Photoshop's Preferences for Print Designers

Photoshop contains many preferences that allow you to customize the way you use the application. You can set these preferences to help improve your day-to-day print design and production workflow. After you familiarize yourself with them, you’ll soon discover that many of them are helpful time-savers, while others are simply a matter of, well…preference! This section is designed to help you identify which preferences matter most to print designers. You can access the Preferences dialog box under the Photoshop menu (Mac) or the Edit menu (Windows). Preferences contain various options for file handling, system performance, transparency, type, and more. Let’s take a look at the controls in each preference panel that matter most to your print design/production workflow.

A New Dialog
The Preferences dialog box has been slightly revised for CS3. In addition to being able to choose a specific preference panel directly from the Photoshop (Mac) or Edit (Windows) menu, you can now also choose from a directory located within the dialog itself. Click one of the listings on the left to open a specific panel and then choose your preferred settings. You can also scroll through these panels by clicking the Next and Prev buttons, or by pressing F/Ctrl+1 for the first screen, F/Ctrl+2 for the second screen, and so on all the way up to F/Ctrl+9. As soon as you click OK, your new settings are implemented and will remain the default until you decide to change them. You can also restore the Photoshop default preferences by pressing and holding Shift+Option+F or Shift+Alt+Ctrl at application launch until the Delete Settings dialog box appears; click Yes to reset.

General
With the exception of the History States field being relocated to the Performance panel, there’s nothing new in the General preference panel for CS3. However, there are several options here that are worth noting when using Photoshop for print design and production.

Automatically Launch Bridge The Adobe Bridge file browser application is a useful tool for managing images on your hard drive. It’s also a great tool for previewing images, labeling them, and opening them directly in Photoshop. You can also access Camera  Raw from right inside the Bridge application. If you’d like, you can save yourself a step by enabling this option and automatically launching Bridge any time you start up Photoshop.

Resize Image During Paste/Place Enabling this preference can save you a step when pasting or placing large images into a layered document. With this preference enabled, Photoshop automatically resizes images to fit the target image window.

Zoom Resizes Windows This option allows you to resize the image window along with the image any time you apply a zoom command. Disabling this option allows you to zoom in on an image in a static window, which can cause it to be cropped off at higher zoom levels. Generally, you’ll want to see as much of your image as possible onscreen while editing, so it makes sense to keep this preference turned on.

Zoom With Scroll Wheel This option allows you to zoom in and out of an image by using the scroll wheel on a multibutton mouse. If your mouse has a scroll wheel, I recommend enabling this preference, because it can help you navigate in and out of your images quickly as you edit.

Interface
Preferences that are specific to the interface’s appearance and behavior have been moved to the new Interface panel.

Use Grayscale Toolbar Icon CS3 also gives you the option to display the Photoshop icon at the top of the Tools palette in gray rather than in color. If you find the color icon particularly distracting, you can change its color to gray by enabling this preference.

Show Channels In Color Enable this option if you’d like the individual color channels to be displayed in their respective colors rather than the default gray. With this option enabled, each individual selected channel is displayed in color in the image window as well as in the Channels palette. Generally, when viewing images per channel, you are looking for detail that is available in each channel. Viewing individual channels in their respective colors makes this extremely difficult; therefore, I usually keep this preference turned off.

Show Menu Colors Photoshop allows you to edit the way menus are displayed in the interface. When chosen from the Edit Menus dialog box, a task-specific preset option highlights specific menu commands with a chosen color. You can also add your own color menu items and save them in a custom set. Although the color labels can be helpful to new Photoshop users, experienced users may find them distracting. Disabling this option hides all menu colors.

Show Tool Tips Enable this option to allow Photoshop to display tool tip descriptions when hovering over tools and controls. Advanced users may want to disable this preference, because tool tips can sometimes become very distracting.

Auto-Collapse Icon Palettes By enabling this option, any expanded palettes that are docked in the side wells are reduced to icon display after you click anywhere else in the interface. If preserving screen space is your number one priority, keep this preference turned on. I personally like to keep certain palettes open all the time, such as the Info, Histogram, and Layers palettes; therefore, I usually disable this preference. I prefer to keep all three palettes docked and to minimize them manually to icons only when necessary.

Remember Palette Locations If you keep this option turned on, Photoshop will preserve your last-used palette arrangement whenever you reopen the application. It’s a good idea to keep this preference enabled, just in case you’ve modified your workspace  but have not yet saved it.

File Handling
The File Handling preference panel contains options for file saving and compatibility. If you have the entire Creative Suite installed, including Adobe’s Version Cue application, this panel also offers you the option to enable Version Cue File Management.
Ask Before Saving Layered TIFF Files Photoshop allows you to save TIFF files containing multiple layers. In fact, you may not realize it, but TIFFs can store anything that native Photoshop PSD files can. With this option enabled (which it is by default), Photoshop alerts you by displaying a warning dialog box every time you save a layered TIFF. This dialog gives you the option to save the file with layers or flatten them (as in a traditional TIFF). If you prefer to work with layered TIFFs rather than PSDs in your workflow, you may want to turn this option off; otherwise, the warning dialog will appear every time you press F/Ctrl+S.

Maximize PSD and PSB File Compatibility This preference gives you the option to include data in saved PSD and PSB files that can improve compatibility with other applications and with earlier versions of Photoshop. Doing so creates both a flattened and a layered version of your file, and adds a considerable amount to the file size. If your workflow requires you to open PSD or PSB files in other applications, such as old versions of Macromedia FreeHand, which requires a flattened version, choose Always from the list. By choosing Ask (the default option), Photoshop displays a warning dialog box every time you save a PSD or PSB. To disable the maximize option (and the warning dialog), choose Never from the list.

Enable Version Cue Version Cue allows you to create and save alternate versions of an image—and even better, it embeds all of the information into a single file. With Version Cue installed and this preference enabled, you can access these versions from other  applications in the suite, including InDesign and Bridge. This type of workflow can prove to be very helpful when working with picky, “high-maintenance” clients who can never seem to make enough changes or swap out enough images in your layouts and designs.