The far right side of the Application frame is home to a slew of small windows called panels (they were called palettes in previous versions of Photoshop). If you decide to put it back later, drag it to the top of the screen and, when you see a thin blue line appear at the bottom of the Application bar, release your mouse button. If you’d rather put it somewhere else, grab its left end and drag it wherever you want, as shown in Figure 1-3, bottom. When you first install Photoshop, the Options bar is perched near the top of the screen underneath the Application bar. When you move your cursor away from the item, the tooltip disappears. Luckily, you can hover your cursor over any item to see a little pop-up description called a tooltip (you don’t need to click-just wait a couple seconds). Unfortunately, its labels are fairly cryptic, so it can be hard to figure out what the heck all that stuff does. The bar automatically changes to show settings related to the tool you’re currently using. Lording over your document window is the Options bar, which lets you customize the settings for every tool in the program (see Figure 1-3). Finally, you’ll learn how to fine-tune Photoshop’s behavior through preferences and built-in tools (called presets) that let you personalize your work environment even more. If you’re a beginner, the section on using Undo commands and history states will show you how to fix mistakes and back out of almost anything you’ve done. Once you’ve gotten them placed just right, you’ll learn how to save your setup as a custom workspace. You’ll learn how to work with the new Application Frame and Application bar and how to wrangle all the windows and panels filling your screen. Throughout the rest of this book, you’ll dive much deeper into specific tools and techniques, but this chapter gives you a good, solid foundation on which to build your Photoshop skills. With Photoshop CS4, Adobe introduced major changes to the work environment, and while these changes make Photoshop easier to use, they take some getting used to. If you’re an experienced pixel pusher, there are surprises a-plenty waiting for you, too. If this is your first foray into the world of Photoshop, all these features will be new to you.

Photoshop CS4 is bursting with amazing features that’ll help you edit and create digital masterpieces.

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