Photoshop is a variable and that’s a good thing
There are several ways to customize Photoshop so it fits best into your plans. The groupings of customization are setting preferences for the program, changing keyboard shortcuts, redefining menu parameters, adding third party material and new with Photoshop CS4 creating custom panels using confabulator.
Why should you change anything? Photoshop is the kitchen sink of digital imaging programs so it is initially set up to cover what Adobe thinks most users need. And since its main focus is for graphic arts the default settings may not be optimized or even appropriate for more technical or scientific use.
In customizing Photoshop one should consider the way Photoshop will be used, the program user and the physical characteristics of your hardware setup. Depending on the short term and long term needs will control the effort you put into this customization. In some cases just using the defaults is fine for a one time need. At the other end of this paradigm if you will be conducting repetitive methods long term with a relatively unskilled user it may behoove you to do extensive customization of Photoshop interface not only turning off unnecessary commands but also by adding procedure specific keyboard shortcuts, getting third party material and building a custom panels to walk though the procedure. This would help to ensure that the method is carried out properly and with a minimum of variability.
Finally if the method can be automated action and scripts can be created and used to increase efficiency and consistency. At this time we will not go over actions, scripting , and droplets but later some of it will be covered.
How you customize Photoshop will depend on why you are using it. Some different purposes are:
Developing a image processing method
- Performing image correction
- Conducting image correction or enhancement
- Collecting data from image
- Preparing output
Each purpose above can be divided up into more specific uses. Once you have focused on what are the ultimate purpose of your Photoshop session you can more easily identify how Photoshop can be modified to optimize the user experience. In some cases it is easy to reconfigure Photoshop designing your session so it can be optimize for each step, of the workflow. It does depend on your work style. Is a single image worked on from start to finish or are sets of images run though stages together.
Note that Photoshop lacks a way to have presets for different sets of preferences so it can be cumbersome to manually reset the preference options repeatedly.
The different aspect to consider when modifying Photoshop are what will be covered in upcoming articles.
Preferences
- Shortcuts
- Menus
- Workspaces
- Building a custom flash panels
- Making actions and droplets
- Saving presets for tools, panels, and control interface settings
- Adding third party material
- Controlling color management
So keep coming back to learn specific ways of making Photoshop bend to your will. First up setting preferences will be covered .