Inside Adobe Photoshop 5, Limited Edition Customizing Photoshop 5

Transcription

1 Inside Adobe Photoshop 5, Limited Edition - CH 3 - Customizing Photoshop 5 Page 1 of 21 [Figures are not incuded in this sampe chapter] Inside Adobe Photoshop 5, Limited Edition Customizing Photoshop 5 One key to creating a successfu product is to feature customization. Imagine buying a car without adjustabe seats, for exampe--no one woud even take it out for a test drive! Adobe Systems reaizes that Photoshop users think and work differenty, and wants to aow you, the creative individua, to make Photoshop your persona imaging environment. Paced throughout the program, you wi find numerous options you can set to your iking. Some of these options are on paettes, and others are tucked away in fyout menus, but the majority of optiona settings can be found under Preferences. Our first stop in customizing Photoshop 5 is the Preferences diaog box(es). The Preferences Diaog Box Press Ctr(,,)+K (Fie, Preferences) to dispay the Preferences diaog box. This is the pace to start when you are prepared to make Photoshop your own work environment. From this diaog box, shown in Figure 3.1, you can specify what cursors ook ike, which coors represent transparent areas, the coor and divisions of the gridines, ocation of scratch disks, and so on. Each set of preferences can be accessed by pressing Ctr(,,)+1, 2, 3, and so on, or you can go sequentiay through the ist (as you read this chapter) by pressing N. First on the menu is the set of Genera preferences. FIGURE 3.1 The Preferences diaog box is where most of the goba settings are ocated. Setting the Genera Preferences Genera preferences is where you specify how the cipboard hods information, how coor siders are dispayed, what type of coor picker you want to use in Photoshop, and what type of interpoation-- the reassigning of pixes in an image--you want to use. Coor Picker If you use Windows, you want Photoshop s Coor Picker, pain and simpe. With the Photoshop Coor Picker, you can seect from the entire coor spectrum, based on four coor modes, and choose from severa custom coor matching systems, such as TRUMATCH and PANTONE. In contrast, the Windows coor picker features ony basic coors, aowing 16 custom coors based on two coor modes. On the Macintosh, System 8 has six coor pickers, incuding one for the Web. The diaog box and four of the coor pickers can be seen in Figure 3.2. Athough the Macintosh system coor picker offers more seections, the author recommends sticking with Photoshop s Coor Picker, for the simpe

2 Inside Adobe Photoshop 5, Limited Edition - CH 3 - Customizing Photoshop 5 Page 2 of 21 reason that PANTONE and other eectronic coor-matching specifications exist in Photoshop s Coor Picker system, and not in the Macintosh coor picker seections. FIGURE 3.2 The Macintosh user can seect from six coor pickers, incuding one for the Web. Interpoation When you change the number of pixes in an image by using the Image Size or Layer Transform command, Photoshop creates or deetes pixes based on the interpoation (interpretation) method you have chosen. Nearest Neighbor, as mentioned in Chapter 1, "Getting Acquainted with Computer Graphics and Terms," is the owest quaity of the three choices. This method gives modified seections a jagged appearance. Any changes you make to the Preferences settings are saved ony when you exit Photoshop (crashes excuded). These settings are written to the Preferences foder in the System Foder on the Macintosh, and to the PHOTOS40.PSP fie in the Prefs subdirectory in the Photoshop directory in Windows. If you want to reset a preferences to their defauts, deete your Preferences fie. Aso, if you shoud run into probems aunching Photoshop at any time, those probems probaby occur because the Preferences fie is corrupted. Trash this fie, restart Photoshop (your preferences wi be ost), and then rebuid your preferences. Biinear interpoation is a trade-off between speed and quaity. Many appications use biinear interpoation when they resize images, and athough the process is good, it is not the most aestheticay peasing nor accurate method of reassigning pixes. Bicubic interpoation is the most precise form of interpoation. Though the sowest of the choices, tona gradations are the smoothest. Refer to Chapter 1 for a graphica representation of the bicubic interpoation process. Anti-Aias Postscript To remove the aiased outines from a pasted or paced seection from EPS fies, eave this box checked. If you work with ine art, you might want to turn off this feature to maintain the ine s hard edges as the ine art is rasterized. Export Cipboard With Export Cipboard checked, anything copied to the system cipboard wi remain there when you cose Photoshop. This feature is a wecome one if your system doesn t have the RAM needed to run both Photoshop and a host appication for the contents of the cipboard. You can cose Photoshop, freeing up system resources; the image is sti on the cipboard, and you can then paste the image into PageMaker or QuarkXPress, for exampe. On the other hand, with Export Cipboard unchecked, the cipboard contents wi be purged when Photoshop is cosed, thus freeing up system resources.

3 Inside Adobe Photoshop 5, Limited Edition - CH 3 - Customizing Photoshop 5 Page 3 of 21 Short Pantone Names Some appications, such as Adobe PageMaker, cannot read ong PANTONE names. Checking Short Pantone Names ensures that PANTONE coor names wi match the naming conventions in other appications, and you can work with the same coors as those specified in Photoshop. This feature is particuary handy if you re exporting Duotones or EPS fies that contain a PANTONE spot coor. Show Too Tips When Show Too Tips is checked, a short description wi appear when you hover the cursor over a too or paette eement. For toobox items, the keyboard shortcut is given after the name. This feature is especiay handy for the new Photoshop user. Beep When Done Photoshop can sound a beep when it finishes performing a task. The beep is usefu if you are away from your system during the task. If beeping simpy isn t your thing, Photoshop has two visua indicators of task progress: the hourgass (Macintosh: the wristwatch) and the progress bar, ocated on the status bar in Windows. Dynamic Coor Siders When this box is checked, the sider coors on the Coor paette change as you drag. The ony time you want this feature turned off is when you want to manuay enter the coor s vaues and improve Photoshop s performance by an imperceptibe amount. Save Paette Locations With Save Paette Locations unchecked, Photoshop wi open with a paettes in defaut positions. If you break apart a grouped paette, create a new paette group, hide or show ony certain paettes, and want Photoshop to open with this view, be sure to check this option. Reset Paette Locations to Defaut Cicking this button wi do exacty what the tite impies--it returns a paettes to their defaut ocations. This is usefu if you work on a mutiuser machine or have "ost" some paettes. This button affects ony paette ocations, not settings you ve entered in those paettes. Setting the Fie-Saving Preferences Figure 3.3 shows the Macintosh Preferences for Saving Fies. PC users shoud note that this diaog is avaiabe on the Macintosh ony. FIGURE 3.3 The Preferences choices for Saving Fies on the Macintosh. Image Previews Image Previews are the thumbnais in the Open diaog box or icons on the desktop (Macintosh). They

4 Inside Adobe Photoshop 5, Limited Edition - CH 3 - Customizing Photoshop 5 Page 4 of 21 are usefu for quicky identifying a fie by sight. The choices are Never Save, Aways Save, and Ask When Saving. On the Macintosh, you have four kinds of image previews to choose from: Icon. Saves a preview icon of the image for the desktop or fie foder. Macintosh Thumbnai. Creates a thumbnai for preview in the Open diaog box on the Mac patform. Windows Thumbnai. Check this box if the image wi be used cross-patform and you want a preview in the Windows Open diaog box. Adding a Windows thumbnai wi aso add about 50 KB to the fie size. Fu Size. This preview is for other appications that open Photoshop images for pacement at 72 pixes/inch. This is not an option for EPS fies. Fie Extension On the Mac, this is caed Append Fie Extension. You can choose to add the three- character fie extension that denotes the fie s format. This is usefu if you use the fie on a Windows system. In Windows, you can choose whether the fie extension is upper- or owercase. Lowercase fie extensions are usuay easier to read than uppercase. Fie Compatibiity Checking Fie Compatibiity wi aow your image to be opened by appications that support ony Photoshop 2.5 fies. If you know you wi not need this feature, turn it off. Otherwise, you wi needessy add to the saved fie size. Setting Dispay & Cursors Preferences The dispay and cursor preferences for both the Mac and the PC are the same, and we cover these options in the foowing sections. Dispay There are four items in the Dispay fied: Coor Channes in Coor. Aows you to view the coor channe in its respective coor rather than in back and white. The coor view is more memory intensive, so check this ony if you are proofing probem areas (such as saturation and coverage) in CMYK mode images. Use System Paette. Uness your video card dispays a maximum of 256 different coors at one time, eave this option unchecked. Using the system paette with a video card whose memory is 512 KB RAM or ess (which is virtuay impossibe to find in 1998) causes the dispayed image in Photoshop to use ony system paette coors, and coors the video system cannot reproduce wi be dithered.

5 Inside Adobe Photoshop 5, Limited Edition - CH 3 - Customizing Photoshop 5 Page 5 of 21 Use Diffusion Dither. Diffusion Dither minimizes dither patterns you woud see onscreen when working with a 256-coor video card. Leave this unchecked if your card supports more than 256 coors. Video LUT Animation. You want to check Video Lookup Tabe Animation; the ony situation in which you d want this turned off is with a card (a very od card) that does not support LUT Animation. LUT Animation aows instant viewing of any coor or contrast changes you make to an image. Otherwise, you woud not see the change you made in the Hue command, for exampe, unti you cicked OK. Cursors If you are new to Photoshop or easiy forget which too you are using, choose Standard as a reminder. Standard dispays the symbo for the too--a paintbrush for the Paintbrush too, for exampe. Many Photoshop users find greater accuracy with Precise or Brush Size seected. Precise gives you a crosshair cursor, and Brush Size shows a circe that indicates the actua size of any painting too (regardess of zoom factor!). You can see the Dispay & Cursors diaog box in Figure 3.4. FIGURE 3.4 From Dispay & Cursors, you can determine the appearance of your mouse cursor. Setting the Transparency & Gamut Preferences Transparency refers to what you see in an image window of a ayer image when you ve erased part of the background. Gamut refers to the coor space you re working with. If, for exampe, your image is in CMYK mode, there can be coors you use in the image that wi be "out of gamut"; they fa outside the range of coors that can be expressed in the given coor space. Transparency Settings From the Transparency Settings fied, shown in Figure 3.5, you can change the coor and grid size of the transparent areas in an image that has ayers. The defaut gray-and-white checkerboard is usefu in most design situations, uness you are editing an image with ots of sma back-and-white areas. If you re editing a gray-and-white checkered tabecoth image, for exampe, you woud want to choose different transparency coors and the Photoshop grid to contrast against the coors in your image. FIGURE 3.5 The Transparency & Gamut Preferences diaog box. Gamut Warning Gamut is the range of coors in a coor system that can be dispayed or printed. The purpose of a gamut warning is to notify you of a coor that is visibe onscreen but cannot print in the CMYK mode because there is no equivaent coor. This warning feature is vauabe if you want to repace out-of-gamut coor with the coor of your choice. Otherwise, when you convert the image to CMYK, Photoshop wi bring out-of-gamut coors into gamut, and you might not ike Photoshop s choice. To check for any out-of-gamut coors (you might need to change the defaut gray to a coor that contrasts with coors in your image), choose View, Gamut Warning. To bring these areas back into gamut, you might try the Sponge too in Desaturate mode; go over the highighted out-of-gamut areas unti the out-of-gamut preview coor goes away.

6 Inside Adobe Photoshop 5, Limited Edition - CH 3 - Customizing Photoshop 5 Page 6 of 21 Setting Units & Ruers Preferences The Units & Ruers Preferences enabe you to change the ruer s unit of measurement and specify the width of coumns and gutters. Ruers Six units of measurement are avaiabe: pixes, inches, cm, points, picas, and percent. You can make the Ruers dispay aong the edges of an image window by pressing Ctr(,,)+R, or choose View, Show Ruers. The ruers appear aong the eft and top of the image window. To ca up the Units & Ruers Preferences box shown in Figure 3.6 directy from the workspace, doube-cick anywhere on the ruers. If you seect Show Ruers in one image, a subsequent images you open wi aso show ruers unti you choose Hide Ruers. FIGURE 3.6 Units & Ruers offer six units of measurement for the ruers. Coumn Size A rarey used feature for the average Photoshop practitioner, uness you work for a pubisher who requires you to size your images according to coumns, is the Coumn Size feature. As an exampe of when you woud use the Coumn Size option, say that your pubisher wants an image that s two coumns wide; each coumn is 12 picas wide, with a gutter of 3 picas, so you enter those vaues here. Now, the image you are preparing to send must fit these dimensions. From the Image Size diaog box, choose Coumns from the Width drop-down menu and enter 2 for the width. Cick OK, and the image is sized to your pubisher s specifications. Point/Pica Size If you work with points and picas, and output to either a PostScript or traditiona device, you need to specify which kind of output you wi use. The author recommends that you cick the PostScript button, which specifies that there are 72 points to an inch, because fewer and fewer commercia presses use physica ayouts and the traditiona physica unit specification of points to the inch. Setting the Guides & Grid Preferences Guides and a grid can be used to hep you position eements in your image. Figure 3.7 shows four guides and a grid paced over an image; Figure 3.8 shows the diaog box. FIGURE 3.7 The grid and guides hep you to pace objects in precise ocations. FIGURE 3.8 The coor and stye of guides and grid are specified in this Preferences box. Guides Guides are ines you drag from the ruers into the document window. Guides do not become part of the image, nor do they print. You can move, remove, and ock guides from the View menu. You can aso assign any coor to guides and choose between soid or dashed ines.

7 Inside Adobe Photoshop 5, Limited Edition - CH 3 - Customizing Photoshop 5 Page 7 of 21 Guide pacement and visibiity are specific to each image--if you pace a vertica guide at 2", this guide wi not appear in the next image you open. Grid A grid ies on top of your entire image and is hepfu when you need precision whie you re working with mutipe eements. You can choose any coor for the grid and make it appear as Lines, Dashed Lines, or Dots. With the Gridine every and Subdivisions boxes, you determine the frequency of ines in the grid. You can show or hide the grid from the View menu. Simiar to Ruers, if you seect Show Grid in one image, a subsequent images you open wi aso show the grid unti you choose View Hide Grid, whose keyboard shortcut is Ctr(,,)+" (quotation marks). Athough this option in not in the diaog box, you can aso choose Snap to Grid--a time-saving way of aigning objects across ayers--by pressing Shift+Ctr(,,)+" (quotation marks) anytime you are working in the Photoshop workspace. Setting the Pug-Ins & Scratch Disks Preferences The Pug-Ins & Scratch Disks options enabe you to specify the ocation of these items, as shown in Figure 3.9. FIGURE 3.9 Photoshop 5 offers four ocations for scratch disks. Pug-Ins Pug-ins are fiters, deveoped by Adobe and third-party vendors, that work within the Photoshop environment. By defaut, most third-party pug-in fiters are instaed in Photoshop s Pug-Ins foder (a native fiters are ocated here aso). If you prefer to keep a foder containing your pug-ins esewhere on your hard disk, you can use Choose to te Photoshop where to ook for that foder. The author recommends keeping with the defaut of the Photoshop Pug-Ins foder. If you move thirdparty fiters, you must aso move Photoshop s native pug-ins (which makes no sense uness you re running out of hard disk space); Photoshop cannot oad pug-in fiters from two different ocations in one session. Scratch Disks When you exceed the avaiabe RAM on your machine, Photoshop wi write to the scratch disk, which is a temporary space defined on your hard disk(s). This feature enabes you to continue working in Photoshop without crashing your machine, athough there wi be an obvious decrease in performance. RAM speed and hard disk speed are a magnitude of difference in speed--ram s much faster at reading and writing. New in Photoshop 5 is the option to assign four ocations for scratch disks (one reason Adobe created this option is the memory-intensive History paette). When you exceed the aocated RAM during a Photoshop session, information is written to the first scratch disk. When the first scratch disk is fu, Photoshop writes to the second scratch disk, and so on. You want to assign the disk with the most space (uncompressed and defragmented!) to the First fied. Work your way down to Fourth, if your system has a third or fourth hard disk ocation, assigning First to the disk with the most free space, and Fourth (ast) to the disk with the east amount of free space. Be sure to have more scratch disk space aocated than RAM, measured in megabytes. Photoshop wi use ony the amount of RAM

8 Inside Adobe Photoshop 5, Limited Edition - CH 3 - Customizing Photoshop 5 Page 8 of 21 equa to the amount that you have in scratch disk space. For exampe, if you have 128 MB RAM, yet ony 30 MB scratch disk space, Photoshop wi use ony 30 MB of RAM. And in this scenario, you are severey (and needessy) impinging on Photoshop s performance. You can monitor whether your scratch disks are being used by cicking on the Document Sizes fyout menu button, ocated on the status bar, and choosing Efficiency. On the Macintosh, the Document Sizes fied is at the bottom of the scro bar in each image window. To the eft of the fyout icon is a percentage of the amount of RAM Photoshop is using. At 100%, Photoshop is using ony RAM to perform the operations. A dispay under 100% indicates that Photoshop is using the scratch disks. Setting the Memory & Image Cache Preferences Proper settings for memory are imperative for optimum performance in Photoshop. Figure 3.10 shows the Windows version of the Memory & Image Cache preferences. FIGURE 3.10 The Windows Memory & Image Cache Preferences diaog box. Cache Settings Photoshop uses image caching to speed the screen redraw during editing. Image caching hods severa copies of the document in memory to update the screen quicky when operations such as appying coor adjustments and Layer Transform are performed. Cache Settings of 2 or 3 are best for a fie under 10 MB, and 4 is good for images of around 10 MB. The maximum setting is 8, and you want to experiment with the settings if you work with fies arger than 10 MB. Be aware that the higher you set the cache, the more it wi drain your system resources. The Use cache for histograms option is best eft unchecked for compete and consistent histogram readings. When checked, the zoom ratio and any previous histograms during that session wi infuence the histogram. Physica Memory Usage The amount you enter for Physica Memory Usage wi affect Photoshop s performance more than the scratch disk and cache settings. Macintosh and Windows each have a different method for specifying memory usage. On the Macintosh, cick on the Photoshop icon and then choose Fie, Get Info from the Appe menu to view the Info box, shown in Figure The Suggested Size is the amount of RAM Photoshop needs. The Preferred Size fied is where you can enter a specific amount of RAM to dedicate to Photoshop. How much can you aocate to Photoshop? Foow these steps: DEFINING PHOTOSHOP MEMORY ON THE MACINTOSH 1. Open a appications that you must use at the same time as Photoshop. Be aware that the more you open, the ess RAM you have for Photoshop. 2. Choose About This Computer from the Appe menu. 3. Notice the vaue in Largest Unused Bock. This is the amount of memory currenty avaiabe and

9 Inside Adobe Photoshop 5, Limited Edition - CH 3 - Customizing Photoshop 5 Page 9 of 21 you can aocate no more than 90% of this vaue to Photoshop. Do the math and proceed to step With Photoshop cosed, cick once on the Photoshop icon. Press,,+I to bring up the Info box and enter the amount from step 4 in the Preferred Size fied. 5. Cose the Info window. FIGURE 3.11 To specify the amount of RAM for Photoshop on the Macintosh, use the program s Info paette. Even if you think you never need an appication running outside of Photoshop, you cannot aocate 100% of Physica Memory Usage to Windows 98, 95, or NT. The Windows operating system prohibits an appication from steaing a system resources. So you can type 100% in this box, but a the memory that wi be aocated to Photoshop wi actuay be about 85%. On the Windows patform and in the Physica Memory Usage fied, you can enter the amount of RAM you want to dedicate to Photoshop. The defaut setting of 50% is a good trade-off between draining your system by yieding a resources to Photoshop and not yieding enough. During Photoshop sessions, if the Efficiency readout (as described under Cache Settings) rarey or never drops beow 100%, you can increase the percentage in the Physica Memory Usage fied. Photoshop s New Coor Management Features In order to accommodate a Photoshop users (who have a broad range of production needs), the simpe Fie/Coor Settings/Monitor Setup command is gone. Coor management in Photoshop now consists of three reated entities: Gamma contro, coor settings for different types of coor spaces, and ICC profies. This is ceary going to take a itte earning if you re new to Photoshop, and it s going to require some rethinking to get the best output if you re a seasoned Photoshop user. We strongy recommend that you read the foowing sections carefuy; if you don t, you risk ruining the data in an image fie, and you be working with an onscreen image that s darker or ighter than you want. Late-Breaking News on Version As you are reading this, Adobe has aready reeased a patch, version 5.0.2, for version 5. Aside from a number of fixes to the Type too, ayer effects improvements, and support for Iustrator version 8 data, Adobe has made it easier for novices and professionas aike to ensure accurate screen representation of images and faithfu output. The foowing sections wak you through setting up coor management in version Because the authors are working with an eary prototype of version 5.0.2, the information was accurate at the time of this writing, but might not be when you attempt this. Pease check out our Web site at updates/ for the most current information on Photoshop 5.0.2, and if you don t aready have the upgrade to 5.0.2, check Adobe s site at to earn how you can get the update. The Adobe Gamma Contro Pane

10 Inside Adobe Photoshop 5, Limited Edition - CH 3 - Customizing Photoshop 5 Page 10 of 21 When using the Adobe Gamma contro pane, you shoud define a Gamma for your monitor based upon what your eyes te you, and not the presets the program offers. First of a, "what is Gamma?" might be a good question to ask yoursef before engaging in the Gamma utiity s wizard (the Assistant on the Macintosh). Gamma is the non-inearity of signa to brightness; a monitors have their particuar characteristics, but generay, as votage increases through the video circuitry to the monitor, there wi be a faoff in the monitor s brightness, especiay noticeabe in the midtones of what you re viewing. This votage versus brightness curve is caed the Gamma curve, and to compensate for the non- inearity of votage versus brightness, everyone has a different Gamma dispayed on their monitors. Typicay, the Macintosh has a Gamma of 1.8, and Windows machines dispay a Gamma of 2.0. Regardess of what you might read in onine Photoshop documentation, these are the vaues for the respective operating patforms; if you trust the author on this one, you have a much easier time caibrating your system to match different outputs. It is the author s advice to avoid using the Gamma contro pane uness you fee that a your images in a your appications are dispaying too ight or too dark. There are things you want to do first to caibrate the tona scheme of images dispayed in Photoshop and other appications: Wipe the monitor screen with a damp coth to remove partices from the air that have been attracted by static eectricity. Adjust the room ighting. If you re in an office environment, try to expain your need to your boss; if she says "No can do," get on a adder and unscrew the fuorescent tubes in the ceiing fixture. It s important to have some ambient, indirect ighting where you work, but indirect ighting on your screen. You shoud not, for exampe, see the ights in your room refected in the monitor. Adjust the Brightness/Contrast contros on your monitor. Rue number 1 in professiona imaging is to avoid changing the image data; change your viewing conditions instead. The reason for this rue is that ighting and monitor contrast can be changed, and then changed back again. But once you change the appearance of, for exampe, a TIFF fie, you can never change its tones or coors to their origina state again. Changes made to bitmap images are progressive changes--you can ony make changes on top of changes, on top of changes, on... If none of the recommendations improves the tona baance of an image, then by a means run Adobe Gamma. If you re unhappy with the resuts of Adobe Gamma, the saved setting is a fie (in Windows with the *.icm extension) in the System Coor foder; you can deete the fie, and your defaut monitor settings wi be restored. Simiary on the Macintosh, at the end of the Adobe Gamma setup, you re asked to name the saved settings, and the fie can be found in the System/Preferences/CoorSync foder. Running the Adobe Gamma Contro Pane The Adobe Contro Pane can be found under the Start menu, Settings, Contro Pane on Windows 95. The Adobe Gamma contro pane in Windows NT is ocated under Photoshop/Goodies/Caibration/Adobe Gamma.cp. Doube-cick this fie to open the step-by-step Gamma Contro diaog boxes. On the Macintosh, you choose the Appe menu, Contro Panes, Adobe Gamma. In Figure 3.12, you can see the opening screen for the Adobe Gamma utiity.

11 Inside Adobe Photoshop 5, Limited Edition - CH 3 - Customizing Photoshop 5 Page 11 of 21 FIGURE 3.12 Monitor and Gamma settings adjustments are performed in the Adobe Gamma Contro Pane. On the opening screen, you have your choice of Step By Step mode of caibration or going directy to the Contro Pane to perform tona corrections. Cick the Contro Pane button and then cick Next. You can see in Figure 3.13 that if there is a specific coor profie you want to use, you cick Load in the ICC Profie fied and ocate the profie. Otherwise, use the defaut Adobe Monitor Settings.icm (defaut System Profie on the Macintosh). A the settings you enter wi write to this profie. Brightness and Contrast settings are performed by adjusting screen eements in this diaog box via your monitor s dias (or buttons). First you need to adjust the contrast of your monitor to the highest setting, which is the easiest part of performing a Gamma caibration. Next turn the brightness eve a the way up, and then turn it down unti the gray boxes (ocated between the back boxes) become as dark as possibe, keeping the white area (immediatey beow the gray and back squares) as white as possibe. A word of caution: The onger you ook at the white box, the more your eyes wi adjust and the harder it wi be to notice if the white is sti as bright as it shoud be. Perform this step within a few seconds and don t hesitate to move the brightness back to the highest settings and start again. FIGURE 3.13 Monitor and Gamma settings are entered in the Adobe Gamma diaog box. The phosphors that make up the red, green, and bue of your monitor s picture can vary with each manufacturer. Check the documentation that came with your monitor and seect the appropriate phosphor from the Phosphors drop-down menu. If you are unsure of the phosphors used on your screen, you might as we choose Trinitron; Trinitron tubes and their equivaents are used in most monitors today. Adjusting the Gamma sider can be as tricky as working in the Brightness and Contrast fied--your eyes can adjust quicky, making the correct setting difficut to notice. Move the sider back and forth unti the center box fades into the immediate background. A soid coor wi obviousy not fade into a stripe pattern, but what you are ooking for is the point where the box is east noticeabe within the background. Squinting at the box heps you evauate a match. You can uncheck View Singe Gamma Ony and individuay adjust each of the RGB coors. A Gamma of 1.8 is the defaut on the Macintosh, 2.0 is the Windows 95 defaut. As mentioned earier in this chapter, these defaut settings might ook wrong when your monitor is dispaying images--if it ooks wrong, it is wrong. In this case, skip the defaut setting and use what your eyes te you is correct whie adjusting the Gamma contro (s). Cick Measure if you know the setting for Hardware is incorrect in the White Point fied. An aert box with directions appears--be sure to read and understand those directions before cicking OK (Next) to continue. For your next step, the screen wi go back, dispaying three gray squares. You shoud be abe to cick the square that contains the most neutra gray within the first few seconds. Again, the onger you ook at the screen, the more your eyes wi adjust, thus making an objective choice more difficut. Press Esc when you think you ve chosen the most neutra coor box. Finay, you are probaby best off eaving the Adjusted options at their defaut of Same as Hardware. In Windows, cick OK to finaize your Gamma corrections and to cose the Contro Pane; cick Save in the attention box that appears after cicking OK; you re finished. On the Macintosh, cick the Cose

12 Inside Adobe Photoshop 5, Limited Edition - CH 3 - Customizing Photoshop 5 Page 12 of 21 box, cick the Save button in the attention box, and you re finished. Coor Space Adobe has taken the position, and righty so, that coor space as saved within an image fie is not the same as the coor space your monitor and video card are capabe of dispaying. In fact, coors saved to an image fie can have a greater gamut--an expressibe number of unique coors--than your monitor can dispay. For this reason, Adobe has created a number of RGB settings that you can customize to define Photoshop s dispay of coor space, for any particuar image, that works best for you. Using the Coor Management Wizard When you open an image for the first time in Photoshop 5.0.2, you are presented with a Coor Management Wizard--a step-by-step series of diaog boxes that guides you through specifying the coor setting that Photoshop uses when dispaying an image in the workspace. After experimenting with the same image, using five different machines (and monitors and video cards), the authors beieve there are two reasonabe options in the Coor Management system: Use Defaut Settings (5.0.2) and Imitate Photoshop 4.0 Coor Handing. Figure 3.14 shows the second diaog box you reach after pressing Next when the Coor Management Wizard starts; this is where you make a choice. FIGURE 3.14 These two options resut in onscreen images that are consistent with previous versions of Photoshop and the dispay of the images in other appications. If you choose the Photoshop 4.0 settings, images opened in Photoshop dispay the same coor space as when they were created in Photoshop 4.0 (or in other programs). If you choose this option, you are presented with a ong string of subsequent diaog boxes that warn you that you are choosing to disabe certain coor-management features of version 5.0.2, most notaby, the ICC Profie feature (which you get to shorty). This option is for users who never dea with CMYK conversions (for prepress work) and want to work with Photoshop s new features without adjusting the tona and coor contros in Photoshop, and whose work is either for the Web or for fim recorders. The monitor coor space on the Macintosh varies depending on what type of monitor you use; in Windows, the coor space, oddy, is Appe RGB (but this is actuay a good option for Windows users). If you choose Use Defaut Settings (5.0.2) in the Coor Management Wizard, the next diaog box features the Finish button--and images you open in Photoshop basicay appear the same as if you were using the Photoshop 4.0 coor settings. The big difference is that by choosing this option, you can now use Photoshop s ICC coor profies in your work. You can go back to the Coor Management Wizard at any time by choosing Coor Management from the Hep menu and then change your options. RGB Coor Settings If you choose to go with the Photoshop 4.0 Coor Settings, Windows users can get right to work in version In Figure 3.15, you can see the settings that are entered in the Fie, Coor Settings, RGB Setup diaog box, and uness your images ook drasticay wrong in Photoshop s workspace, you do not need to change the settings in this box.

13 Inside Adobe Photoshop 5, Limited Edition - CH 3 - Customizing Photoshop 5 Page 13 of 21 FIGURE 3.15 These are the RGB coor settings if you choose to use Photoshop 4.0's method of coor handing. However, if you choose Photoshop s defaut coor settings, there are some tweaks that you wi want to perform in the RGB Coor Setup box. To better understand what you re getting yoursef into, et s briefy describe a coupe of the profies that are used in the RGB Coor Setup box. By defaut, the workspace coor space is srgb ("standard" or "simpified" RGB). This breadth of coor expression is cose to, but a itte smaer than, your monitor and video circuitry s capabiity to dispay coor. Why cheat yoursef out of the extra coor space that can be shown? Let s straighten out a these options so you have both an accuratey caibrated monitor and the opportunity to embed ICC Profies shoud you want to in the future. Coor Settings for Windows The monitor Gamma you use has aready been defined earier in this section, and it can be any name you choose. We recommend the Adobe RGB (1998) as the RGB choice in RGB Setup, a Gamma of anywhere from 1.8 to 2.0, a White Point coor temperature of between 5500 and 6500 Kevin, and Adobe RGB (1998) in the Primaries fied. Coor Settings for the Macintosh When you use the Gamma Contro Pane on the Macintosh, the Appe 13" RGB Standard is a very easy choice for the ICC profie--you can choose this by cicking Load, which is to the right of the ICC Profie fied. This does not mean that you have to use a 13" monitor--the name of this fie comes from the first standard dispay offered by Appe Computers, so the fiename is in fact a misnomer. This profie is compatibe with Photoshop's environment and shoud dispay accurate consistent coor onscreen. Once you're done with the Gamma Contro and are back in Photoshop, the foowing choices shoud be made in the RGB Setup box: RGB--Choose Adobe RGB (1998). This used to be caed "SMPTE-240M," and the coor space is much more broad than a monitor can dispay. The reasoning here is that you might be proofing CMYK images or acquiring scans that are in excess of 24 bits/pixe. If you're not doing either one of these things, it sti doesn't hurt to have an appication coor space that's wider than your computer's video circuitry can dispay. In this way, no visua data is "simpified"; it's dispayed, as the srgb setting does. Gamma This is a good baseine to work from, and uness images are printing darker or ighter than you see onscreen, you' probaby decide to keep the Gamma at 2.0. If your screen images don't even come cose to output, try adjusting the Gamma anywhere from 1.9 to 2.2. White Point--Anywhere from 5500 to 6500 Kevin shoud provide a neutra coor cast in your images. Again, this is something you can come back and experiment with if your output is coor casting toward exces- sivey coder or warmer coors. Primaries--Again, Adobe RGB (1998) is the ogica choice. You might notice that your images' midtones are a itte more open when compared to the origina fie opened in an appication other than Photoshop, but this can be corrected by adjusting the Gamma to a higher vaue.

14 Inside Adobe Photoshop 5, Limited Edition - CH 3 - Customizing Photoshop 5 Page 14 of 21 Is this a ot of tweaking? Yes, but once you have your coor accuracy down, you can, with confidence, edit images that dispay consistenty across a appications. Do not forget to cick the Save button in the RGB Setup diaog box and save this caibration work as a fie to a safe pace on your hard disk. Figure 3.16 shows what both the Macintosh and Windows coor settings shoud ook ike if you chose to accept Photoshop s settings in the Coor Management utiity. FIGURE 3.16 These settings shoud cosey match the dispay of images in other appications, and by choosing 3.0.5's coor system, you have enabed profie embedding within saved images. ICC Profies A ot of Photoshop s coor-accuracy features revove around the use of ICC profies: You save RGB Setup parameters to an ICC fie (the Windows extension is *.icm), you use ICC profies when importing a PhotoCD image, and you can aso eect to use ICC profies when saving an RGB or CMYK image. The ICC standards define coor space that can be expressed by a specific device. In theory, embedding ICC coor profies in an image can ensure coor accuracy--what you see onscreen, for exampe, wi ook identica on someone ese s monitor running the same ICC profie. The image wi aso print approximatey to the same tones and coors when it s rendered to a high-resoution imagesetting device--if you ve defined the correct profie to be embedded. Ah, but if the designer s ife were that simpe! At present s best the universa impementation of ICC profies is quite imited to beeding-edge commercia printers. Uness you ive in an urban hub, chances are that your oca print shop wi not be using the embedded information that s been tagged within an image you might send to them. Embedding an ICC profie adds to an image s overa size, and uness you re a whiz at pre-press, you are not going to use this feature correcty...and your printing resuts wi be a disappointment. Photoshop s Fie\Coor Settings\Profie Setup is where you specify an ICC profie for an image that you open and save. By defaut, a Assumed Profies are set to None, and for good reason. It keeps users with itte or no experience with pre-press and the CMYK mode of images out of troube! Do not touch the contros, as shown in Figure 3.17, uness you ve spoken with your service bureau or commercia printer first and found out the exact specifications for the ICC profie to use (and save aong with your image). If your work is entirey for onscreen presentations or for the Web, absoutey do not embed coor profies in images! Doing this increases fie size, and some browsers and programs wi not be abe to read the coor information correcty. If you go ahead and start saving images with specific ICC profies embedded in them, you re ikey to see a warning box ike that shown in Figure Our advice is to cick Don t Convert, et the image open, do not save the fie, and reset your Profies Setup to None for a types of images. Photoshop does not change the data in a fie that s opened and converted to the current screen coor space, but it makes it very hard to edit an image when the picture is too ight or the coor-casting is off. Again, image coor space and monitor coor space are two different things, and you owe it to yoursef to make sure that what you see onscreen is being saved to the same coor space. FIGURE 3.17 The Profie Setup diaog box in Photoshop.

15 Inside Adobe Photoshop 5, Limited Edition - CH 3 - Customizing Photoshop 5 Page 15 of 21 FIGURE 3.18 Photoshop handes profies that do not match your coor setup quite eeganty, but it is better not to have profies set up for any type of image uness you know what you're doing with coor profies. To summarize, there are two things we d ike to stress to ensure that your adventures in image editing in Photoshop wi contain consistent coors among other appications, systems, and other devices: 1. ICC profies are a great idea whose proper impementation and wide acceptance have yet to come. ICC profies, however, are extremey usefu when opening a PhotoCD image, and this is covered in Chapter Gamma caibration, as the Adobe Gamma utiity offers, is better than no caibration at a for your monitor. If your output more or ess matches your screen, using the Gamma utiity is ike taking an aspirin when you don t have a headache. However, you shoud use the Adobe Gamma Contro Pane if you fee that the tones in images you saved a few years ago don t ook right today and that the age of your monitor has thrown the signa to brightness off. Paettes Before discussing the options of each individua paette, the customizing of paette groups shoud be mentioned. You can tear a paette out of its group and combine paettes from different groups to create a custom group. For exampe, by defaut, the Navigator, Info, and Options paettes are one group. If you reguary use the painting toos, you woud save screen space by combining the Brushes and Options paettes, then hiding the remaining paettes. Combining Brushes with Options is the author s recommendation, as you see in figures throughout this book. Each paette has a drop-down menu icon ocated just beow the Cose (X) icon in Windows, and beow the Zoom box on the Macintosh. In the drop-down menu, there are options specific to that paette. Some paettes, Layers for exampe, have icons at the bottom for additiona functions pertaining to that paette. In this book, when we recommend, say, creating a new ayer, the quickest way to perform this is by cicking on the Create New Layer icon--you can easiy discover what the icons mean if you eave TooTips on and hover your cursor above an icon. You can aso choose identica functions from the drop-down menu. Info Paette A singe cick on the Eyedropper icons on this paette wi bring out a seection of modes you can choose from, as you can see in Figure 3.19 (this figure was edited for iustration purposes; you can t reay have two cursors on the same screen). A cick on the + wi give you a choice of measurement units for your cursor coordinates. The First Coor Readout and the Second Coor Readout in the Info Paette Options set the modes for the top eft and top right readouts in the Info paette, respectivey. There are eight choices in each of the Mode fieds. Three of the modes are:

16 Inside Adobe Photoshop 5, Limited Edition - CH 3 - Customizing Photoshop 5 Page 16 of 21 Actua Coor--Dispays vaues at the pointer s ocation in the current coor mode of the image. Tota Ink--Dispays the tota percentage of a CMYK ink based on the vaues set in the Separation Setup diaog box. Opacity--Dispays the opacity of the current ayer (not background) at the pointer s ocation. FIGURE 3.19 The Info paette provides options for coor readings, cursor position, distance specified using the Measure too, and other handy statistics. The Info paette measures coors ike a densitometer, provides measurements of a seection, the degree of a rotated ayer, the exact position of the cursor, the resuts from the Measure too, and much more. If your work reies a ot on precise measurements, you want to make fu use of this paette. To quicky dispay the paette onscreen, press F8. The New Coor Samper Too and the Info Paette The Eyedropper too in version 5 has some company on the toobox; if you drag in the Eyedropper too to revea the drop down, you can choose the Coor Samper too. Suppose you want to pinpoint a coor in an image, not to sampe the coor, but to see what the point s coor vaues are, and what they wi become when you appy changes to the area where the point is ocated in the image? For exampe, suppose you want to compare the RGB coor of an area with the coor of the same area when you appy the Hue/Saturation command to the entire image. Or suppose you want to compare the "before and after" tone of an area in an image when using the Leves command? The soution is a simpe one. You choose the Coor Samper too, and you can cick in up to four different areas in the image, eaving a coor marker where you cicked. The Info paette wi then extend and show a new fied, with numbers 1 through 4, showing the coor vaues underneath the markers in the image. The markers can be moved by the Coor Samper too, and the Info paette wi record the changes in coor. When you make changes (or propose to make changes, whie in a diaog box), the Info paette wi change its bottom fied to dispay the current coor under a marker, foowed by a forward sash, and to the right you see the proposed coor change. Try pacing a coor marker or two in an image with the Info paette open. Then, press Ctr(,,)+L to dispay the Leves command. Change the midpoint sider s position, and you see how the Info paette reports changes for pixes beneath the coor markers you paced in the image. In Figure 3.20, you can see the Coor Seector too and the Info paette in action. The figure does not show the Leves command, but the Leves command is being used on the image in this figure to change the midpoint in the image. Notice the before and after readings on the Info paette. FIGURE 3.20 The Info paette in version 5 now can record and save the vaues of pixes that have a Coor Samper too marker paced on them. Perhaps the most usefu impementation of the Coor Samper too is in combination with the Coor/Swatches paette. You can quicky and accuratey define new coors based on the vaues shown on the Info paette by entering the numbers shown on the Info paette into the fieds on the Coor paette. You can then add these coors to the Swatches paette by cicking on an empty area of the

17 Inside Adobe Photoshop 5, Limited Edition - CH 3 - Customizing Photoshop 5 Page 17 of 21 Swatches paette. The Coor Samper too s markers are a persistent part of an image; they wi stay where you paced them even after cosing and then reopening a fie. To remove coor markers from an image, hod At (Opt), and then cick on the marker(s). Options Paette The Options paette is where you can customize the use of a the toos on the toobox, except the Hand and Type toos. Figure 3.21 shows the drop-down menu for a the toos: Reset Too and Reset A Toos. Reset Too wi reset the brushes and options to the defaut of ony the current too. Reset A Toos wi set every too and option back to its factory defaut. FIGURE 3.21 A painting toos have the same options: Reset Too and Reset A Toos. Let s take a ook at too and paette options. Rubber Stamp Options: Use a Layers, Aigned The Use A Layers option is better described as Use A visibe Layers. With Use A Layers checked, as shown in Figure 3.21, the Rubber Stamp cones from a ayers with the uppermost ayer in the image (shown on the Layers paette) being samped first. When Use A Layers is unchecked, the Rubber Stamp sampes ony from the active ayer. This is a usefu feature, especiay when there are many ayers in your image. A check in the Aigned box makes the sampe point foow the Rubber Stamp on subsequent strokes. After the first stroke, if you move the cursor 2" to the right, the sampe point wi aso move 2" to the right. With Aigned unchecked, the Rubber Stamp wi sampe from the origina area unti you set a new sampe area. Move Options: Pixe Doubing, Auto Seect Layer When you move ayer contents, the screen redraw is best described as jerky. To minimize this effect, you can choose Pixe Doubing as shown in Figure To achieve this smoother movement, the ayer contents become far ess sharp in appearance during the move. FIGURE 3.22 Pixe Doubing and Auto Seect Layer are avaiabe when the Move too is active. Auto Seect Layer is a new feature that enabes you to cick on a ayer s contents and move it, regardess of which ayer is currenty active. In previous versions of Photoshop, you had to make the ayer active before the Move too coud be used. Brushes: New Brush, Load, Repace, and Save Brushes, Changing Brush Size A the painting toos (third through sixth row on the toobox) have the same drop-down menu options on the Brushes (not Options) paette, as shown in Figure Any changes you make from this menu affect the brushes for a the painting toos. FIGURE 3.23 The Brushes paette.

18 Inside Adobe Photoshop 5, Limited Edition - CH 3 - Customizing Photoshop 5 Page 18 of 21 New Brush aows you to design a brush tip (see Figure 3.24). FIGURE 3.24 In the New Brush diaog box you can configure a new brush for the Brushes paette. The diameter can be as sma as 1 pixe and as arge as 999 pixes. The range of Hardness is from the softest at 0% to the hardest at 100%. Spacing is the distance between brush marks in a stroke. For exampe, the Penci with 100% spacing wi pace a mark each time the stroke moves 100% of the Penci s current brush diameter. This effect and other Spacing settings are shown in Figure If you prefer the smoothest spacing setting, uncheck the box to the eft of Spacing. The ast item in the New Brush diaog box is where you can design the shape and ange of a brush. You can drag on the anchor points to fatten the circe, and you can drag within the box to rotate the brush. The Ange and Roundness can aso be entered manuay. A preview of your new brush is shown in the ower right. FIGURE 3.25 Spacing and the shape and ange of a brush are performed in Brush Options. Deete Brush wi deete the brush that is currenty seected. The Brush Options diaog box is identica to New Brush if the active brush is circuar. Otherwise, a smaer box appears with Spacing and Anti-aiased as your options. Brush Options can aso be chosen directy from a right-cick on the brush. Reset Brushes wi return the brush seection to the defaut setting. Load Brushes aows you to oad from disk a premade set of brushes. In Photoshop s Brushes foder you wi find three sets of brushes: Assorted, Shadows, and Square. Figure 3.26 shows the Brushes paette oaded with a three sets of brushes. FIGURE 3.26 A partia view of the Assorted, Shadows, and Square brush sets oaded in the Brushes paette. Define Brush is an interesting option you might want to choose. This option is how a the weird custom brushes were created. To create a custom brush, foow these steps: CREATING A CUSTOM BRUSH 1. Create a new sma image whose background is white. A 1" 1" image at 72dpi in Grayscae mode is fine. 2. Make a squigge with the Paintbrush too. 3. With the Rectanguar Marquee too, seect the squigge. 4. Cick on the Brushes paette's drop-down menu, and then choose Define Brush. The brush tip is added to your current set of tips at the end of the paette, and you can use it at any time now. Your ony option for further modifying the custom brush tip is Spacing, and you can specify this in the Brush Options box, which is dispayed when you doube-cick the custom tip.