ptg PREFERENCES & Presets IN THIS CHAPTER Opening the Preferences dialogs . . . .385 General Preferences . . . . . . . . . . . .386 Interface Preferences . . . . . . . . . . .388 File Handling Preferences . . . . . . . .389 Performance Preferences . . . . . . . . .391 Cursors Preferences. . . . . . . . . . . . .392 Transparency & Gamut Preferences . .392 Units & Rulers Preferences . . . . . . . .393 Guides, Grid & Slices Preferences . . . .394 Plug-ins Preferences . . . . . . . . . . . .394 Type Preferences . . . . . . . . . . . . . .395 Preferences for Adobe Bridge . . . . . .396 Using the Preset Manager . . . . . . . .398 Managing presets via pickers and panels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .400 Creating tool presets . . . . . . . . . . . .402 24 Preferences are settings that you specify for application features, such as the default units for type or the rulers. Most prefer- ence changes take eect immediately (but are saved to the Preferences le when you exit/quit Photoshop); a handful of preference changes don’t take eect until you relaunch Photoshop or Bridge (such exceptions are noted). In this chapter, in addition to learning about all the panels in the Preferences dialog, you’ll learn how to save and load brush, tool, and other presets. Opening the Preferences dialogs To open the Preferences dialog for Photoshop, press Ctrl-K/Cmd-K, or choose Edit/Photo shop > Preferences > General or another choice on that submenu. In the dialog, click one of the 10 panel names on the left side, A or click Prev or Next, or press Ctrl-1/Cmd-1 through Ctrl-0/Cmd-0 (zero). To open the Preferences dialog for Bridge, in Bridge, press Ctrl-K/Cmd-K or choose Edit/Adobe Bridge CS5 > Preferences. RESETTING ALL THE PREFERENCES ➤ To reset all the Photoshop preferences to their default settings, hold down Ctrl-Alt-Shift/Cmd-Option- Shift as you launch the program. When the alert dialog appears, click Yes to delete (and reset) the Adobe Photoshop Settings fi le. ➤ To reset the Bridge preferences, hold down Ctrl/ Option as you launch Bridge. When the Reset Settings dialog appears, check Reset Preferences, then click OK. A e P r e f e r e n c e s d i a l o g i n P h o t o s h o p c o n t a i n s 1 0 p a n e l s . ptg 386 Chapter 24 General Preferences ( A , next page) As the default Color Picker, choose Adobe (the default setting) or the color picker for your system. For the onscreen HUD (Heads-Up Display) Color Picker, choose a strip or wheel style and a display size. ★ See page 186. Choose a default Image Interpolation option for Photoshop features, such as the Image Size dialog and the Crop tool, that involve resampling or transforming: Nearest Neighbor (Preserve Hard Edges), the fastest and the best for hard-edged graphics but the least precise; Bilinear, medium quality; Bicubic (Best for Smooth Gradients), higher quality but slower; Bicubic Smoother (Best for Enlargement); or Bicubic Sharper (Best for Reduction). e latter two options also produce high-quality results. Options Check Auto-Update Open Documents to have open Photoshop documents that you edit in other applications update automatically when you return to Photoshop, such as when you enter metadata for a le in Bridge. Check Beep When Done to have a beep sound when a command is done processing. is can be handy for commands that take a while to process (so you can grab a snack!). Check Dynamic Color Sliders to have the colors above the sliders on the Color panel update as the sliders are moved. Check Export Clipboard to retain the current Clipboard contents on the system’s Clipboard when you switch between Photoshop and other applications. With Use Shift Key for Tool Switch checked, in order to access a tool on a pop-out menu, you must press Shift plus the assigned letter (e.g., press Shift-B to cycle through the Brush, Pencil, Color Replacement, and Mixer Brush tools). If you uncheck this option (as we do), you can cycle through related tools simply by pressing their assigned letter (without pressing Shift). To learn the tool shortcuts, see pages 104–106. Check Resize Image During Place to have pixel images from other Photoshop les or other applica- tions scale to t the current canvas area automati- cally when imported via the File > Place command. Check Animated Zoom for smooth, continuous zooming when you change the zoom level by drag- ging (OpenGL is required and must be enabled in the Performance panel of this dialog). With Zoom Resizes Windows checked, a oating document window will resize when you change the zoom level via the Ctrl/Cmd- + (plus) or Ctrl/ Cmd- – (minus) shortcut or the Zoom tool. is preference can be set either here or via the Resize Windows to Fit check box on the Options bar. If your mouse has a scroll wheel and you check Zoom with Scroll Wheel, you can change the zoom level by scrolling the wheel. Check Zoom Clicked Point to Center to center the image, when zooming, at the location you click. Check Enable Flick Panning to enable a magnied image to quickly oat across the screen when you drag it with the Hand tool a short distance, then release the mouse (OpenGL is required and must be enabled in the Performance panel of this dialog). Check Place or Drag Raster Images as Smart Objects to have raster images that are imported into Photoshop via the Place command arrive as Smart Object layers. ★ History Log Check History Log to generate a log of your Photoshop activity from each work session. For Save Log Items To, choose where the log is to be saved: to the Metadata of a le, to a separate Text File, or to Both (of the above). For either of the latter two options, choose a location for the text le in the dialog that opens automatically, then click Save (or open the dialog by clicking Choose). From the Edit Log Items menu, choose what data is to be saved in the log: Sessions Only to log only when you launch or exit/quit Photoshop and which les were opened; Concise to log Sessions infor- mation plus a list of edits (states on the History panel); or Detailed, to include all of the above data plus any actions used and the options and param- eters used in each editing step. ese log options can be handy if you need to keep a tally of billable hours for clients or a record of your exact editing steps. Click Reset All Warning Dialogs to reenable any alert dialogs that you may have asked to be hidden by checking Don’t Show Again. ptg Preferences & Presets 387 A General Preferences ptg 388 Chapter 24 Interface Preferences ( A , next page) General To customize the colors for any of the three Photoshop screen modes — Standard Screen Mode, Full Screen with Menus, or Full Screen — choose a background color from the rst menu and a border style (or None) from the second. See page 94. Check Show Channels in Color to display RGB or CMYK channels in color when displayed individu- ally on the Channels panel (in the thumbnails), and in the document window. With this option o, individual channels display in grayscale; this can be useful for judging the luminosity values of individual channels. Check Show Menu Colors to enable the display of background colors that are assigned to menu com- mands via Edit > Menus or by choosing a work- space that contains them, such as the “New in CS5” workspace. Check Show Tool Tips to allow the name or func- tion of whichever bar, dialog, or panel feature the pointer is currently hovering over (with the mouse button up) to appear briey onscreen so you can identify it. is is a good way to learn the names and shortcuts for tools. Mac OS users: Check Enable Gestures if you have a Windows 7 or MacBook computer with a multi- touch trackpad (or are using a Magic Mouse with an Apple computer) and you want to enable the capability of the trackpad to zoom, rotate, or ick images. ★ Unlock this option if you nd that the gestures are causing unwanted changes. Panels & Documents If Auto-Collapse Iconic Panels is checked and you open a collapsed panel, it will collapse back to an icon when you click outside it. With this option unchecked, the panel will remain expanded. See pages 96–97. Check Auto-Show Hidden Panels to allow panel docks that you have hidden via the Tab or Shift- Tab shortcut to redisplay temporarily when you let the pointer pause on the dark gray vertical bar at the left or right edge of the Application frame if the document is in Standard Screen mode, or at the edge of your monitor if your document is in either of the Full Screen modes. When the pointer is moved away from the panels, they will disappear again. Check Open Documents as Tabs to have documents dock automatically as tabs when opened instead of in a oating window. (With this option checked in the Mac OS, images dock as tabs in one document window even when the Application frame is hidden.) Enable Floating Document Window Docking to allow a oating document window to be docked as a tabbed window when you drag its title bar below the bar at the top of the Application frame or below the title bar of another window. Click Restore Default Workspaces to restore any predened Adobe workspaces to the Workspace menu that were deleted. ★ UI Text Options To implement choices made from the following two menus, you must relaunch Photoshop. If you are using a multilingual version of Photoshop, from the UI Language menu, choose a language for the interface. From the UI Font Size menu, choose Small (the default choice that we prefer), Medium, or Large as the font size for the Photoshop user interface (menus, panels, tool tips, the Options bar, and the like). ptg Preferences & Presets 389 A Interface Preferences File Handling Preferences ( A , next page) File Saving Options Choose Image Previews: Never Save to save les without a thumbnail preview for the Desktop, or Always Save (our preference) to have an updated preview save with your les each time they’re saved, or Ask When Saving to decide which previews to include in each case via Image Previews check boxes in the Save or Save As dialog. See pages 24 and 26. In the Mac OS, check Icon to have a thumb- nail of an image display as its le icon on the Desktop and in the File > Open dialog. Check Windows umbnail to have a le’s thumbnail display when the le is selected in File > Open. In the Mac OS, choose Append File Extension: Always (our preference) to automatically include a three-letter abbreviation of the le format (e.g., .tif, .psd) when a le is saved; or Ask When Saving to have the option to decide in each case whether Continued on the following page ptg 390 Chapter 24 to include the extension via File Extension check boxes in the Save As dialog. Extensions are helpful when converting les for Windows, and are neces- sary when saving les for the Web. Keep Use Lower Case checked to have le extensions appear in low- ercase characters instead of uppercase. In Windows, choose File Extension: Use Lower Case or Use Upper Case. Check Save As to Original Folder to have the loca- tion in the Save As dialog default to the existing location of the current le. Great new feature! ★ File Compatibility Click Camera Raw Preferences to open that dialog. Check Prefer Adobe Camera Raw for Supported Raw Files to have raw les that you open via File > Open open into Camera Raw, as opposed to other conversion software (we keep this option checked). Keep Ignore EXIF Profile Tag unchecked to allow Photoshop to read a camera’s EXIF metadata color space information when opening les. is option was necessary only for some early digital cameras. Check Ask Before Saving Layered TIFF Files to have an “Including layers will increase le size” alert appear when layered les are saved in the TIFF format. You can use this as a reminder to uncheck the Layers option in the Save As dialog. A File Handling Preferences e Maximize PSD and PSB File Compatibility option includes a attened version of les in those formats to make them compatible with programs that don’t read Photoshop layers (including Adobe Lightroom). is option increases the le size but is often a necessity. Choose Ask to have the com- patibility option be oered via an alert when les are saved, or choose Always to produce compatible les upon saving without an alert appearing. See pages 24 and 26. Note: Upon saving a layered le, if Ask is the cur- rent Maximize PSD and PSB File Compatibility preference and you check Maximize Compatibility and Don’t Show Again in the Photoshop Format Options dialog, Photoshop will switch the prefer- ence setting to Always. If you uncheck Maximize Compatibility but do check Don’t Show Again in the alert, the preference setting will be switched to Never. ★ File list In the Recent File List Contains [ ] files eld, enter the maximum number of les (up to 30) that can be listed at a time on the File > Open Recent submenu in Photoshop. Note: Adobe Drive is not available in, or supported by, Adobe Creative Suite 5. . (but are saved to the Preferences le when you exit/quit Photoshop) ; a handful of preference changes don’t take eect until you relaunch Photoshop or Bridge (such exceptions are noted). In this. in Bridge, press Ctrl-K/Cmd-K or choose Edit/Adobe Bridge CS5 > Preferences. RESETTING ALL THE PREFERENCES ➤ To reset all the Photoshop preferences to their default settings, hold down. results. Options Check Auto-Update Open Documents to have open Photoshop documents that you edit in other applications update automatically when you return to Photoshop, such as when you enter metadata for