Adobe Photoshop CS6 Top 100 Simplified Tips and Tricks by Lynette Kent

SET THE PREFERENCES for the way you work
Even if your computer meets the minimum
requirements to run Photoshop, you should set up
the Preferences to fit the type of tasks you regularly
work on. Optimizing Photoshop’s performance not
only makes your computer run more efficiently, it also
makes working with your projects faster and easier.
For example, by default, Photoshop is set to use more
than half of the available RAM. You can adjust this
setting to fit not only the amount of RAM installed in
the computer but also the number of applications you
need to run at the same time. You can also set a
separate scratch disk to speed up your work.
Using the Preferences settings, you can customize
other default settings such as the colors for the
guides and grid so they are distinct from those in
your image and designate an additional plug-ins
folder to keep third-party items separate from those
included with Photoshop. You can also select the
Camera Raw Preferences to change those default
settings. Each option under the Preferences menu
opens different panes to customize so you can make
Photoshop work for you.
1
2
3
1 Click Photoshop (Edit).
2 Click Preferences.
3 Click General.
8
6
5
4
The General Preferences dialog
box appears.
4 Click any of the drop-down
menus to change your settings.
Note: For this task, the default
Image Interpolation has been
changed to Bicubic Sharper.
5 Click to select the options you
want, or deselect those you do
not want ( changes to ).
Note: For this task, the Beep When
Done option is selected.
6 Click Performance in the left pane
to continue customizing more
settings.
Note: You can optionally click Next
to change the settings for the next
pane in the list.