From the course: Photoshop: Channels and Masks

Setting up a pro-level workspace - Photoshop Tutorial

From the course: Photoshop: Channels and Masks

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Setting up a pro-level workspace

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- [Instructor] In this movie I'll show you how to establish what I consider to be the optimal workspace for getting any kind of pro level work done inside Photoshop including masking. A workspace by the way is a configuration of panels typically over here on the right hand side of the screen. If you want your workspace to match mine, which should lead to the least amount of confusion possible then go ahead and click on this icon in the top right corner of the screen. It might look a little different, but I'll bring up this popup menu that begins with essentials, which is Photoshop's default workspace. Now what we're gonna do is move some panels around starting with this guy right here, libraries. Go ahead and grab its tab and drag it and drop it into this group of panels that includes layers, channels, and paths. Then click on the layers tab to bring that panel to the front. All right notice this icon right here it indicates the properties panel. So if you were to click on it I'll bring up the properties panel as we're seeing right here. So what we've got is essentially two columns of panels at this point, one panel that's expanded over here on the right and then this other column of panels that are collapsed down to icons. You can show them and hide them just by clicking on the icons like so. I'm gonna grab the adjustments tab and I'm gonna drag it and drop it to the top of this icon right there in order to drop it into place at which point you should see the adjustments panel indicated by this black and white circle. All right now we want to bring up a few more panels. You can get to all the panels that are available inside Photoshop by going up to the window menu and choosing any one of these commands right here. So I'm gonna start by choosing actions which will bring up the actions panel, which is automatically grouped with the history panel which is just fine by me. Now I'll return to that menu and choose brush settings which will bring up both the brush settings and the brushes panel. We want to add one more panel to this mix by returning to the window menu and choosing this guy, the clone source panel which affects the behavior of the healing brushes as well as the clone stamp tool. All right now I'm gonna take this little icon right there and I'm gonna drag it and drop it onto the bottom of these brushes in order to group these guys together. Then I'll return to the window menu and choose character to bring up both the character and paragraph panels which allow you to format time. Then I'll go back to the window menu and choose layer comps to bring up both the layer comps and notes panel. I'll return to the window menu and choose tool presets and then I'm gonna take this guy and drag em and drop em to the bottom of those last two icons right there. By the way we're not gonna be using every single one of these panels in this course, however, all of these panels are quite useful over time. All right we're almost done, just a few more changes. Return to the window menu and choose the histogram command to bring up both the histogram and navigator panel. Now the navigator panel allows you to navigate around inside of your image and histogram shows you a column graph of all the luminance levels inside the image on a channel by channel basis. In other words they don't have anything to do with each other, so I'm gonna grab the histogram tab and I'm gonna drag it right here to between the color and layers groups. So I'm seeing this blue horizontal bar. Then I'll just go ahead and drag that guy into place and I'll drag the navigator icon right there and drop it all the way at the bottom of that icon column. All right now I'll return to the window menu and choose a command that is related to histogram which is info which shares with you other information about the current image. So I'll grab its tab and drag it and drop it here with the histogram panel. Then I'll switch back to the histogram panel and double click on its tab in order to collapse that panel like so so that we have more room for the layers. All right now I'll return to the window menu for the second to last time and choose styles to bring up the styles panel right here and I'll grab its tab and drag it and drop it into this color and swatches group right there. Then I'll click on the color tab to switch back to that panel. That ends up giving me a very tall color field and so I'm gonna just drag that horizontal bar right there upward, so that again we have more room for the layers and finally I'll go up to the window menu and choose timeline in order to bring up the timeline panel which appears down here below the image. I'll double click on its tab in order to collapse it and finally I want my layers panel to be a little wider so I can see all of the names. I'll do that by dragging this vertical bar right here over to the left like so. All right and finally we want to save this configuration of panels as a workspace and you do that by returning to that icon in the top right corner of the screen and if for some reason it's dimmed just go ahead and click on the magnifying glass in order to bring up the search feature and then you can go ahead and close that and then this guy should light up. At which point click on it and choose this command right here new workspace. I'm gonna go ahead and call my workspace one on one after my series of one on one video courses on Photoshop and on Illustrator by the way. Then I'll go ahead and click save. Now I've already created such a workspace and so I'm gonna just go ahead and click yes to replace it. Now at this point you can switch back and forth between your workspaces just by clicking on that icon once again and choosing essentials. Now at first nothing is gonna happen and that's because you're seeing all of the edits that you applied to the essentials workspace. If you want to return to the default workspace you click on that icon again and choose reset essentials. At which point you'll see all the panels the way they appeared the first time you ever launched Photoshop. All right, however, I want to stick with my workspace so I'll click on that icon again and choose one on one. That's how you establish what I'm calling a power workspace that is the optimal workspace for pro level image editing including masking and compositing here inside Photoshop.

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