Opening up documents in tabs

Here, we're going to continue to work with some interface preferences, and we're going to focus in on a few options that you might want to customize. So in the Preferences dialog, go ahead and click on the Interface tab. Next, let's make our way down to this Options area. For the most part, these default settings will work really well. Yet there are a couple of preferences that you might want to customize. These two rights here, these allow us to open documents up as tabs. And also, they allow us to dock images or dock documents which are floating. Let's see how these preferences work just turned on here with the default settings.

Let's go ahead and click OK. Let's navigate to the Adobe Bridge. We can do so by going to the File pulldown menu and then selecting Browse in Bridge. Down here in Adobe Bridge, I want to open up this picture which is located in our Chapter 03 folder. Let's go ahead and double-click the image to open it up in Photoshop. You notice that by default it opened this picture up inside of a new tab. In order to navigate between these two photographs, we can just click on these tabs. Yet let's say we have one of those scenarios where we want to combine an image with another document.

Well, how can we do that? One way that we can do that is we can click and drag this tab out of that tabbed area. Now this is floating. We could then bring that back to the tabbed area by clicking and dragging it here. You see that highlight blue is telling me I can then drop that into that tabbed area. Again, it's as simple as clicking and dragging in or out. And that's because of that preference which allows us or enables us to dock these floating windows. If I want to bring this image into this other document, it's as simple as clicking and dragging and dropping using the Move tool.

Here, we now have this photograph inside of this document. In this case, I actually don't want this here. I just wanted to illustrate that. So I'll delete this layer by clicking on the trash can icon at the base of the Layers panel. After having done that, something interesting is going to happen. I have this image up which is tabbed, but where is the other photograph? I haven't closed it yet. We just can't see that picture because it's floating. To access it, we would have to go back to this Window pulldown menu. Here, at the very base, it will show you all of your open documents.

I'll click on that other document, shaun_tomson.jpg and you can see I can now access that. So when you are working with floating documents, it can be helpful because you can kind of see these one on top of another. Yet whenever you have a document which is floating, eventually you will most likely want to tab this or add this to the tabbed group, so you want to make sure you have that preference turned on. Let's go back to our Preferences now. Here, we'll go to Photoshop > Preferences and choose Interface. So again, you want to make sure that this option is always turned on so that it allows you to dock those floating windows. And then this one. Well, it's really up to you.

If your workflow is all about compositing and combining multiple images or multiple documents together, you may want to have this option turned off. With this option turned off, what will happen is when we go to the Adobe Bridge to open up a document, it will open that document up in a way where it will be floating. So let's go back to the Bridge by navigating to our File pulldown menu, choose Browse in Bridge, and let's select another picture, this time a photograph of my wife and my oldest daughter Annie here. We'll go ahead and double-click that file to open it up.

You'll notice that this image now comes into Photoshop, and it is floating. Because I have the preference turned on which allows me to dock this, I could then drag and drop this into this area. So this preference in regards to having tabbed documents or floating documents is really up to you. In my own workflow, what I find that typically works best is having this preference turned on, Open Document as Tabs. And the reason is, is that I then can always drag one of these tabs out if I need to. That being said, when I'm in that mode where I'm really combining together a lot of different photographs, every once in a while, what I'll do is I'll navigate to my Preferences and turn this option off, just so it opens these images up in a way where they are all floating.

Well, now that you know these options, hopefully this information will help you make the best choice for your own workflow. In order to apply those settings, you want to turn those options on and then eventually, you will simply click OK.