dekeBytes: A Tour of Photoshop CS3's New Interface

Start by noticing the new single-column toolbox over on the left hand side of the screen, which makes more efficient use of the screen and frees up some space for the image window. If you prefer the old-style toolbox, click on the dark gray bar at the top of the toolbox. To return to the single column palette, just click again.

All of the tools and controls work more or less as they have in previous versions of Photoshop, except for the Quick Mask button. Now there's just one button where there used to be two; click on it to take you into Quick Mask mode, click again to go out of it. (You can also use the Q key.)

The palettes along the right side of the screen are clustered inside what's called a docking panel, which is the dark gray area that surrounds the palettes. The docking panel replaces the docking well that used to be located on the far right side of the options bar. You can create multiple docking panels, permitting you to sprinkle docks throughout your workspace.

One of the advantages of the new dock is that you can resize your palettes vertically. For example, if you think too much room is given to the Navigator palette and too little to the Layers palette, then you can drag the horizontal bar between the palettes upward to give more room to the Layers palette. You can display other palettes that are not part of this default setting. Let's add, for example, the History and Actions palettes. First, go to the Window menu and choose History. By default, both the History and the Actions palettes open up in an independent dock on the left hand side of the screen.

You can't drag a dock. So if you want to move the palettes, you must drag the light gray cluster bar immediately above the History and Actions tabs. If you drop the palettes in the middle of the image, they turn into free floating palettes the way they did in CS2 and earlier. Floating palettes are all very well and good, but I prefer to move them to their own docking panels because many of CS3's interface features functions work better in dock mode.

To add the palettes to a new dock on the right hand side of the screen, drag the cluster bar all the way over to your right until you see a blue vertical line along the left hand side of the original dock. This line indicates where the new dock will appear.

Now let's say we want to add more items to this dock. For example, choose Window→Character to display the Character and Paragraph palettes. Drag the Character/Paragraph cluster to the top of the new History/Actions dock. This time you should see a blue horizontal line that shows where palette will land. Release your mouse button to group the two clusters in one dock.

Choose Window→Brushes to bring up the Brushes and Clone Source palettes. (The latter is new to CS3.) Drag the new cluster to the base of the dock, wait for the blue horizontal line along the bottom, and release. Once you've got all the palettes inside the dock, you can resize them vertically to your heart's content.

To you keep your image from getting covered up with all these palettes, you can take advantage of a new Fill Screen mode. At the bottom of the toolbox is the Change Screen Mode button. If you click and hold on that button (or press the F key), you'll notice that one of the new options is called Maximized Screen Mode. This setting will make the image as big as it can be while still fitting inside the space left by the palettes. If you show or hide the palettes, the image window will grow or shrink automatically depending on how much room you have.

If you want to collapse your palettes to icons, click on the dark gray title bar at the top of the dock. To expand them back out, click the title bar again. You can also temporarily expand a palette by clicking on the individual icon. Click the icon again to hide it away again.

Notice that in Maximized Screen mode, the image adjusts depending on how much screen real estate is available. Mac users should also note that if you click in the background while in this mode, it does not take you back to the Finder. You stay inside Photoshop, which is great when you're trying to keep your focus on a particular project.

You can also tab away the palettes and automatically display them. To tab away the palettes, press Shift+Tab. You can make them come back temporarily just by hovering on the right side of the screen. Then make the changes that you want to, and as soon as you move out of the Palette area the palettes go away again. You'll prbably find yourself working with this useful toggle often.

Once you get done setting up the workspace the way you like it, I recommend you save it. You can conveniently get to workspaces by clicking on the Workspace icon on the right side of the interface inside the options bar. This brings up a dialog box where you can name your settings anything you like. (Here, I've called mine My Workspace.) Click Save to specifically save those palette locations.

"The Goddess" photo by Aleksandra Alexis courtesy of iStockPhoto.