Preferences

For our first exercise, these few suggestions on how to configure Photoshop will do. Many more suggestions will be made throughout this course.

• To make our user experience as pleasant as possible, let’s adjust our Preferences. It’s quick and easy to get to this page of the Preferences: On a Mac, use the Photoshop menu; on Windows go to the Edit menu. In either case, choose Preferences. You may also use the somewhat unintuitive shortcut ⌘-K/Ctrl-K.

Interface

This book makes extensive use of screenshots (pictures of my screen while using Photoshop). To make these as legible as possible, I’m going to make Photoshop’s user interface a little less dark and murky. So that we both have similar experiences, you may wish to do the same.

• Click Interface on the left side of the Preferences dialog box. Choose the lightest Color Theme.
• In the Presentation section, you may change the font size of user interface (“UI”) elements. I use Large, which is not very large at all. The entire user interface can be scaled to match. This is possibly useful on high-resolution displays.

File Handling

There are several annoyances that I would like to prevent for both of us. Sometimes, when saving files of certain formats, Photoshop will interrupt the process with alerts and dialog boxes that are needless at best, and are often confusing to new users.

Also, crashes happen. So we’ve been taught to save often, which is good advice, including in Photoshop. Luckily, Photoshop saves recovery data in case we forget to save our files as frequently as we aspire to.

What follows are my suggestions (with explanations) for settings that will save time and minimize those annoying messages.

Save As to Original Folder

For those occasional instances when I save a copy of a file, I usually want it to be in the same folder as the original. Of course, it’s easy to choose a different location. This preference checkbox makes the original file’s folder the first suggestion.

• Ensure that the checkbox for this option is checked.

Automatically Save Recovery Information Every…

Although Photoshop isn’t saving your actual file, this is still useful in the event of a crash. When you next restart the application, Photoshop will show you a likeness of the document you were working on. If this option is set to 10 Minutes, that is the maximum amount of work you will have lost. You should know that large, complex documents take longer to save, and so does their recovery information. During that time, Photoshop runs more slowly.

• Choose a frequency that reflects your level of caution.

Ask Before Saving Layered TIFF Files and Maximize PSD and PSB File Compatibility

Layers are the most important feature in Photoshop and there are several file formats that use them. When you save a document that contains layers and choose one of these formats, you are presented with odd warnings.

Saving to a TIFF format will prompt an obvious warning that adding layers increases file size. You can disable that warning here. Photoshop’s native format, Photoshop Document (PSD), and its close cousin for documents larger than 2 gigabytes, Large Document format (PSB), also prompt you when first saving a document with layers. To better ensure that these files can be opened with other versions of the program, and to generate a usable preview inside other applications, we need to maximize the file’s compatibility.

• Disable the option to Ask Before Saving Layered TIFF Files, and choose Always for the option to Maximize PSD and PSB File Compatibility.

Amusing fact: the letters of the extension for Photoshop’s Large Document format, PSB, stand for “Photoshop Big!”

Performance

There is likely nothing you need to change in these preferences. But I’d like you to be aware of something. Many applications, Photoshop included, rely increasingly on a computer’s graphics processor (its GPU) to do its work. If the one installed on your computer is supported, it will be listed here and the Use Graphics Processor box will be checked.

Technology Previews

This preference is where you can enable experimental features that vary with version. Often, these features ship with the application eventually. In the version that’s current as I write this book, the previewed feature called Preserve Details 2.0 Upscale is available. It’s an artificial intelligence–assisted way to “upsample” an image. That is, when pixels are added, this method keeps important details (like hair) sharp without damaging softer transitions (like skin). Check on this part of the preferences after updating to see what’s new.

Note: I’ll let you know what other preferences may need to be adjusted as we go forward.

• Click OK so we can adjust the interface a bit more.