1. Computing & Technology

Photoshop Document Windows

Lesson 1: Getting Around in Photoshop CS2

Explore the Photoshop CS2 workspace in this illustrated tutorial.
Document Window Elements
When you have a document window open in Photoshop, there are a few more workspace elements you'll need to be able to identify. Go to File > Open and navigate to any image file on your computer and open it now. Ctrl-O (Win) or Cmd-O (Mac) is the keyboard shortcut to open a file. This is the same shortcut used by most applications, so it should be an easy one to remember. Windows users can take advantage of a handy shortcut for opening a file — just double-click on the Photoshop application window background.

If your image is small, drag the lower right corner of the document window to make it large enough that you can see all parts of the document window shown in the diagram above.

The Title Bar

The title bar shows the filename, the zoom level, and the color mode of the image. On the right are the minimize, maximize/restore, and close buttons that are standard in all computer applications.

Scroll Bars

You're probably familiar with scroll bars for moving around the document when it is larger than the workspace. A good shortcut to know for avoiding the scroll bars, is the Spacebar on your keyboard. No matter where you are in Photoshop, you can temporarily switch to the hand tool by pressing the Spacebar. We'll practice this shortly.

Context-Sensitive Menus

In addition to the menu bar, Photoshop often has context-sensitive menus for accessing some of the most likely commands depending on which tool is selected and where you click. You access the context sensitive menu by right clicking, or by pressing the Control key while clicking on a single-button Macintosh mouse.

One of the most convenient contextual menus can be accessed by right clicking on the title bar of a document for quick access to the duplicate command, image and canvas size dialogs, file information, and page setup. Go ahead and try this now on your open document.

Next select the zoom tool from the toolbox, and right click anywhere on your document. This context-sensitive menu offers quick access to commands for Fit on Screen, Actual Pixels, Print Size, Zoom In, and Zoom Out.

Note: Each document appears in its own floating window, unless you maximize the document window, in which case only the top-most document will be visible in the workspace. When you maximize a document window in Photoshop, the document title bar merges with the Photoshop application title bar, and the zoom indicator and status bar go to the bottom edge of the Photoshop application window.

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