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The Palettes When you first open Photoshop, the palettes are stacked along the right edge of your screen in palette groups. The first group contains the Navigator, Info, and Options palettes. Next is the Color Swatches. Below that are the History and Actions Palettes. Finally, you have the Layers, Channels, and Paths Palettes; and the Styles, Character, and Paragraph Palettes. Palette groups can be moved around in the workspace by clicking on the title bar and dragging. Each palette group has a collapse and a close button in the title bar area. Try the collapse button for each of the palette groups. You'll notice the button works as a toggle; clicking the button a second time after the palette is collapsed will expand the palette again. You may also notice that some palettes do not completely collapse. Try collapsing the color palettes and you'll see that the color ramp is still visible. For palettes that partially collapse, you can completely collapse them by holding down the Alt key as you press the collapse button. You can also collapse a group by double clicking on any of the palette tabs. To display a collapsed palette, just click once on the palette tab if it's in the back of the group, or double click if it's in the front of the group. Palettes can be resized either by holding your cursor over an edge and dragging when the cursor changes to a double pointing arrow, or by clicking and dragging on the right corner. Only the Color, Options, and Info palettes are not resizable. When you click the close button on a palette group it closes all the palettes in the group. To display a palette that is not shown, you can either choose the command from the Window Menu, or display the palette using its keyboard shortcut. They are:
And don't forget these:
To bring a grouped palette to the front of the group, click on the palette's tab. You can also ungroup and rearrange the palettes by clicking on a tab and dragging it outside of the group or to another group. Try it now by dragging the navigator palette out of it's default group. Then put it back by dragging it back onto the palette group.
Practice showing, hiding and moving the various palettes, click on the palette tabs to familiarize yourself with each palette, and take a look at each of the palette menus while you're at it. If you'd like to return the palettes to the default locations after you finish experimenting, go to Window > Reset Palette locations and click the button to reset Palette Locations. If you always want to start Photoshop with you palettes this way, uncheck the box "Save Palette Locations" box while you are there. If you work with many large images you may prefer to keep your palettes collapsed along the bottom edge of the Photoshop workspace to give you the maximum space for documents. |
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Another common feature of all the palettes is the palette menu. Notice the small arrow in the upper right corner of each palette. If you recall from our lessons on the menu and status bar, this indicates a pop-out menu. Whenever you see me refer to a palette menu throughout these lessons, you'll know I mean this menu for whichever palette is being discussed. Take a look at the palette menu for each of the palettes now. Notice that each individual palette has a unique menu.