shortcut or select the menu command Similarly, if youdeselect the option in the Preferences dialog box, you can add the Alt to turn win-dow-zooming on temporarily

If Photoshop is unresponsive to these or any other keyboard shortcuts, it’s bly because the image window has somehow become inactive (It can happen if you

proba-so much as click the taskbar.) Just click the image-window title bar and try again

The magnification box

Another way to zoom in and out without changing the window size is to enter avalue into the magnification box, located in the lower-left corner of the Photoshopwindow Select the magnification value, enter a new one, and press Enter Photoshopzooms the view without zooming the window (Neither the Resize Windows to Fitcheck box on the Options bar nor the Keyboard Zoom Resizes Windows option inthe Preferences dialog box affect the magnification box.)

In Figure 2-11, I started with a specially sized window at actual-pixels view I then

entered two different zoom ratios into the magnification box — 156.7 percent and

60.4 percent — alternately enlarging and reducing the image within the confines of

a static window

Figure 2-11: To zoom an image without changing the window

size, enter a zoom ratio into the magnification box and press

Enter Alternatively, deselect the Resize Windows to Fit check

box on the Options bar when working with the zoom tool

Magnification box

You might like to know more about the magnification box:

✦ You can enter values in the magnification box as percentages, ratios, or

“times” values To switch to a zoom value of 250 percent, for example, you

can enter 250%, 5:2, or 2.5x.

✦ You can specify a zoom value in increments as small as 0.01 percent So if a zoomvalue of 250.01 doesn’t quite suit your fancy, you can try 250.02 I seriously doubtyou’ll need this kind of precision, but isn’t it great to know it’s there?

When you press Enter after entering a magnification value, Photoshop changes theview size and returns focus to the image window If you aren’t exactly certain whatzoom ratio you want to use, press Shift+Enter instead This changes the view sizewhile keeping the magnification value active; this way you can enter a new valueand try again

Creating a reference window

In the ancient days, paint programs provided a cropped view of your image at theactual-pixels view size to serve as a reference when you worked in a magnified view.Because it’s so doggone modern, Photoshop does not, but you can easily create asecond view of your image by choosing View ➪ New View, as in Figure 2-12 Use onewindow to maintain a 100-percent view of your image while you zoom and editinside the other window Both windows track the changes to the image

Figure 2-12: You can create multiple windows to track the changes made to a

single image by choosing the New View command from the View menu

Tip

Tip

Scrolling inside the window

In the standard window mode, you have access to scroll bars, just as you do in just

about every other major application But as you become more proficient with

Photo-shop, you’ll use the scroll bars less and less One way to bypass the scroll bars is to

use the keyboard equivalents listed in Table 2-1

Table 2-1

Scrolling from the Keyboard

Scrolling Action Keystroke

I’ve heard tales of artists who use the Page Up and Page Down shortcuts to comb

through very large images at 100-percent view size This way, they can make sure

all their pixels are in order before going to print

Personally, however, I don’t use the Page key tricks very often I’m the kind of merry

lad who prefers to scroll by hand Armed with the grabber hand — as old timers call

it — you can yank an image and pull it in any direction you choose A good grabber

hand is better than a scroll bar any day

To access the hand tool temporarily when some other tool is selected, press and

hold the spacebar Releasing the spacebar returns the cursor to its original

appear-ance This keyboard equivalent even works from inside many dialog boxes

Tip

The Navigator palette

I saved the best for last Shown in Figure 2-13, the Navigator palette is the best thing

to happen to zooming and scrolling since Photoshop was first introduced If youroutinely work on large images that extend beyond the confines of your relativelytiny screen, you’ll want to get up and running with this palette as soon as possible

Figure 2-13: The Navigator palette is the best thing to happen

to zooming and scrolling since Photoshop 1.0

If the Navigator palette isn’t visible, choose Window ➪ Show Navigator You canthen use the palette options as follows:

✦ View box: Drag the view box inside the image thumbnail to reveal some

hid-den portion of the photograph Photoshop dynamically tracks your ments in the image window Isn’t it great?

adjust-But wait, it gets better Press Ctrl to get a zoom cursor in the Navigatorpalette Then Ctrl-drag to resize the view box and zoom the photo in theimage window

You can also Shift-drag to constrain dragging the view box to only horizontal

or vertical movement

✦ Box color: You can change the color of the view box by choosing the Palette

Options command from the palette menu My favorite setting is yellow, but itultimately depends on the colors in your image Ideally, you want somethingthat stands out To lift a color from the image itself, move the cursor outsidethe dialog box and click in the image window with the eyedropper

✦ Magnification box: This value works like the one in the lower-left corner of

the Photoshop window Just enter a new zoom ratio and press Enter

✦ Zoom out: Click the zoom out button to reduce the view size in the same

pre-defined increments as the zoom tool This button doesn’t alter the size of theimage window, regardless of any window resizing options you set for the otherzoom controls

✦ Zoom slider: Give the slider triangle a yank and see where it takes you Drag

to the left to zoom out; drag right to zoom in Again, Photoshop dynamicallytracks your changes in the image window Dang, it’s nice to zoom on the fly

✦ Zoom in: Click the big mountains to incrementally magnify the view of the

image without altering the window size

✦ Size box: If you have a large monitor, you don’t have to settle for that teeny

thumbnail of the image Drag the size box to enlarge both palette and nail to a more reasonable size

thumb-Customizing the Interface

Every program gives you access to a few core settings so you can modify the

pro-gram to suit your personal needs These settings are known far and wide as

prefer-ences Photoshop ships with certain recommended preference settings already in

force — known coast to coast as factory defaults — but just because these settings

are recommended doesn’t mean they’re right In fact, I disagree with quite a few of

them But why quibble when you can change the preferences according to your

merest whim?

You can modify preference settings in two ways: You can make environmental

adjust-ments using File ➪ Preferences ➪ General, or you can change the operation of specific

tools by adjusting settings in the Options bar Photoshop remembers environmental

preferences, tool settings, and even the file format under which you saved the last

image by storing this information to a file each time you exit the program

To restore Photoshop’s factory default settings, delete the Adobe Photoshop 6

Prefs.psp file when the application is not running The next time you launch

Photo-shop, it creates a new preferences file automatically You can find the preferences file

in the Windows/Application Data/Adobe/Photoshop/6.0/Adobe Photoshop 6 Settings

folder (Adobe relocated the preferences file to accommodate the multiple-user

fea-tures of Windows 98 Depending on your system setup, the program may choose a

different storage folder If you don’t see the file in the location I specified here, keep

reading for another way to trash your preferences file.)

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You also can dump the preferences file using this trick: Close the program and thenrelaunch it Immediately after you launch the program, press and hold Ctrl+Shift+Alt.Photoshop displays a dialog box asking for your okay to delete the preferences file.Click Yes Continue to hold down Ctrl+Shift+Alt to display dialog boxes for changing theplug-ins folder and scratch disk settings (I discuss both topics later in this chapter).

Deleting the preferences file is also a good idea if Photoshop starts acting funny.Photoshop’s preferences file has always been highly susceptible to corruption, pos-sibly because the application writes to it so often Whatever the reason, if Photo-shop starts behaving erratically, trash that preferences file You’ll have to reset yourpreferences, but a smooth-running program is worth the few minutes of extra effort

Photoshop saves actions, color settings, custom shapes, contours, and the like rately from the Prefs file This means that you can delete your Prefs file without anyworry about harming your scripts, color conversions, and other custom settings

sepa-After you get your preferences set as you like them, you can prevent Photoshopfrom altering them further by locking the file In Windows Explorer, right-click theAdobe Photoshop 6 Prefs.psp file and choose Properties from the pop-up menu.Then select the Read Only check box in the Properties dialog box and press Enter.From now on, Photoshop will start up with a consistent set of default settings

That’s a good tip, and I include it in the name of comprehensive coverage But sonally, I don’t lock my Prefs file because I periodically modify settings and I wantPhotoshop to remember the latest and greatest Instead, I make a backup copy of

per-my favorite settings After a few weeks of working in the program and customizing it

to a more or less acceptable level, copy the preferences file to a separate folder onyour hard disk (someplace you’ll remember!) Then if the preferences file becomescorrupt, you can replace it quickly with your backup

The preference panels

Adobe shuffled some menu commands when developing Photoshop 6, including theall-important Preferences command, which now appears on the Edit menu Choosingthe command displays a long submenu of commands, but you needn’t ever use them

if you remember a simple keyboard shortcut: Ctrl+K

This shortcut brings up the Preferences dialog box, which provides access to eightpanels of options, representing every one of the Edit ➪ Preferences commands.Select the desired panel from the pop-up menu in the upper-left corner of the dialogbox, as demonstrated in Figure 2-14 Or press the Ctrl key equivalent for the panel

as listed in the pop-up menu You can also click the Prev and Next buttons (or pressAlt+P and Alt+N, respectively) to cycle from one panel to the next

Figure 2-14: Select a panel of options from the pop-up menu,

or click the Prev and Next buttons to advance from one panel

to the next

Photoshop always displays the first panel, General, when you press Ctrl+K If you

prefer to go to the panel you were last using, press Ctrl+Alt+K

To accept your settings and exit the Preferences dialog box, press Enter Or press

Escape to cancel your settings Okay, so you already knew that, but here’s one you

might not know: Press and hold the Alt key to change the Cancel button to Reset

Then click the button to restore the settings that were in force before you entered

the dialog box

The following sections examine all but two of the Preferences panels, in the order

they appear in the Figure 2-14 pop-up menu I explain how each option works, and

include what I consider the optimal setting in parentheses (The figures, however,

show the default settings.) Out of context like this, Photoshop’s preference settings

can be a bit confusing In later chapters, I try to shed some additional light on the

settings you may find most useful

The options on the Adobe Online panel are the same ones you get if you click the

Preferences button in the Adobe Online splash screen, shown in Figure 2-2 I

dis-cuss this toward the beginning of this chapter, so no need to travel that road again

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General preferences

The General panel, shown in Figure 2-15, contains a miscellaneous supply of whatare arguably the most important Preferences options

Figure 2-15: The General panel provides access to the most important

environmental preference settings I agree with many, but not all, of the default settings shown here

✦ Color Picker (Adobe): When you click the foreground or background color

con-trol icon in the toolbox, Photoshop displays any color picker plug-ins that youmay have installed plus one of two standard color pickers: the Adobe colorpicker or the one provided by the operating system If you’re familiar with otherWindows graphics programs, the system’s color picker may at first seem morefamiliar But Photoshop’s color picker is substantially more versatile

✦ Interpolation (Bicubic): When you resize an image using Image ➪ Image Size

or transform it using Layer ➪ Free Transform or one of the commands in the

Layer ➪ Transform submenu, Photoshop has to make up — or interpolate —

pixels to fill in the gaps You can change how Photoshop calculates the polation by choosing one of three options from the Interpolation submenu

inter-If you select Nearest Neighbor, Photoshop simply copies the next-door pixelwhen creating a new one This is the fastest setting, but it invariably results injagged effects

The second option, Bilinear, smoothes the transitions between pixels by ing intermediate shades Photoshop averages the color of each pixel with fourneighbors — the pixel above, the one below, and the two to the left and right.Bilinear takes more time but, typically, the softened effect is worth it

creat-Still more time intensive is the default setting, Bicubic, which averages thecolor of a pixel with its eight closest neighbors — one up, one down, two onthe sides, and four in the corners The Bicubic setting boosts the amount ofcontrast between pixels to offset the blurring effect that generally accompa-nies interpolation.

The moral is this: Select Bicubic to turn Photoshop’s interpolation capabilities

on, and select Nearest Neighbor to turn them off The Bilinear setting is a poorcompromise between the two — too slow for roughing out effects, but tooremedial to waste your time

✦ Redo Key (Ctrl+Z): This option enables you to change the keyboard shortcuts

assigned to the Undo, Redo, Step Back, and Step Forward commands It’s mately a personal preference, but I discourage you from changing this optionfrom its default Selecting something other than Ctrl+Z makes Photoshop appear

ulti-to match other programs that feature multiple undos — such as Adobe Illustraulti-torand Macromedia FreeHand — but any resemblance is purely coincidental Thewonders of the History palette notwithstanding, Photoshop relies on a single-level Undo command Setting it to match other programs’ multilevel undos is misleading If you haven’t the vaguest idea of what I’m talking about, check outChapter 7, “Retouching, Repeating, and Restoring.”

✦ History States: This value controls how many steps you can undo via the

History palette The right value depends on the amount of RAM you’re willing

to devote to Photoshop If you’re working with limited memory — 32MB orless — I suggest that you lower the value to 5 or 10 Otherwise, raise the value

as you see fit, remembering that the more states the program retains, themore you strain your system

✦ Export Clipboard (off): When selected, this option tells Photoshop to transfer

a copied image from the program’s internal clipboard to the operating system’sclipboard whenever you switch applications This enables you to paste theimage into another running program Turn this option off if you plan to usecopied images only within Photoshop and you want to reduce the lag time thatoccurs when you switch from Photoshop to another program Even with thisoption off, you can paste images copied from other programs into Photoshop

✦ Short PANTONE Names (off): As most digital artists are already aware, Pantone

is a brand name assigned to a library of premixed spot-color printing inks shop supports the most recent Pantone naming conventions Most modern pub-lishing programs support these longer color names, but a few older versions

Photo-do not If you run into problems separating spot-color Photoshop images whenprinting from another program, turn this option on Otherwise, leave it off, as bydefault (When you export straight grayscale, RGB, or CMYK images, this checkbox is irrelevant.)

✦ Show Tool Tips (on): When on, this option displays little labels and keyboard

shortcuts when you hover your cursor over a tool or palette option The tooltips don’t impede Photoshop’s performance, so I see no reason to turn off thisoption

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