Explore the nuances of managing panels and customizing workspace in Photoshop. Learn how to select colors for the foreground and background, change colors using hex codes, understand layers, and navigate through the history of changes made in your document.
Key Insights
- The color panel allows you to select and modify the colors for the foreground and background. By clicking on the display boxes, you can see the specifics of the chosen color and alter it using the color picker window.
- Each addition of an image, mask, or an object to your image adds a layer which can be seen in the layers panel. The history panel displays the chronology of changes made to your document.
- Photoshop's interface can be customized to suit individual needs. You can arrange panels, toolbars, and menu bars in a specific arrangement known as a workspace. To create a personalized workspace, you can add or remove panels and save the final arrangement with a unique name.
Note: These materials offer prospective students a preview of how our classes are structured. Students enrolled in this course will receive access to the full set of materials, including video lectures, project-based assignments, and instructor feedback.
Now, if we look to the right of the screen, you'll see that there are multiple panels stacked on top of each other, or docked. The first panel we'll discuss is our color panel. Here, we have the ability to select colors for our foreground as well as our background.
By clicking on either of these display boxes, we can reveal the specifics of that color. If we click on the foreground color, we'll see the color picker window comes up. This will give us the specifics of that color that we have chosen.
In addition, if we want to change the color, we can do so by dragging and sliding the indicators for the desired color. As we click and drag, we'll see that the values for the color change, and on the bottom we have our hex code. The hex code is a series of numbers and letters that identify a very specific color.
If we want to change the color here, we can double click this code and enter the desired color. I will enter six Fs to indicate white and click OK. We now have a white foreground color.
In addition, we can change the foreground color or background color here with our color picker. I'll select our foreground color and move the color indicator to black. Moving on to the bottom right hand of the screen, we'll find our layers panel.
Currently, the only layer we have is our background. Each time we add an image, a mask, or an object, we'll be adding an additional layer to our image and it will be displayed here. Moving to the left of these docked panels, we can see that there's an additional panel group.
It's currently displayed as a column. We can open this by either clicking on the icon for history. If we click again, we'll collapse it.
Or, if we want to expand this, we can click on the two arrows on the top right of the group. Again, if we click on the two arrows, we'll collapse this group. With our history panel open, we can see that this displays the history of all of the changes that we make to our document.
If I determine I want to expand this panel lengthwise, I'll go to the bottom of the panel till I see the two arrows and click and drag to my desired length. I can also expand it to the left and the right, creating a larger width by waiting until I have the two arrows on the border to the left. I'll click and drag to my desired width.
Let's collapse the history panel by clicking back on the icon. Together, this specific arrangement of panels, toolbars, and menu bars in the interface is called our workspace. On the top right-hand corner, next to the search icon, we have our workspace icon.
If we click on the workspace icon, we'll see that we are currently in the essentials workspace. And as we select alternative workspaces, we'll see that the panels and options change. Let's return to the essentials workspace.
Next, let's customize our workspace for our needs. First, let's work to reduce our panels to only one column panel on the right and one expanded panel. Because we'll be covering Photoshop's basics in this course, we won't be needing the learn panel, and we can remove it.
We'll do so by right-clicking on the title and clicking close. We're now left with only one panel on the right, our libraries panel. Let's move this and group it with the color and swatches panel.
We can do so by clicking on the library's title and dragging it over by color and swatches. In addition, if we want to drag it somewhere else, we can click and drag. The blue line or blue box indicates where the panel will land.
As you can see right now, the blue line indicates that it will go above colors and swatches. However, for our purposes, let's leave it grouped with color and swatches. As a final customization, let's change the width of these panel groups.
We can do so by hovering over the left-hand wall of this panel until we see the two arrows. This indicates we're able to click and drag. Let's drag it to about there to give us a little more space and release.
This current arrangement is the workspace arrangement we'll be using throughout the course. Therefore, let's save it as a new workspace by going back to the workspaces icon and clicking new workspace. We'll title this workspace VDCI and click save.
We've now set our workspace for the remainder of this course. In the next video, we'll be discussing file types and the images that Photoshop is able to open and modify. I'll see you there.