Controlling Those Palettes

The first order of business is to get you enough space to work effectively with your images. We'll accomplish this by organizing the palettes so that they don't obstruct your view of your document. I don't think you'll like the default position of the palettes—that is, unless you use a 36-inch screen. The palettes take up too much valuable screen real estate (Figure 1.1).

Collapsing the Palettes

One way to maximize your workspace is to collapse the palettes when you're not using them and move them to the bottom of your screen. To collapse a palette, double-click any of the name tabs at the top of the palette. To reposition a group of palettes, click the little bar at the top of the group and then drag it toward the bottom of your screen. When you move a palette close to the bottom of the screen, it should snap into place (Figure 1.2).

When you're repositioning your palettes, you need to make sure that you don't place any palettes too close to the right edge of your screen. This edge, affectionately known as palette alley, can cause you great pains when you zoom in on your images (Figure 1.3). Here's why: If you have a palette too close to the right edge of your screen and you press Command-+ (Mac) or Alt-Ctrl-+ (Windows), Photoshop can't resize the document window to the width of your screen. Instead, it leaves palette alley open and doesn't allow the document window to intrude into this space. This means your efforts to reposition the palettes in order to save space were futile.

If you need access to any of these palettes, double-click the palette's name tab, and the palette will instantly pop open (Figure 1.4). When you're done using the palette, just double-click its name tab to collapse it again.

If you turn off the Save Palette Locations check box in the File > Preferences > General dialog box, each time you launch Photoshop, the palettes will be at their default locations.

Regrouping the Palettes

Another way to maximize your screen real estate is to change the way your palettes are grouped. For example, if your most frequently used palettes are the Color and History palettes, you can put them in one group so that you have one palette open at any given time instead of two. To regroup the palettes, drag the name tab of the palette you want to move (in this case, Color) on top of the palette grouping you want to move the palette into (in this case, History). You can then remove any palettes you don't want in this grouping by dragging the name tab of that palette onto an open area of the screen (Figure 1.5).