The Photoshop Productivity Series: Customizing Photoshop

Setting Preferences

To open the Preferences dialog, choose Photoshop > Preferences (Mac) or Edit > Preferences (Windows). As you review the tabs in the Preferences dialog, be on the lookout for things that you might want to change. Setting preferences is a very personal thing, so I’ll only mention a couple of examples here.

Here’s an example of a preference you might set for a specific project or as an ongoing option. From the time layers were introduced, Photoshop has used a white-and-gray checkerboard to indicate transparency (Figure 1.1). In some cases, this can be pretty inconvenient, such as when working with small white type (with the Background layer hidden).

Figure 1.1 Default transparency indicator.

The smaller the type, the more ...