From the course: Photoshop 2024 Essential Training

Arranging the panels you use most often - Photoshop Tutorial

From the course: Photoshop 2024 Essential Training

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Arranging the panels you use most often

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- [Instructor] Photoshop has a tremendous number of tools and options to work with, and a lot of those options are found in the panels. Now, if we look at the number of panels that are showing by default, well, this isn't even all of them. Your panels might look slightly different based on the resolution of your monitor, because Photoshop does configure them slightly differently if you have a different resolution. If you have rearranged any of your panels, you can always return to this default view by using the dropdown and choosing Essentials, and then choosing Reset Essentials. All right, to see all of the different panels that are available, we can use the Window menu. You'll notice that a few of the panels have checks next to them, and those are the ones that are on top of the nested groups of panels. So, color has a check, for example, but swatches doesn't. If I were to select swatches from the list, then it would have a check, and it would also be at the top of the group of panels. If I select a panel that isn't already showing, like the character panel, then Photoshop is going to add that to this second column of panels. Some panels automatically nest with others, like the character panel is nested with the paragraphs panel. Now, these two panels are expanded, but the other ones in this column are not. If I want to expand them, I can click on the two chevrons at the top of the column, and if I wanted to collapse them, I could click again. If I want to see the name of the panel instead of just the icon, I can drag out the width of that column. Then I can drag it again in order to make it smaller. In order to rearrange the panels, we can click on the name of the panel or on the tab and just drag it within a grouping of panels, or we can move any of these panels and nest them with another group by dragging it on top of another panel. When we see the cyan outline, I can release my cursor, and it will group with those panels. We can also create a new grouping by just dragging it between two panels until we see the solid cyan line and releasing the cursor. I can double click on a panel in order to minimize it, or I can single click in order to expand it. If I wanted to add more columns of panels, I could drag a panel to the left of this column and then release the cursor. I can also drag a panel to float it by just dragging it away from the other panels. This can be very convenient if I wanted to drag this, say to a secondary monitor. If I wanted to close a panel and it's floating, I can click on the X, or we can right click or Ctrl + click on any panel and either close a single panel or the entire tab group. If I want to hide the panels as well as the options bar and the tools, I can tap the Tab key. Tapping Tab again will bring them back. When they are hidden, if I move my cursor over to the edge of my monitor, they will display temporarily, and then when I move my cursor away, they'll automatically be hidden. I'll tap Tab again to bring 'em back. If I only want to hide the panels but leave all of my tools as well as the options showing, I can use Shift + Tab. Shift + Tab again will bring back those panels. Now, the properties panel is a little bit different from the other panels, and I just want to point it out. The contents of this panel are going to change based on the tool and the layer that's selected. So, for example, while I have a background layer, we get options for the canvas size, rulers and grids, guides, and quick actions, but if I were to unlock the background, which would convert it into a layer, now I have options for transforming, aligning, and distributing. In this way, it's very similar to the contextual taskbar because it's going to switch out the options based on the tools that I'm using. Now, as you become more experienced in Photoshop, you're going to find that you use different groups of panels for performing different tasks, and it's helpful to customize the panel locations and then save them for that task. If you want to explore some different options, Photoshop ships with several workspace of presets of different panel locations, so you can check out Graphic and Web, for example, or maybe the Painting workspace. Once you figure out what panels you'll use most often and where you want them to appear, you can then choose to save that as a new workspace. I'll go ahead and just name this JK, and once we save this, it will appear on the list. All right, so that we'll all be working with the same setup, I will choose Essentials, and then I'll select Reset Essentials. However, throughout this course, I'm going to be hiding many of the panels so that we can focus on the ones that are more relevant to the features that we're discussing. Excellent. You can see it's very easy to customize the panels that you use most often in Photoshop.

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