Built-In Workspaces

Workspace Switcher

Photoshop CS4 provides us with several built-in workspaces. Each one is designed to meet the needs of someone doing a particular kind of function in Photoshop.

For example, select the Painting workspace from the Workspace Switcher. You will see the panels on the right-hand side remix. Layers, Channels and Paths stay at the bottom because they are essential to almost all Photoshop jobs. Color, Swatches and Styles stick around because they help you choose colors and styles. Everything else is replaced by Brushes and the Navigator. The Brushes panel is very large because it’s like a huge table full of every kind of painting brush you can imagine (and then some.)

Then select the Typography workspace. The Character, Paragraph, and Styles panels now take center stage on the right (or is that “stage left”? Sorry, I’m a drama dork.) The Character panel lets you modify your fonts and spacing. The Paragraph panel lets you align your text in a variety of ways.

Finally, take notice of the Save Workspace… item at the bottom of the menu. We will use that later in this lesson.

Screen Modes

With a simple key press or two, you can use Screen Modes to completely change how your workspace is displayed in Photoshop.

Press the Tab key. All of the panels on the left and right will hide. Also hidden is the Control panel above.	Press the Tab key
Press the F key. Photoshop will take over your entire screen. In Windows, that means your bottom bar with the Start Menu, Taskbar, etc. disappears. Also hidden is the Application Tab. This helps you see your image without a lot of clutter around it.	Press the F key once
Press the F key a second time. Now your image is the only thing visible, and the area surrounding it turns black. This is a great screen mode for showing your image to clients or other people.	Press F a second time
How do we get back all of our panels and such? Just press F again, and the Tab key.
These were the keyboard shortcuts to switch between screen modes. You can also use the Screen Modes icon up in the Application Bar.	Screen Modes icon

Next: Working with Panels