Customizing the interface

When it comes to setting up Photoshop, the good news is that there isn't a lot of work that needs to be done. That's because most of the default settings work really well. Yet there may be a few settings which you want to customize to suit your own preferences. Well, here I want to take a look at those. In particular I want to focus in on how we can customize the Photoshop Interface. Now, in order to talk about the interface, I want to show you a few different techniques that you can use in order to customize it. In particular I want to show you a few shortcuts as well as how you can access some of the Interface Preferences in the Preference dialogue.

All right, well, for starters, let me show you a few shortcuts. Currently, you can see that I'm viewing an image. And we can change the different view modes of our photographs buy pressing a single key on the keyboard. It's the F key. If you press the F key what it will do is it will cycle through the different screen modes. Here, I'll press the F once, and then another time, and then yet another time. In this way, you can see that we can change to different view modes. Now in each view mode by default, there's a different background color. Currently it's dark gray.

Well if you want to change that, you can position your cursor over the background area and then right-click or Ctrl-click. And when we do that, you'll notice that you have different options. Currently the option which is selected is Default. If I wanted this to be brighter or lighter I could choose Light Gray. This way we can change the surrounding area. Now this will only change that color that we're seeing here in this Screen mode. In other words, let's go ahead and take this back to the default setting. Then, press the F key to navigate to another screen mode.

Here we can see this is another shade of gray. Right-click or Ctrl+click on that, currently it's set to Medium Gray. If we take this to the default setting, we'll see a darker color there in the background. So in this way we can customize the way that that background color appears behind our photographs. Another way that we can change the Photoshop Interface is by navigating to the Preferences dialogue. You can find the preferences by navigating to the Photoshop pull-down menu, and then by choosing Preferences. And rather than going to General, what we want to do is select Interface. This will take us to the exact location where we want to go. So here let's choose Preferences and then Interface.

In this particular dialogue, you will notice that we have Interface selected, and we have a few options which allow us to customize the appearance. Here we can choose an overall color theme. For example, we could choose a theme which was darker or one that was brighter. And all that you need to do to make these changes is to simple click on these little color chips. Another way that we can make some changes, is by using some of the options down below. Currently, we have our Standard Screen Mode, Full Screen Mode with Menus and Full Screen. Well the screen mode that I'm in right now is the middle one, Full Screen Mode with Menus.

Well, here I can change what I'm seeing here, for example, if I'd like to have a line surrounding the image, I can then choose that option here. Now, currently it's a little bit difficult to see in this darker mode. So, I'm going to choose a color theme which is brighter. Now we can see that black line around the image. If I change that to none, you'll see that line dissapear. So, the way that you customize your Interface really is a bit of an interplay between these options. And also between the background color that we're seeing here behind our photographs.

Now, we can customize this in one more way. We can choose to have a Drop Shadow behind our image. And here we have a subtle little Drop Shadow which shows behind the photograph. As you seek to customize the interface, what you'll want to do is to choose the Color Theme which you like best. And again, this is just a preference which is completely up to you. There is no right or wrong answer. Next you may want to dial in a few other options as well. When it comes to Borders or Drop Shadows my preference is to choose None. I like to see the image without anything behind it.

Alright, well after you dial in those settings the only other thing I want to highlight here has to do with the text that we'll see throughout Photoshop. Currently by default, the Font Size which is selected is Small. Now, you may prefer to make that a little bit larger if you have trouble reading all of those small menus. Well, in order to change this, simply click on this menu and then choose the option. When you do that, it will remind you that these changes will take effect the next time you start Photoshop. And those are the changes related to the text size. So if you want to choose the larger text size make that selection, click OK and then Quit and then reopen Photoshop in order to see how that will appear. In my case I tend to like the smaller text size so I'll choose Small there. All right, well the rest of these default settings here for our interface will work really well.

There's no need to make any further changes. All that we need to do is to apply the modifications that we've made to our appearance. In order to do that, simply click OK, in order to apply those Interface Settings.