Learn how to navigate and adjust the Photoshop interface according to your project needs. This article guides you through the process of creating a new file, understanding tool galleries, and exploring the Menu Bar and Document Window.
Key Insights
- The Photoshop interface can be customized to suit the needs of different projects. This involves creating a new file, selecting a suitable template based on project type, and adjusting settings like size, units of measurement, resolution, color mode, and background contents.
- Understanding Tool Galleries is essential for effective use of Photoshop. These are groups of similar tools, and only one tool from each gallery is displayed at a time. The hidden tools can be accessed by clicking and holding on a tool that has a small triangle next to it.
- Knowing how to navigate the Menu Bar is important in Photoshop. The Menu Bar contains standard items like File, Edit, and View, as well as custom options specific to Photoshop, such as Image, Layer, Filter, and Window. It also explains how to use the Document Window for managing multiple open files.
Note: These materials offer prospective students a preview of how our classes are structured. Students enrolled in this course will receive access to the full set of materials, including video lectures, project-based assignments, and instructor feedback.
In this video, we will be examining and adjusting the Photoshop interface for our course needs. With the Photoshop application open, let’s begin by creating a new file.
We can do this by navigating to the menu bar and selecting File, New. Here we have our new document window. Photoshop provides us with multiple templates depending on the type of project that we will be working on.
For the purposes of this video, let’s select Photo and choose the default Photoshop size. To the right of these options, we can see that we have many details about the specifics of this file. First, let’s change the title of our file.
We can do this by double-clicking Untitled 1 and typing “Interface.” Below this, we see that we have the options to change the size and units of measurement, the resolution, the color mode, and the background contents. For the purpose of this file, we will leave them all as their default settings and click Create on the bottom right-hand side of the window.
Welcome to the Photoshop interface. As a general rule of thumb, it is best to save the file as soon as we begin working on it. However, for this file, we are only going to use it to explore the interface and customize our workspace.
Therefore, there is no need to save the file. Now, let’s begin navigating the interface. We will start on the left-hand side of the screen where we can find our Tools panel.
This panel contains common tools that we will use to edit and modify our images. Currently, the Tools panel is condensed into one column to take up less space on the screen. If you prefer to expand this to two columns, you can click the two small arrows on the left-hand side of the screen. For the purposes of this course, I will be working with it as a one-column panel so that we have more room for our images.
We can condense it again by clicking the two arrows on the top left-hand side of the panel. The Tools panel already looks full of tools, but there are even more tools hidden in Tool Galleries. Tool Galleries are groups of tools that perform similar functions.
Only one tool will be shown from each gallery at a time, and to see the other tools in that gallery, we have to click and hold on a tool that has a small triangle next to it. We can observe this by going down to our Brush Tool. We can see that it has a small triangle on the bottom right-hand corner of the icon, meaning that if we click and hold with the left mouse button, we will see additional available tools.
With my left mouse button still held, I can release it when I am hovering over the tool I would like. I will choose the Pencil Tool and release the mouse click. To go back to the Paintbrush, I can again click and hold the Pencil Tool and hover over the Brush Tool before releasing.
We can also observe this in our Shapes Tool. Currently, I have the Rectangle Tool shown. If I click and hold it, I can see that I have the Ellipse Tool, the Polygon Tool, and other tools available to us.
I will release on the Ellipse Tool, thereby giving me access to the Ellipse Tool. If I again click and hold on the Ellipse Tool and let go over the Rectangle Tool, I now have the Rectangle Tool. Navigating next to the Options Bar, we will see that I have options specific to this tool.
As I change tools such as changing to the Brush Tool, we will see that my Options Bar has now changed to options specific to that tool. Let’s try once more by switching to the Rectangular Marquee Tool, and again we will see that our options have changed. Above the Options Bar, we can see the Menu Bar.
The Menu Bar has standard menu items like File, Edit, and View, but also has custom options for Photoshop like Image, Layer, Filter, and Window. We will go into more detail with these drop-down menus later in the course. In the middle of the screen, you will see the Document Window.
This displays the file we are currently working on. If we have multiple files open, they will display on top of the Document Window as tabs. Currently, we only have one tab open titled “Interface, ” showing that it is zoomed in at 50% and displaying the RGB color mode for our image.
In the next video, we will be customizing our interface. See you there!