3 The Interface: A Hands-On Tour

For any workflow to actually flow, one needs to develop comfort with the tools at hand. For example, it becomes tedious and slow to examine an image if one is unfamiliar with the fastest ways to zoom and pan.

Also, our software needs special care and feeding. Without enough disk space, Photoshop becomes unstable. What’s enough? More than you might think. Lightroom gets testy if you move an image outside its interface. These and other “quirks” can cause frustration if not grief.

In this chapter, I’ll give you the insight you need to really own your software. We’ll learn how to rapidly zoom in and out and pan around even the largest images, how to leap from one image to another, and from one application to another. I’ll also examine those features that shouldn’t be used hastily.

Even veteran users should look over this chapter as some “best practices” may have changed, along with some features.