Dissecting Dialog Box Jargon Photoshop

In many respects, the Photoshop dialog boxes are very much like the dialog boxes you find in all other Windows and Mac applications. You’ll find text boxes with space to type in information (such as the name of a new layer, or the width or height you want to apply to a new document), pop-up menus of parameters you can choose from (such as whether you want the width and height expressed in pixels, inches, millimeters, picas, or some other unit of measurement), and controls like sliders that you use to specify amounts (in percentages, pixels, or degrees) over a continuous range.

Some dialog boxes are very complex and perform multiple tasks. However, even though Photoshop’s dialog boxes perform a variety of functions, the controls in them are standardized and familiar enough that, after you know how to use a few dialog boxes, you can use them all.

Photoshop dialog boxes, particularly filter dialog boxes, include preview windows so that you can check out the effects of your settings before clicking the OK button. The Photoshop Variations dialog box is one of the most complex of these. It includes a whole clutch of thumbnail images that show you the current image, plus several different renditions.

Dialog boxes generally appear when you choose a menu item followed by an ellipsis, such as Load Selection . . . The ellipsis is your tip-off that the menu selection needs additional information to complete the operation. Dialog boxes can also pop up at other times, such as when you double-click the Quick Mask icon in the Tools palette to produce the Quick Mask Options dialog box, or double-click the www.adobe.com icon at the top of the Tools palette.

If you know how to work with other applications, you already know how to use most of the controls in Photoshop dialog boxes. These include:

-Pop-up menus: Drop-down lists of choices that have been preselected for you.
-Spin buttons: These are up-/down-arrow buttons that you click to increase or decrease values quickly.
-Text boxes: Areas in which you can type values of your own choosing.
-Radio buttons: A set of mutually exclusive buttons; you can select only one of them, such as the Inside, Center, or Outside radio button, which tells the Stroke dialog box where to apply the stroke.
-Check boxes: Boxes that you can select or deselect to turn a feature on or off, independently of other features.
-Slider controls: Controls for specifying any one of a continuous range of values.
-Nested dialog boxes: Some dialog boxes include a button with text followed by an ellipsis, indicating that when you click the button, a new, sub-dialog box appears.
-Action buttons: Labeled with text such as OK or Cancel, these buttons activate or cancel an operation when you click them.