Grasp the process of making adjustments to the Photoshop interface to enhance workflow efficiency. Understand how to reset the workspace, add or remove panels, update the workspace, and remove rich tool tips for a cleaner workspace.
Key Insights
- Resetting the workspace is crucial for maintaining the original saved configuration of the Photoshop interface. This can be achieved by clicking the workspace icon found at the top right of the screen.
- Adding or removing panels, such as the histogram, within the workspace can assist in working with photos. Saving the workspace with the new panel ensures that your workspace meets your specific needs.
- Rich tool tips, the videos found to the right of the different tools, can be removed to avoid intrusion into the workspace. This can be done by navigating to edit, preferences, and tools, and unchecking the use of rich tool tips.
This lesson is a preview from our Photoshop Certification Course Online (includes software & exam). Enroll in this course for detailed lessons, live instructor support, and project-based training.
In this video, we'll be making a couple of quick adjustments to how we interact with the Photoshop interface. Let's begin by creating a new file.
Go to **File > New**, and because we're just making a couple of adjustments to the interface, the actual file we open isn't important. Therefore, you can choose any of the templates, and we won't bother giving it a title. We'll simply click **Create**.
The first thing we'll want to do is reset our workspace. As we're working within Photoshop—dragging panels around, pulling them out so they’re floating, or rearranging them—it’s helpful to have a way to reset our workspace back to the original saved configuration. The easiest way to do this is to go to our **Workspace Icon** found in the top right of the screen, and by clicking this, we can simply select **Reset VDCI**.
By doing this, we return to the original configuration of the **VDCI** workspace that we previously saved. The next thing we'll want to do is add one more panel to our workspace that's helpful when working with photos. Let's navigate to **Window > Histogram**, and we can see that the **Histogram** is now part of our workspace.
Let’s close this panel for now, as we’ll be reviewing it in future videos. Now we want to save our workspace with this new panel added. We'll go back to our **Workspace Icon**, and what we really want to do is update the workspace.
Currently, we have options to reset, create new, or delete a workspace. So, let’s create a new workspace. We’ll title it exactly the same as before: **VDCI**, and press **Enter** to save.
We’ll see a window appear asking if we want to replace the **VDCI** workspace. We'll click **Yes**. Now our workspace is updated to reflect our new needs and preferences, including the **Histogram** panel.
The second adjustment we’ll want to make is removing the videos that appear to the right of the different tools. These are called **Rich Tool Tips**. While they can be helpful for understanding what a tool does or previewing its function, they can also be a bit intrusive and clutter the workspace.
Therefore, let’s remove these by going to **Edit > Preferences** (found at the bottom), and then selecting **Tools**. Simply uncheck **Use Rich Tool Tips** and click **OK**. Now, if we hover over each of these tools, no video preview appears on the right, giving us more space to view our files and images.
In the next video, we'll begin making adjustments to photos. See you there!