NZPhotographer Issue 45, July 2021

Parts of the workspace
remove a panel, you can reset the workspace back to
what it was (Window -> Workspace -> Reset Essentials).
Tools Panel: This is where you’ll find all the tools you
need to be able to edit. This panel actually displays
only a small selection of available tools – it can be
overwhelming but, as you learn, you’ll be glad of the
range. Luckily, the people at Adobe realise learning
the tools can be a struggle so they’ve added a great
feature: hovering the mouse over any tool in the
toolbar will pop up a small, animated graphic showing
what it does. Helpful! You might not have identical
icons displayed on your screen to the screenshots
shown here and that’s because most of these tools
have a hidden range which you can access by
clicking and holding on the icon until a sub-menu
pops up. Whichever tool you select from the sub
menu replaces the current icon in the tools panel.
Options Bar: Whenever you select a tool, you’ll see
a range of options appear in the options bar. This is
where you can adjust and fine-tune whatever tool
you’ve selected to do precisely what you want.
Almost every tool has a unique set of options, piling
on the already overwhelming heap of information.
You can get by without knowing much about this
to start with, but it is important once you get more
comfortable with Ps.
Application Bar: The top menus are found within the
application bar. This is where you can open and
save files, edit and transform images, make image
adjustments (destructively), create and alter layers,
edit type, alter and refine selections, choose and
apply image filters, render 3D, change the layout and
view, manage plugins, customise the workspace, and
find Ps help. Again, there’s a lot to take in from these
menu options, but you’ll find that you use some all the
time and ignore others entirely. Ps wasn’t made just for
editing photos – it is widely used by graphic designers,
web developers, digital artists, and many more – so
lots of what it contains can (thankfully) be ignored by
us photographers.
Panel Dock & Panels: Panels allow you to perform
different tasks, edit adjustments, and fine-tune tools.
The Window menu in the application bar allows you
to open new panels. Depending on what you select,
the panels can appear differently, as shown in the
graphic on the top of the next page which uses the
Brushes panel as an example.
Document Window: This is where your file appears
once opened. Multiple files can be opened and you
can switch between them by selecting the document
tab at the top of the document window. Clicking on
the x on a document tab will close the document.
Clicking and dragging the document will make it pop
out into its own floating window rather than being
NZPhotographer
July 2021
47