Quick Overview of the Photoshop Desktop

QUICK OVERVIEW OF THE PHOTOSHOP DESKTOP

The The Photoshop desktop is made up the toolbox, floating palettes, options bar and the menu bar. Understanding how these elements work and interact with one another makes learning Photoshop a whole lot easier.

The important thing to remember about Photoshop is that it is a monster of a program. If you are the type of person who has to understand absolutely every command and aspect of an application, then be prepared to spend a lifetime learning Photoshop. However, most Photoshop users learn what they need to know to accomplish a task (whether it be color correction, cropping an image, adding text, etc.) and save the rest for another day.

THE TOOLBOX

The toolbox is the long skinny box located by default at the left of your desktop (although you can drag it to wherever you want). To select a tool, just click on its icon.

Often, when Adobe updates Photoshop with the release of a new version, some tools are moved and new tools are added so consult the manual or HELP menu for the Photoshop version you are using for more information about the location of the individual tools and their keyboard shortcuts.

Although over 20 tools are accessible in the Photoshop toolbox at any given time, the toolbox is actually made up of a many more tools. Over half are hidden away inside pop-up menus. A tool that is comprised of several hidden tools has a tiny triangle in the bottom right corner of its toolbox icon. To access a hidden tool, click and hold on the tool icon in the toolbox. A pop-up menu of hidden tools will appear. Drag across to the hidden tool you want to select and then release the mouse. For instance, when you click the triangle for the LASSO TOOL, you’ll find the POLYGONAL LASSO and MAGNETIC LASSO tools.

The following graphic is an example from Photoshop 5.5 when Adobe moved the CROP TOOL so that it was “hidden” amongst the MARQUEE TOOLS. This so infuriated Photoshop users that the CROP TOOL was given its own slot back in the toolbox in later versions of Photoshop:

OPTIONS BAR

Most of the tools in the toolbox have a distinct set of options you can change to suit your needs. By default, the OPTIONS BAR is located at the top of your screen beneath the MENU BAR (although you can move it to wherever you want). If you don’t see the OPTIONS BAR, go to the WINDOW MENU and sect SHOW OPTIONS.

Click on any tool in the toolbox and the OPTIONS BAR will display the different settings available for that tool. The following, for example, are the options available for the CROP TOOL:

FLOATING PALETTES

Photoshop palettes include the NAVIGATOR, INFO, COLOR, SWATCHES, BRUSHES, HISTORY, ACTIONS, LAYERS, CHANNELS, and PATHS palette. Floating palettes work just like mini windows. You can drag them around and put them anywhere you want on the desktop. You can resize a palette by dragging on the SIZE BOX in the lower right corner of the palette. You can close a palette by clicking on the CLOSE BOX at the top left corner. You can also make palettes disappear (and bring them back again) by using the SHOW and HIDE commands under the WINDOW MENU. To create more work space area, you can collapse (and expand) a palette by clicking on the COLLAPSE BOX at the top right corner of the palette

Palettes can exist individually or they can be nested together. When palettes are nested, just click on the PANEL TAB to access a certain palette. To nest a palette, grab the PANEL TAB and drag it to its new palette group, or drop it on the desktop to create a single palette.

Each palette has a PALETTE MENU of options. To display a palette’s menu, click and hold on the triangle in the top right corner of a palette and a pop-up menu of options will appear. Palettes may also contain drop-down menus and pop-up sliders.

To hide all of the palettes, press the SHIFT and TAB keys. To bring the palettes back into view, press the SHIFT and TAB keys again.
To hide all of the palettes and the toolbox, press the TAB key. To bring them back into view, press the TAB key again.

MENU BAR

The menu bar runs along the top of your desktop and consists of the following drop-down menus: FILE, EDIT, IMAGE, LAYER, SELECT, FILTER, VIEW, WINDOW, and HELP. Within these drop-down menus, there are often more drop-down menus. For example, when you select the IMAGE MENU and scroll down to MODE, another drop-down menu appears:

Chances are you won’t ever use all of the commands included within each FILE MENU. Some only work when an image is saved in a particular graphic mode or on an image layer. Other commands only work on selected portions of an image. One could even say that a few of the commands are just plain pointless so don’t get overwhelmed. Just move on.

For a PDF of this tutorial, click here.