If you want to have some control over some of the behavior of Photoshop, look at the Preferences. Follow this instructions to make the most common changes:
- Open Photoshop
- Click on Edit, Preferences, General. A new window will open.
- Leave History States to 20, you don’t want to use too much of your computer memory. Something that I think is important is to uncheck the box for Export Clipboard, if you uncheck this box, whatever you put in the Clipboard on Photoshop is not going to affect the loading of other programs in your computer. Check Save Palette Locations if you want to have the palettes in the same location before you close Photoshop. If you want them to be in the default layout next time you open Photoshop, then uncheck the box.
- Click on Next. This is the File Handling. I find that the only thing that I may want to change is at the bottom of the window, the Recent File Contains: 10 files. That is the default. If you want to see more files that you opened recently (File, Open Recent) change the number.
- Click on Next. Now you are in the Display and Cursors. This allows you to change the way you see the cursors. I like the default.
- Next. Transparency and Gamut. I just leave that as is. Click on Next.
- Now you have the control over the Units and Rulers. If you are going to be printing your images, it may be more comfortable for you to work with inches or cm. Click on Next again.
- You are in the Guides, Grids… window. Here you can change the colors of your guides and grids. Also, how apart you want the lines from each other in the grid. This can be very helpful if you are designing something that you need specific locations.
- Click on Next and you get the Plugs In and Scratch Disk. Check the box for Additional Plugs-In Folder if you have plugs-in in other folder than the default Photoshop Plugs-In. If you check the box, then you will be able to Choose the folder where those plugs-in are, making them available in the menu of your Photoshop plugs-ins. The Scratch Disk is important because allows Photoshop to use one hard drive for the scratch, preventing to clash with your operating system. This is useful only if you have two hard drives. For the First: you may want to use the additional hard drive. For the Second: use the hard drive where you have Photoshop installed (usually the C: drive) If you have only one hard drive, leave the default Start Up: in the box.
- Click on Next. We arrive to the last option, the Memory & Image Cache. This is the amount of memory that Photoshop is going to use for the Zoom command. Any number that you put after Cache Levels: means the number of lower resolution copies of your image that Photoshop makes in order to load quicker the zoom in or out feature. Remember that this takes memory, so don’t use a high number. Leave unchecked the box for Histograms in Levels, since you want the histogram to be relative to the real image size and not to the displayed image. About Memory Usage, I just leave it at 50%.
- Click OK. The new preferences are going to be effective after you close Photoshop. The changes are going to be saved in your hard drive and they are going to be the same every time you open Photoshop.
Tags: Preferences in Photoshop
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