- Introduction
- Optimizing Photoshop
- Setting General Preferences
- Modifying File Handling Preferences
- Working with Display & Cursors Preferences
- Controlling Transparency & Gamut Preferences
- Working with Units & Rulers
- Working with Guides, Grid & Slices
- Selecting Plug-Ins & Scratch Disks
- Allocating Memory & Image Cache
- Working with Type
- Managing Libraries with the Preset Manager
- Customizing the Workspace
- Defining Shortcut Keys
- Creating a Customized User Interface
- Using Drawing Tablets
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Setting General Preferences
Photoshop's General preferences help you configure some of the more common features of the program. Image quality settings,
as well as the new History log are setup in General preferences. Other options, such as showing tool tips, beeping when an
operation is finished, and using Smart Quotes, can all be turned on or off in the options area. The History Log lets you save
all the History States performed on a particular document. For example, when you open an image, all the adjustments and actions
performed are saved in a text file. This gives you access to valuable information, and lets you reproduce the steps performed
on one image, to correct the contents of another. You can also change the size of the small font text on the Options bar,
palettes, and tool tips (
).
Work with General Options
Click the Edit (Win) or Photoshop (Mac) menu, and then point to Preferences.
Click General.
Click the Color Picker list arrow, and then select Adobe or another operating system (Windows or Macintosh).
Click the Image Interpolation list arrow, and then select Nearest Neighbor (Faster), Bilinear, or one of the Bicubic options.
Click the UI Font Size list arrow, and then select a size for the user interface fonts ().
The change takes effect the next time you start Photoshop.
Enter the amount of History States steps you want to keep as undos; you can enter up to 1,000.
IMPORTANT History States impact Photoshop's performance by holding the History States using a combination of RAM and Scratch Disk space. The more History States used, the more RAM memory is required. Using an extensive number of History States can impact Photoshop's performance.
Select the various options you want to use:
-
Export Clipboard. Transfers a copied image to the operating systems clipboard.
-
Show Tool Tips. Shows labels when your cursor is placed over an option.
-
Zoom Resizes Windows. Forces the image window to resize when zoom is selected.
-
Auto-Update Open Documents. Creates a link between the open image and the image file on disk.
-
Show Menu Colors. Displays selected menu items in user-defined colors (
).
-
Resize Image During Paste/ Place. Allows you to resize an image during a Paste or Place.
-
Beep When Done. Sounds when an operation is complete.
-
Dynamic Color Sliders. Previews color effects within the slider bars.
-
Save Palette Locations. Defaults the palette locations.
-
Use Shift Key For Tool Switch. Allows you to use the keyboard shortcut when two tools share the same slot in the toolbox.
-
Automatically Launch Bridge. Automatically launches the Bridge in the background every time Photoshop is launched (
).
-
Zoom with Scroll Wheel. Determines whether zooming or scrolling is the default operation of the scroll wheel (
).
-
Select the History Log options you want to use.
Click OK.
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