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Photoshop 7 is filled with advancements, large and
small, to improve productivity. For some, Saved
Workspaces will fall into the "small" category, but
for most of us, this capability has the potential to
be a huge time saver.
One of my colleagues definitely counts
as a "power user" of Photoshop. He (let's call him
"Bob") produces incredible work at lightning speed.
His brain moves faster than his Wacom stylus, so any
speed advantage he can find, he takes.
One of Bob's favorite tricks is to
make sure that his Photoshop work environment is
optimized for the task at hand. He even has different
Preferences files for different jobs. Since the Prefs
record the location of each palette and the current
settings for each tool, swapping files alters the work
environment. When changing from, say, photo retouching
to prepress work, Bob quits Photoshop, changes the
Prefs file in Photoshop's Settings folder, and
restarts. When Photoshop re-opens, his palettes are
right where he needs them, the tools have his
preferred settings, and he's ready to move full-speed
into the next project. Bob swears that this has been
faster and easier than manually changing the palettes
and tools each time. (I think the re-start is the only
time he finds to grab a cup of coffee....)
Imagine Bob's joy when I told him
about Photoshop 7's capability to save workspaces and
tool presets! No more re-starts to show and hide
certain combinations of palettes. No more re-starts to
produce a specific set of tools options. (No more
re-starts to go grab coffee. Okay, so Bob's not 100%
sure that this is truly a "good thing.")
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Photoshop's preferences have long been
able to remember the last-used arrangement of
palettes. That's still a feature of Photoshop 7 - when
the program is next started, the palettes return to
their most recently used locations on screen. However,
those previous palette positions may not be
appropriate for the next task. Photoshop and
ImageReady now let you to save multiple palette
arrangements and switch among them through the Window
menu.
To save a workspace, simply arrange
the palettes as desired and use the menu command
Window> Workspace> Save Workspace. A dialog box will
give you the opportunity to name the new saved
workspace. The name can be up to 31 characters (and
spaces) long.
You can remove unwanted workspaces
from the list using the menu command Window>
Workspace> Delete Workspace. A dialog box opens that
contains a pop-up list of all the saved workspaces.
Select a workspace from the list and click OK. The
pop-up menu also offers the option of deleting all
saved workspaces. Photoshop will ask you to confirm
your decision to delete all saved workspaces.
So, how valuable can this feature be?
Compare the work environments in these two
screenshots:
One has a palette setup designed for
working with text, the other for color correction and
adjustment. In both cases, it takes only a few moments
to drag the palettes into position. However, with
saved workspaces, it takes only a single click to
switch from one to the other.
Also consider, if you will, palette
arrangements for working with paths, for creating Web
graphics, for photo retouching. You don't necessarily
need to have the same palettes available for the
different jobs. Rather than dragging palettes around
the screen, and showing and hiding them with the
Window menu, you can save your basic setups and change
among them in a snap. You can, of course, continue to
use the Tab key to show and hide palettes, and
show/hide individual palettes while working, too.
If you do the same task, all day,
every day, you may need only one palette arrangement.
If, like most of us, you do different things with
Photoshop, then saved workspaces can become a
habit-forming convenience. |