A Semester of Photoshop

Photoshop Setup

The setup instructions on pages 12–14 are potentially very important to the student using this book — without them Photoshop in many instances won't respond the way the instructions in the book describe — so I'm reproducing them here so it's possible to access them easily even when you don't have the book handy.

Like most complex applications, Photoshop is enormously configurable. You'll eventually find, by trial and error, a setup that works best for you, but for now we're going to change a few basic parameters to insure that when you follow the steps listed in the exercises in this book Photoshop will respond as described here. (If you ever find that Photoshop doesn't respond as described during an exercise, check back to these pages to confirm the setup on your machine. This is especially important if you're working in a classroom environment in which you don't use the same computer every time.)

 

The "Essentials" Workspace

Find the Workspace Selector in the Options Bar at the top right-hand side of the screen. Make sure it's set to "Essentials" then click "Reset Essentials" to be sure it's at its default settings.

 

Mac vs. Windows

The location of the Preferences menu is different in Mac and Windows versions of Photoshop — possibly the last remaining difference between using Photoshop on the two platforms.

• For Windows, start Photoshop and click on the Edit menu and then on the "Preferences" item (at the very bottom).
• For Mac, start Photoshop and click on the Photoshop menu and then on the "Preferences" item (at the very bottom).

From this point on everything is the same...

Select "General" from the fly-out menu. You can also use the Control+K (Win) or Cmd+K (Mac) shortcut to get directly to the General Preferences dialog box. Once you get to General Preferences all the others will be available from the left-hand column in the Preferences dialog. Click on a category on the left and its options appear on the right. You can also navigate between them with the "Prev" and "Next" buttons.

Under "General"

For Image Interpolation, choose "Bicubic sharper - best for reduction"

Under "Interface"

Make sure the box next to "Open Documents as Tabs" is unchecked

Make sure the box next to "Enable Floating Document Window Docking" is unchecked

Under "File Handling"

For Image File Extension, choose "Use Lower Case"

Under "Performance"

Leave everything at default settings

Under "Cursors"

Set Painting Cursors to "Normal Brush Tip"

Set Other Cursors to "Precise"

Under "Transparency amp; Gamut"

Leave everything at default settings

Under "Units amp; Rulers"

Set Rulers to "Pixels"

Set Type to "Points"

Set Print Resolution to "300 Pixels Per Inch"

Set Screen Resolution to "72 Pixels Per Inch"

Set Point/Pica Size to "PostScript (72 points/inch)"

Under "Guides, Grids amp; Slicesamp;quot;

Set Gridline to "33.33 percent" and "8 Subdivisions"

Under "Plug-Ins", "Type"and "3D"

Leave everything at default settings

Now click "OK" to save all the settings and close the dialog box. There are dozens of options we didn't change or mention. Most you won't change ever.

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Color Management

Now, from the main menu, choose Edit > Color Settings... to open a dialog box. There's a lot of room for serious misadventure here! So just change one thing: In the Color Management Policies section put a check mark in the box for "Missing Profiles: Ask When Opening". Click "OK" to save the settings.

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File Handling Options

Now, it's time to change how your computer, as opposed to Photoshop, handles image files. For most of this book, and most of the work that takes place in the professional world, you will see images in one of just a few formats. PSD (Photoshop's native file format) and JPEG (JPG) are the most common. PSD files will open in Photoshop automatically. But most computers will default to opening JPEG files in a photo viewing application native to the operating system (usually Preview on Mac and Windows Photo Viewer in Windows.)

If you're serious about digital imaging and Photoshop you'll probably want to have JPEGs open directly in Photoshop by default. This is known as setting a "file type association". There are several ways to accomplish this on both Mac and Windows systems. Expert users can use their own preferred method. I'll just describe one method for each platform here.

File Handling: Mac

Copy any JPEG onto the desktop (or locate a JPEG in any folder using Finder).

Right-click on it (or control-click if you're using a one-button mouse) and you'll see the pop-up menu shown at near right.

Click on "Get Info".

In the resulting dialog go to the item called "Open With", click the arrows at the right side of the drop-down list and choose Photoshop from the list. (If Photoshop isn't there, you'll need to choose "Other..." and find Photoshop on your hard drive.)

The dialog box should now look like the image shown at far right.

Click the "Change All..." button to make this change affect all JPEGs on your computer. If the next time you try to open a JPEG and it opens in another application it's probably because you missed this step.

File Handling: Windows

Copy any JPEG image onto the desktop (or find any JPEG image in Windows Explorer).

Right-click on the file icon and you'll get the pop-up menu shown at left.

Put your mouse pointer over "Open with" to show the sub-menu.

Click on "Choose default program..."

In the Open with dialog (shown at right) choose Photoshop from the list of applications displayed.

If Photoshop isn't visible, find the text "Other Programs" at the bottom of the list and the horizontal line next to it; at the far right end of the line is a downward-pointing arrow which will reveal other programs when clicked — Photoshop should be revealed as an option when you click on it. (If Photoshop still isn't one of the listed options you'll have to click the "Browse" button and locate Photoshop on your hard drive manually.)

Be sure to put a check in the box marked "Always use the selected program to open this kind of file" box before clicking OK.

 

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