The new Photoshop CC 2017 interface

- So, as I was saying in my live action intro, Photoshop CC is a work in progress meaning that Adobe updates the program every few months or so, which is generally a great thing because it means that we continually have access to the latest and greatest technology but it presents a challenge where teaching the program is concerned, because it means that what you see in my videos and what you see on your screen may occasionally be somewhat different. For example, with Photoshop CC 2017, Adobe has released an update that changed some of its onscreen appearance.

That is to say, they revamped the interface which frankly presented us with one of two options. Re-record literally hundreds of movies, or offer you this up-front movie in which I explain the differences you might encounter. Not surprisingly, we went with the latter. In other words, I'm going to introduce you to the new interface right now right up-front, and for better or for worse, it all starts the moment you launch the program at which point you see the start screen. And you're going to notice this list of recently opened files.

If you want to open any of these files, all you need to do is just click on its file name and the image will open up in Photoshop like so, at which point the toolbox over here on the left side of the screen and the panels over on the right. If you close the image and its the last image you had open, you will return to the start screen like so. Now if you want to create a new file, you can just go ahead and click on the new button in order to bring up this revamped new document dialog box, which includes a list of recent file sizes that you've been using as well as presets.

So for example, if I click on Art and Illustration, I can select from a few different image sizes and I can even download templates from Adobe stock. In my case however, I'll just go ahead and click the close button in order to escape out. If you want to open an image that you haven't opened recently, then you can click on the open button and you can also view all of your recent images' thumbnails by clicking on this icon right here, in which case you will see thumbnails of your images, assuming that you've opened them inside a recent version of Photoshop CC.

And so for example, let's say I want to open this colorful image right here I just go ahead and click on it, in order to once again gain access to my toolbox and my panels. And you may find yourself greeted by this fancy dialog box which in my case is offering to add the colors from my shape layers as well as my layers' styles to my libraries panel. But that's not something that I want to do now, and my guess is you're not going to want to be greeted by this dialog box every time you open a complex image, in which case go ahead and turn on the "Don't show again" checkbox and click on the cancel button.

Alright, I'm going to zoom in a little bit by going up to the view menu and choosing the zoom in command. And next I want you to notice the appearance of the tools over here on the far left side of the screen. The tools have been replaced by so-called flat icons, starting with the move tool up at the top of the list and ending with the zoom tool down at the bottom. Now, even though these tools look slightly different, they appear at the exact same positions that they do in my movies, and they appear at the same positions in the flyout menus so in other words, your experience and mine are going to be exactly the same.

Another thing that you're going to notice is dark dialog boxes. So for example, if I go up to the image menu and choose the image size command which allows me to scale the size of the image, and the dialog box is even scalable as well, you're going to end up with this dark dialog box instead of the light one that you'll see a few chapters from now. However, despite their different appearances, the options inside this dialog box work exactly as they did when I recorded my movies.

So again, your experience and mine are going to be the same. Alright finally, you can change the brightness of the interface by going up to the edit menu, that would be the Photoshop menu on the Mac, dropping down to the Preferences command which is higher in the menu on the Mac, and then choosing interface. And then notice up here at the top of the dialog box, these color theme options. If you want to make the interface brighter, just go ahead and click on a brighter swatch and that'll brighten up all the panels and dialog boxes as well, if you want to make it darker, click on a darker swatch.

In my case I'm going to stick with the default setting which is this second swatch right there, and then, I'll click on workspace and I want you to notice this checkbox "Large Tabs" it's responsible for the size of the tabs at the top of these panels. And notice each one of the tabs by default is a little taller than it's name. And the reason this is a default setting is because it makes things easier to access for folks who are running Photoshop on tablets, such as Surface Pros. In my case, however, because I have very little screen space to work with, I prefer the smaller tabs so I'll go ahead and turn "Large Tabs" off and if you do so as well, you'll find that your experience and mine are the same, at which point I'll go ahead and click OK to accept that change.

And those are the differences between the hundreds of movies in my course and the latest interface developments here inside Photoshop CC 2017.