The Color Picker and the Color palette both fit into one category, so we almost always group them together into one palette on our screen and switch between them as necessary. Or better yet, we just put them in the Options bar’s palette well.
Most novice Photoshop users select a foreground or background color by clicking once on the icons in the Tool palette and choosing from the Color dialog box. Many pros, however, have abandoned this technique, and focus instead on these color palettes. Here are a few tips to make this technique more… ah… palettable.
Switching Color Bars. Instead of clicking on the foreground color swatch in the Tool palette, you might consider typing values into the Color palette. Are the fields labeled “RGB” when you want to type in “CMYK” or something else? Just choose a different mode from the popout menu on the palette. If you like choosing colors visually rather than numerically, you can use the color bar at the bottom of the palette (no, the Color Bar is not just another place to meet people). While the spectrum of colors that appear here usually covers the RGB gamut, you can switch to a different spectrum by Shift-clicking on the area. Click once, and you switch to CMYK; again, and you get a gradient in grayscale; a third time, and you see a gradient from your foreground color to your background color. Shift-clicking again takes you back to RGB.
Editing the Color Swatches. You’ve probably ignored all those swatches on the Swatches palette because they never seem to include colors that have anything to do with your images. Don’t ignore… explore! You can add, delete, and edit those little color swatches on the Swatches palette. If you’re looking for Web-safe colors, or other useful colors, check out the popout menu at the top of the palette.
You can’t actually edit a color that’s already there. Instead, you can click on the swatch (to make it the current foreground color), edit the foreground color, then Shift-click back on the swatch (which replaces it with the current foreground color).
In a battle of the palettes, we don’t know which Photoshop palette would win the “most important” prize, but we do know which would win in the “most telling” category: the Info palette. We almost never close this palette. It just provides us with too much critical information.
At its most basic task, as a densitometer, it tells us the gray values and RGB or CMYK values in our image. But there’s much more. When you’re working in RGB, the Info palette shows you how pixels will translate into CMYK or Grayscale. When working in Levels or Curves, it displays before-and-after values (see Chapter 6, Tonal Correction). New in Photoshop 7 is the Proof Color option, which shows the numbers that would result from the conversion you’ve specified in Proof Setup, which may be different from the one you’ve specified in Color Settings (see Chapter 5, Color Settings). The Proof Color numbers appear in italics, to provide a clue that you’re looking at a different set of numbers than the ones you’d get from a mode change.
But wait, there’s more! When you rotate a selection, the Info palette displays what angle you’re at. And when you scale, it shows percentages. If you’ve selected a color that is out of the CMYK gamut (depending on your setup; see Chapter 5, Color Settings), a gamut alarm appears on the Info palette.
Finding Opacity. When you have transparency showing (e.g., on layers that have transparency when no background is showing), the Info palette can give you an opacity (“Op”) reading. However, while Photoshop would display this automatically in earlier versions, now you have to do a little extra work: you must click on one of the little black eyedroppers in the Info palette and select Opacity.
Switch Units. While we typically work in pixel measurements, we do on occasion need to see “real world” physical measurements such as inches or centimeters. Instead of traversing the menus to open the Units dialog box (on the Preferences submenu under the File menu), we find it’s usually faster to select from the Info palette’s popout menus. Just click on the XY cursor icon. Another option: double-clicking in one of the rulers opens the Units Preferences dialog box. Note that you can also do this by Control-clicking (on the Mac) or Right-button-clicking (in Windows) on one of the rulers. (Press Command-R if the rulers aren’t visible.)
The more layers you have in your document, the more difficult it is to manage them. Fortunately, Photoshop now offers layer “sets” in which you can group contiguous layers (layers that are next to each other). Layer sets are so easy to use that they really don’t require a great deal of explanation. Here are the basics, though.
- To create a layer set, click on the New Layer Set button in the Layers palette.
- To add a layer to a set, just drag it on top of the set. Or, to create a new layer inside the set automatically, select the set or any layer within the set (in the Layers palette) and press the New Layer button. You can remove a layer from a set simply by dragging it out.
- You can move layer sets in the same way you move layers: just drag them around in the palette. You can also copy a whole set of layers to a different document by dragging the layer set over.
- If you have more than one layer set, it’s helpful to color code them: just double-click on the layer set’s name and pick a color in the Layer Set Properties dialog box. You should probably name the set, too, while you’re there (the default “Set 1″ doesn’t help identify what’s in it).Watch out, though: if you drag a color-coded layer out of the set, it still retains its color-coding!
- If you want to move all the layers within a layer set at the same time, select the layer set in the Layers palette. This is easier and faster than linking the layers together.
- You can add a layer mask to the layer set (see Chapter 13, Selections for more on masks) and it’ll apply to every layer in the set. Similarly, locking a set locks every layer within the set.
- Layer sets act almost like a single layer, so when you show or hide the set, all the layers in that set appear or disappear.
- When you delete a layer set, Photoshop lets you choose to delete the set and the layers inside it or just the set itself (leaving the layers intact).
Unfortunately, you can’t apply a layer effect (see Chapter 14, Essential Image Techniques) to a set or use a set as a clipping group (see Chapter 13, Selections).
Layer Sets and Blending Modes. If you had your coffee this morning, you’ll notice that you can change the blending mode of a layer set. Normally, the blending mode is set to Pass Through, which means, “let each layer’s blending mode speak for itself.” In this mode, layers inside the set look the same as they do if they were outside the set. However, if you change the set’s blending mode, a curious thing happens: Photoshop first composites the layers in the set together as though they were a single layer (following the blending modes you’ve specified for each layer), and then it composites that “single layer” together with the rest of your image using the layer set’s blending mode. In this case, layers may appear very different whether they’re inside or outside that set.
Similarly, when you change the opacity of the set, Photoshop first composites the layers in the set together (using their individual Opacity settings) and then applies this global Opacity setting to the result.
In every version since 3.0 (the first time that the layers feature was introduced), the Layers palette has become increasingly important to how people use Adobe Photoshop. With such a crucial palette, there have to be at least a few good tips around here. No?
Displaying Multiple Layers. Every click takes another moment or two, and many people click in the display column of the Layers palette (the one with the little eyeballs in it) once for each layer they want to see. Cut out the clicker-chatter, and just click and drag through the column for all the layers you want to see.
Click to Turn Off Layers. Another way to make multiple layers appear or disappear is by Option-clicking in the display column of the Layers palette. When you Option-click on an eyeball, Photoshop hides all the layers except the one you clicked on. Then, if you Option-click again, it redisplays them all again. Even though this trick doesn’t save you a lot of time, it sure feels like it does (which is often just as cool).
Creating a New Layer. Layers are the best thing since sliced bread, and we’re creating new ones all the time. But if you’re still making a new layer by clicking on the New Layer button in the Layers palette, you’ve got some learning to do: Just click Command-Shift-N (or Command-Option-Shift-N, if you don’t want to see the New Layer dialog box). If you’re trying to duplicate the current layer, just press Command-J (if you have pixels selected when you press this, only those pixels will copy to a new layer).
Rename your Layers. It’s a very good idea to rename your layers from Layer 1 or Layer 2 to something a bit more descriptive. However, don’t waste time looking for a “rename layer” feature. Instead, just double-click on the layer tile to rename it. Note that this works in the Channels, Paths, and File Browser palettes, too.
If you have a favorite way you like your palettes to be arranged on your screen, and your co-worker is forever moving them, don’t go berserk and throw your carrot sticks at him. Instead, use the Workspace feature to save your palette setup and then recall it whenever necessary. It’s easy to save a workspace: just arrange the palettes exactly the way you want them, and then choose Save Workspace from the Workspace submenu (under the Window menu). Adobe
Later, when you want to recall your carefully customized creation, you can select it from the Workspace submenu. Workspaces are useful even if only one person is using the computer, too. For instance, David has one workspace for when he works on Web graphics (which has the Swatches palette and the Styles palette open) and another for print images (which has those palettes closed).
Save Info Palette Configurations. If you’re like us, you probably use different info palette setups for different kinds of work. For example, when Bruce works on RGB files destined for CMYK output, he sets one readout to RGB and the other to CMYK. But if he’s working on RGB files for RGB output on an inkjet or film recorder, he sets the Info palette to read RGB and Lab. When you save a workspace, it records not only palette locations, but also the Info palette configuration, so you can use workspaces to switch easily between different Info palette setups.
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