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There are lots of panels in Photoshop. As you work through the movies in this
course, you'll see different configurations of panels on the right side of my screen.
In many movies, I'll have open only two panel groups and those are the
Adjustments panel group, which contains the Adjustments panel and the Masks
panel, both of which are new in Photoshop CS4. We'll be talking a lot about
both of these panels. I also have open the Layers panel group, which
includes the all important Layers panel. I'd like to show you how to
set up a custom workspace that contains just those two panel groups, so that
it will be easy for you to get back to that panel configuration whenever
you need to during the course. Workspaces are controlled from up in the Workspace
menu, which is here on the far right of the Applications bar. The Applications
bar is a new separate bar on a Mac, and on a PC, its part of the menu
bar at the top of the screen. The default workspace in Photoshop CS4 is
also new. It's this Essentials workspace that you see here, which is one
of the Preset workspaces that come with the program. If your workspace isn't
set to Essentials now, go ahead and click on this Workspace menu and choose Essentials.
The Essentials workspace displays not only the Adjustments panel group and the
Layers panel group, but also this Color panel group that contains the Color
Swatches and Styles panel. We won't be using that particular panel group
much during this course. In order to give more room to the Adjustments and Layers
panel groups, I'm going to go ahead and close the Color panel group.
To do that, go to this icon on the right side of the panel group, click there
to open the panel menu and choose Close Tab Group. Now there is more room for
the Adjustments and Layers panel groups. Since you'll be using this particular panel
configuration a lot during this course, go ahead and save it as a custom workspace
that you can quickly return to at any time. To do that, again, click on
the Workspace menu and this time go down and choose Save Workspace.
In the Save Workspace dialog box, let's give this workspace a name by typing
Adjustments in the Name field and make sure that Capture Panel Locations is
checked and then click Save. Now you've made a new custom workspace called
Adjustments that contains just these panel groups.
You'll be able to get back to this panel configuration at any time quickly.
For example, let's say that we're working in a different workspace in one of the
movies, like say the Color and Tone workspace. So go up to the Workspace menu and let's select
Color and Tone, which is one of the pre-built workspaces that comes with Photoshop.
This workspace includes not only the Adjustments and Layers panel groups,
but also the Histogram panel group. So let's say that we are working in this workspace
and then we start another movie and we want to get back to the Custom
Adjustments workspace. To do that, just go back up to the Workspace
menu and this time choose Adjustments from the top of that menu. Again,
you'll see just the Adjustments and Layers panel groups open on the screen.
Now that you've created a Custom Adjustments workspace, and you know how to
switch between workspaces, you can quickly make your panel configuration match
mine as you follow along with me through this course.
I suggest that in the beginning of each movie, you check the name of the
workspace up here in the Workspace menu and select that workspace from the menu
and you'll be all ready to go.