Photoshop CC: The Missing Manual, 2nd Edition

Working with Presets

Once you get comfortable in Photoshop, you can customize the behavior of almost every tool in the Tools panel. For example, if you find yourself entering the same Options bar settings over and over again for a certain tool, then saving those settings can save you time. In fact, Photoshop includes a bunch of built-in tool recipes, called presets, such as frequently used crop sizes, colorful gradient sets, patterns, shapes, and brush tips. You can access ’em through the tool’s Preset Picker at the far left of the Options bar, as shown in Figure 1-17 (top).

Click a preset in the list to activate it, and then use the tool as you normally would. To save a new preset, enter your custom settings in the Options bar, and then click the Create New Preset icon labeled here. Give the preset a name in the resulting dialog box, click OK, and it appears in the Preset Picker list. To reset a tool to its factory-fresh settings, load additional presets, or access the Preset Manager (Figure 1-17, bottom), click the gear icon.

Figure 1-17. Top: To access a tool’s presets or create new ones, open its Preset Picker at the far left of the Options bar (circled). Bottom: The Preset Manager gives you access to presets for all of Photoshop’s tools (except for the Convert Point tool—see page 575). Click the gear circled here to open this menu, which lets you change the size of the previews, ...