I like to work fast, and I like to have the tools as I like, I always adapt Photoshop to my way of working. But my way is always evolving and changing over time, usually I try new methods for a while if I improve my performance change the way I work and the Photoshop preferences. Have you tried it, or do you work with Photoshop as it comes from the factory?

I hope to do a series of articles talking about it. Today I’m talking about two things that I believe are most important before start Photoshop, are the workspace and guides.We gonna customize the keyboard in another occasion.

Workspace

So I always work with “Full Screen With Menu Bar” mode, you can change it up, below the top menus, or pressing the F key (default) and change documents with Control+Tab. So in this mode we can working with a wider space and we can move the image edge to the center of the screen, something you can’t do in windowed mode.
I have all the panels on my right. The column nearest the document is the Tools panel, in the second column usually I have the character panel and layer panel, giving much more space to the last one.
The OSX Dock is at the right and occupy the minimum space possible and only with the apps I have open at the time.

Why am I doing this? For one simple reason: I am right handed, and as with the pen, I like to have the most use objects at my right (except my coffee mug!), having the Tool panel on the left and the other panels on the right is a waste of time and energy. You also win a lot of space to work. This is how I see it, and if you try it you’ll notice.

Guides

With guides made two changes: the color and style. The vibrant blue by default is not very useful as a guide, it diverts attention too, besides when looking for more precision the solid line doesn’t help. I use dotted red color guide, because I don’t usually make designs with excessive use of red, if it were the case, I change it for the occasion. WIth a dotted line, makes me see better the design I’m working on and if I have to make a pixel adjustment, I can do it without problem.

I use a green color with Smart Guides, in this case if I need a vibrant color to attract the attention, because I use it a very short time. I assign the keyboard shortcut Command + U, which is the same as Illustrator and so I can unify my shortcuts. If you do not know what are the Smart Guides, what are you waiting for?, check it out! When you move an object with Smart Guides enabled, smart guides shows up and help you to aline your object with others.

Layers panel Options

To work better with Layers, open options panel on and turn off layer thumbnails, you gain a lot of space. Disable the following too:
“Expand New Effects” when creating an effect, it will not expand and have more order in your layers.
“Add a ‘copy’ to Copied Layers and Groups.” This is required, turn off the word “copy” when you copy a layer, I think it’s an option that all we have desired since there are layers in Photoshop.