Photoshop CS6: The Missing Manual

Chapter 2. Opening, Viewing, and Saving Files

Chances are good that if you’re holding this book, you’re spending a lot of time in Photoshop. So the ability to shave off a minute here and there from routine stuff can really add up. Heck, if you’re lucky, you’ll save enough time to read a book, ride your bike, or catch an episode of The Big Bang Theory.

One way to steal back some of that time is to work more efficiently, and that means learning tricks for the less glamorous stuff like opening, viewing, and saving files. And since you’ll be doing these things so often, it’s important to form good habits so your documents are set up properly from the get-go. (It would be truly heartbreaking to find the artwork you’ve spent weeks creating is too small to print, or that you saved the file in such a way that you can’t change it later on.) Finally, since a key part of working with images is navigating vast pixel landscapes, this chapter teaches you some handy ways to move around within your images onscreen.

Creating a New Document

Photoshop gives you a variety ways to accomplish most tasks, including creating a new document. Sure, you can choose File→New, but it’s faster to press ⌘-N (Ctrl+N on a PC). Either way, you’ll be greeted with the New dialog box shown in Figure 2-1.

You’d think naming a document would be simple: Just type something in the Name box and you’re done, right? Not quite. Here are a few things to keep in mind:

• If you’re working on a Mac, don’t start file names with periods. ...