Adobe® Photoshop® Lightroom® & Photoshop® Workflow Bible

Chapter 12. Understanding the Photoshop Workspace

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Learning the Photoshop interface

• Working with palettes

• Viewing photo files

• Setting up Photoshop preferences

Photoshop is incredibly powerful. Almost any image modification that can be imagined can be carried out with its impressive set of tools. However, this power leads to a great deal of complexity, which doesn't lend itself to an intuitive workspace design. Compared to the elegant design of Lightroom's workspace, the Photoshop workspace is far from being easy to understand. However, if you're familiar with the logic behind how the workspace is configured, you can rearrange many of the workspace elements so that the tools you use most are easily available.

Photoshop's preferences are similar to Lightroom's in many ways. Obviously, the options are different for parts of each program, but the general idea is the same. However, when it comes to color-management settings, things are very different. That's because Lightroom doesn't worry about color management until files are being output or exported. Photoshop, on the other hand, begins managing a file's color as soon as the file is opened. For that reason, it's important to set up Photoshop's color settings early in the process. This section explores the color-management issue. By the end of this chapter, you'll not only know which color space is best for your Photoshop editing, you'll also know which color space to use when exporting Lightroom files.

Getting a Bird's-Eye ...