No description of Adobe Photoshop would be complete without that well known, but little utilized area called Preferences. Photoshop preferences serve several purposes. They help customize the program to your particular designing style, and they help you utilize available computer resources to increase the overall performance of the program.

This excerpt was provided with permission of Sams Publishing,
a division of Pearson, from the book Adobe Photoshop CS3 On Demand.

What You’ll Do

Optimize Photoshop
Set General Preferences
Modify File Handling Preferences
Work with Interface Preferences
Work with Cursors Preferences
Control Transparency & Gamut Preferences
Work with Units & Rulers
Work with Guides, Grid, Slices & Count
Select Plug-Ins
Select Scratch Disks
Allocate Memory & Image Cache
Work with Type
Manage Libraries with the Preset Manager
Customize the Workspace
Define Shortcut Keys
Create a Customized User Interface
Use Drawing Tablets

By modifying File Handling preferences, such as appending a file extension on the file, or being asked when saving a layered TIFF file, you can streamline file saving process. In addition, you can change the way your cursors look. For example, do you want your paintbrush to look like a paintbrush when you paint, do you prefer a precession crosshair or the actual brush size shape, or the shape with a crosshair?

As you use Photoshop, you'll come to realize the importance of working with units and rulers. Precision is the name of the game when you are working with images. What about the color of your guides, grids, and slices? No big deal, you say. Well, if you've every tried viewing a blue guide against a blue-sky image, you know exactly why color is important. By working through preferences such as Image Cache, Scratch Disks, and RAM Memory, speed increases of up to 20 percent can be achieved.

In addition, customizing the program, helps make you more comfortable, and studies show that the more comfortable you are as a designer the better your designs. Plus, being comfortable allows you to work faster, and that means you'll accomplish more in the same amount of time. What does setting up preferences do for you? They make Photoshop run faster (up to 20 percent), you work more efficiently, and your designs are better. That's a pretty good combination. Photoshop doesn't give you preferences to confuse you, but to give you choices, and those choices give you control.

Optimizing Photoshop

Photoshop is a powerful program, and as such, requires a tremendous amount of computing power. When working on large documents, a poorly optimized Photoshop will translate into long wait times. That's the bad news if you have a deadline to meet. The good news is that Photoshop can be configured to run more efficiently. To optimize Photoshop, click the Edit (Win) or Photoshop (Mac) menu, point to Preferences, and then click Performance. The Performance preferences dialog box contain options that will help increase the performance of Photoshop.

History States

History States control the number of undos available. In fact, you can have up to 1000 undos (ever wonder who would make so many mistakes that they would need 1000 undos?). Unfortunately, increasing the number of History States will ultimately increase the amount of RAM Photoshop uses to manage the History palette. Assigning more RAM memory to manage History means less memory for Photoshop to perform normal operations, and will reduce the performance of the program. If you are experiencing slow performance problems, lowering the number of History States frees up more RAM, and permits Photoshop to operate more efficiently.

Que Publishing Photoshop On Demand Figure 1