- Accessing Photoshop's Preferences Settings
- General Preferences
- File Handling Preferences
- Setting Display & Cursors Preferences
- Understanding How to Choose Transparency & Gamut Settings
- Setting Units & Rulers Preferences
- Checking Out the Guides, Grid & Slices Preferences
- Getting Some Control Over Screen Appearances of Elements!
- Optimizing Photoshop's Performance with the Plug-Ins & Scratch Disks and Memory & Image Cache Preferences Settings
- More Choices and More Control with the Preset Manager
- Who Wants So Many Palettes in a Group?
- Customizing the Shapes Feature
- Exploring Near-Infinite Brush Variations and Creating Custom Brushes
- Customizing Layers
- Using the Tool Presets Palette
- Using Actions to Add Keyboard Shortcuts
- Setting Selection and Mask Modes
- Spell Checking and Photoshop
- Customizing Your Workspace with the Palette Well
- Summary
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Using the Tool Presets Palette
Of the scores of innovations Adobe Systems has brought to Photoshop, the one we're most impressed with is the Tool Presets palette. The Presets palette is always up there on the Options bar, and it's a good, quick way to save a configuration for any tool. And to add the icing on the cake, you can sort saved presets so the palette presents only the tool you want to use and the permutations you've created and saved. This means, for example, that if you want the orange-tipped square 43-pixel brush tip, you don't have to wallow through presets that refer to Lasso customizations or Eraser tools.
In the steps to come, you'll create a brush, specify a color for it, work on a design, and then pretend you take four months off to go to Barbados (in your dreams!), only to come back to a layout that needs the exact same brush, color, and all. Oh, what to do? What to do?
You do the following steps:
Working with the Tool Presets Palette
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Create a brush tip you can call your own (or pick a different name than "your own"), and pick a color, any color, for the foreground color swatch on the toolbox. See Figure 3.41; you remember this stuff from the previous section.
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Click on the Tool Presets picker (it's the first icon on the left in the Options bar). Click on the icon that looks like a page of paper with a corner partly turned over. In the resulting New Tool Preset dialog box, type a name for the brush (such as Sunny soft brush), check the Include Color check box, and press Enter (Return) to close the dialog box.
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Open the icons.psd image from the Examples\Chap03 folder on the companion CD, and then make a pathetic design, such as the one I created, using the brush, as shown in Figure 3.42.
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Dash off on vacation, leaving no one responsible for watering your office flowers; then come back to the office, totally relaxed, blood pressure on the floor someplace, barely a pulse; and then discover that the sunny icon design you made needs revision. Blood pressure rises.
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Open the Tiffletrom.psd image from the Examples\Chap03 folder of the companion CD. Mr. Tiffletrom now owns the company, and instead of a round logo, he wants a square one with the sunny paint strokes. Oh, wow...big changes, huh?
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Click on the Brush tool, click on the Tool Presets icon (you remember where it is after vacation?), check the Current Tool Only check box, and choose Sunny soft brush, as illustrated in Figure 3.43.
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Complete the design, as shown in Figure 3.44. Mr. Tiffletrom is so impressed with your stamina, sheer raw talent, and vigor that he gives you a promotion and makes you the head of the Barbados office.
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Figure
3.41 Create a brush tip that you're certain you will totally forget
about after rest and recreation.
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Figure
3.42 This is more than just a custom brush you're using; it also
is a saved brush, for use a little later or after your vacation in Barbados.
End of Fairy Tale.
Let's move on to the Actions palette. We have some good news for users who need the Brightness/Contrast menu but are sick and tired of going to the main menu and then doing the sub-menu shuffle to reach this command.
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Figure
3.43 Photoshop has an excellent memory. So do elephants, but elephants don't
come with a Tool Presets palette.
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Figure
3.44 Your custom brush could be just the ticket to Happily Ever After!