Clean up the Clutter: Photoshop CS3 Window Tips
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As applications pile on the palettes and options, screen space remains a premium even as monitor sizes grow. Space is an even bigger challenge if you need to manage multiple windows. Use these tips to shuffle and stack windows in Photoshop as expertly as a Las Vegas casino dealer.
Screen Modes
Click and hold the Screen Mode icon at the bottom of the Tools palette to see four screen modes. We like to cycle through the modes by pressing F. You can also pick a screen mode from the Screen Mode submenu (under the View menu), but the other ways are so much more convenient that you’ll probably go to the View menu only if you’re recording an action that plays back a screen mode change.
In addition to the Standard Screen Mode (regular windows), Full Screen Mode (black background with no menu bar), and Full Screen Mode with Menu Bar (gray background, as shown in Figure 1), Photoshop CS3 adds a new Maximized Screen Mode (see Figure 2), which is a middle ground between Standard Screen Mode and the two full screen modes. As you show and hide palettes, Maximized resizes the document workspace so that it always stays out of the way of the open palettes. Maximized Screen Mode may throw off veteran Mac Photoshop users, because it’s unlike either the Standard or Full Screen modes that existed in previous versions. Think of Maximized as Full Screen Mode with scroll bars. Maximized is actually welcomed by many users who’ve switched from Windows to the Mac, because Maximized is a standard feature in Windows. We like to work in Full Screen mode instead of wasting space on title bars, scroll bars, and the like.
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Figure 1 Full Screen mode takes over all screen space, even the space underneath palettes.
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Figure 2 The new Maximized screen mode keeps the image centered as the palette arrangement changes. You get to keep the status bar and scroll bars.