|
Many image-oriented programs use palettes of a sort, and Photoshop itself has had palettes since version 1.0, released in January 1990. However, since Photoshop 3.0, the program has used a novel way of working with palettes. Instead of stand-alone windows, Photoshop uses grouped, tabbed palettes, which overlap each other in groups of two or three (or more, if you rearrange them yourself). To access a palette that falls behind the one that's displayed on top, click the palette's tab.
Palettes operate a little like dialog boxes and may contain sliders, buttons, pop-up menus, options menus, and other controls. You'll also find icons at the bottom of many palettes. For example, at the base of the Layers palette are icons that let you create a new layer, add a layer style, or trash a layer that you no longer want.
Some palettes can change like chameleons. The Actions palette can be displayed in Button mode, in which you see only the name of each set of procedures you might want to invoke. Alternatively, you can flip the Actions palette to Normal mode, in which each of the procedures in the action is listed separately for you to view or edit.
Most palettes include options for defining sets of parameters (called presets) that you can store for reuse at any time.
Here's how to open, close, and otherwise manipulate a palette group from the Window menu:
- To bring a palette to the front of its group: Select the palette group from the Window menu to bring it to the front of its group. When the palette group is open, the palette that's visible is the palette that has a check mark next to it in the Window menu. In this mode, you can select only one palette in any group because only one tab in a group can be on top at one time.
- To move a palette out of its group: Grab the palette's tab and drag to its new location, such as another group, the Palette Well, or the desktop. If you move the palettes out of their groups or drag them onto the desktop so they stand alone, any of them so positioned can be check marked.
- To hide a palette: Click a check-marked palette in the Window menu.
- To access a palette from the desktop: Find its group and click the palette's tab to bring it to the front.
Here are some palette-manipulation tips:
- Save space by keeping palettes in groups. You can drag all the palettes in a group by dragging the group's title bar. Access an individual palette by clicking its tab to bring it to the front. As a result, several palettes occupy only the screen space required by one.
- Use the Window menu if you can't find a palette. If you can't find a palette or suspect that it's been hidden, access the View menu and click the palette's name to make it visible or to bring it to the top of its group.
- Rearrange groups by dragging. If you'd like to move a palette to another group or to display it in your workspace as a stand-alone palette, grab its tab and drag. Release the mouse button where you'd like the palette to reside in the workspace, or in the destination palette group.
- Customize, customize, customize. After you've used Photoshop for a while, creating your own custom palette groups based on the palettes you use can be a real time saver. For example, if you don't use the Paths palette constantly but can't live without the Actions palette, you can drag the Paths palette to another group or the Palette Well and put the Actions palette in the same group as the mission-critical Layers and Channels palettes.
Minimize palettes to save even more space, but beware. You can double-click a palette's title bar (or tab if you're using the Mac OS) to shrink the palette or palette group down to its title bar and tabs alone. If you use the Mac OS, double-clicking the title bar invokes Window Shade mode and hides the tabs, leaving only the title bar. (Because the palette contains no title, it is a bit difficult to differentiate from other tabless palettes you might have shrunk — not a good idea in most cases.)
- Restore default palette locations whenever you need a change. If you decide you don't like the way you've arranged your palettes, you can choose Window --> Workspace --> Reset Palette Locations to return them to the default configuration they had when Photoshop was installed.
|
