Starting slowly... Workspace

So, at first this is to my Henderson relatives- Ken, Keni and Seth in particular. Feel free to direct anyone who needs random tips or ideas on Photoshop tools.

DISCLAIMER!-
This blog is not comprehensive, exhaustive or even theoretical! Everything in here will be based on my actual experience ("empirical") so there are other ways to do the same things and, very likely, better ways to do what I explain if you ask a Photoshop Expert.

I just know what result I need and I tinker around until I get it!

Also, while writing & editing this first post I realized I need to set some content ground rules. If I let my natural tendencies go then each post would be a 20 page chapter on one topic! I am going to chop things down into small bites. Each post will have no more than 5 screen shots (pictures of what I'm seeing on my computer) and maybe a maximum of 500 words. We'll see how that goes. But if I keyword these posts and keep them short they will be easier to find and use. If any topic is abbreviated to the point where it doesn't work for you then e-mail me at kentphoto@mac.com and we'll sort it out.

I'll be explaining my techniques from Photoshop CS4, most of which I learned while using CS3. If you are using Photoshop Elements let me know. I'll open up Elements and see if it all works the same.

Also- this is on a Mac system (MacBook Pro). In Mac the look of Photoshop may be different than Windows. When there is no picture loaded I will have a default desktop background that shows through the empty space where a picture would normally be.

First I want to cover Curves and Masks, but before I can do that we have to cover "Workspace". It will be a lot easier if you have your Photoshop screen set up the same as mine.

In this blog we will use Layers and History panels almost exclusively. Here's the view of the Photoshop screen with "Essentials" Workspace chosen, because it's the default for CS4. You can either click on the picture, then click "Back" for your browser, or right-click the picture and open in "New Window"-



You see how the white pull-down is from Window > Workspace > and "Essentials" is checkmarked. To set up the Workspace we need to turn off "Color" and "Adjustments", the top two panels. Pull down Window > and click the words Color and Adjustments, the panels disappear but Layers now stretches from top to bottom- it should look like this-



With your cursor, grab the lower right-hand corner of the Layers panel, there's a diagonal series of dots there, and drag it upwards. Allow the panel to only cover the upper half of the right side, like this-



Now pull down Window > and click on History. The History panel in my Mac opens up just to the left of the Layers panel, and they are attached. (Ignore the little picture icon squares if they are there.) Grab the gray area at the top of the panel and drag History down underneath Layers. When you move panels near each other they highlight blue areas for attachment. Drop it underneath Layers and, if you like things neat and tidy, stretch it down towards the corner. Here's two pictures showing the process on my laptop-

Dragging it under-



Docked & Stretched-



This is how my screen looks when I work in Photoshop. Mostly I'm just using the Layers panel with it's built-in options at the bottom (explained in the next post.) When I don't like something I go back one or more steps in History in the lower panel.

There, we're done with the first "episode"- now on to my first take on Curves in the next post!