Customizing Your Photoshop Workspace: Color, Layers, and History

Now, if we look to the right of the screen, you'll see that there are multiple panels stacked on top of each other, or docked. The first panel we'll discuss is our Color panel. Here, we have the ability to select colors for our foreground as well as our background.

By clicking on either of these display boxes, we can reveal the specifics of that color. If we click on the foreground color, we'll see the Color Picker window appear. This will give us the specifics of the color we have chosen.

In addition, if we want to change the color, we can do so by dragging and sliding the indicators for the desired color. As we click and drag, we'll see that the values for the color change, and at the bottom, we have our hex code. The hex code is a series of numbers and letters that identify a very specific color.

If we want to change the color here, we can double-click this code and enter the desired color. I will enter six Fs to indicate white and click OK. We now have a white foreground color.

In addition, we can change the foreground color or background color here with the Color Picker. I'll select the foreground color and move the color indicator to black. Moving on to the bottom right-hand side of the screen, we'll find our Layers panel.

Currently, the only layer we have is our background. Each time we add an image, a mask, or an object, we'll be adding an additional layer to our image, and it will be displayed here. Moving to the left of these docked panels, we can see that there's an additional panel group.

It's currently displayed as a column. We can open this by clicking on the icon for History. If we click again, we'll collapse it.

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Or, if we want to expand this, we can click on the two arrows at the top right of the group. Again, if we click on the two arrows, we'll collapse this group. With our History panel open, we can see that this displays the history of all the changes we make to our document.

If I determine I want to expand this panel lengthwise, I'll go to the bottom of the panel until I see the two arrows, and click and drag to my desired length. I can also expand it to the left and right, creating a larger width by waiting until I see the two arrows on the left border. I'll click and drag to my desired width.

Let's collapse the History panel by clicking back on the icon. Together, this specific arrangement of panels, toolbars, and menu bars in the interface is called our workspace. In the top right-hand corner, next to the search icon, we have our Workspace icon.

If we click on the Workspace icon, we'll see that we are currently in the Essentials workspace. As we select alternative workspaces, we'll see that the panels and options change. Let's return to the Essentials workspace.

Next, let's customize our workspace for our needs. First, let's reduce our panels to only one column panel on the right and one expanded panel. Because we'll be covering Photoshop's basics in this course, we won't need the Learn panel, and we can remove it.

We'll do so by right-clicking on the title and selecting Close. We're now left with only one panel on the right: our Libraries panel. Let's move this and group it with the Color and Swatches panel.

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We can do so by clicking on the Libraries title and dragging it over by Color and Swatches. In addition, if we want to drag it somewhere else, we can click and drag. The blue line or blue box indicates where the panel will land.

As you can see right now, the blue line indicates that it will go above Color and Swatches. However, for our purposes, let's leave it grouped with Color and Swatches. As a final customization, let's change the width of these panel groups.

We can do so by hovering over the left-hand edge of this panel until we see the two arrows. This indicates we're able to click and drag. Let's drag it to about there to give us a little more space, then release.

This current arrangement is the workspace arrangement we'll be using throughout the course. Therefore, let's save it as a new workspace by going back to the Workspace icon and clicking New Workspace. We'll title this workspace VDCI and click Save.

We've now set our workspace for the remainder of this course. In the next video, we'll be discussing file types and the images that Photoshop is able to open and modify. I'll see you there.