Photoshop Interface Tutorial: The Window Menu

Arrange Multiple Open Documents, Load/Save Workspaces, Show/Hide Palettes

In this Photoshop tutorial, we'll look at the Window Menu, part of Photoshop's Menu Bar and user interface.

Photoshop's Window Menu is primarily where you'll find the options to show and hide each of Photoshop's palettes, but it's also where you'll find options for arranging multiple open document windows on the screen, as well as loading and saving Workspaces. Let's take a quick look at the three main sections of the Window Menu. Arranging Multiple Documents, Loading/Saving Workspaces The first group in the Window Menu contains two options, "Arrange" and "Workspace", which really have nothing to do with each other, yet Adobe chose to group them together anyway. If you have multiple Photoshop documents open at the same time, Arrange gives you the ability to organize how those documents are displayed on the screen. You can cascade them one in front of the other, or you can tile them vertically or horizontally. Arrange also allows you to select one of the open documents and have each of the other open documents match that document's current zoom level, it's current scroll location in the document window, or both. Finally, Arrange allows you to open the image you're working on in a second document window, or several document windows if you prefer. Having two or more document windows open showing the image you're working on gives you the freedom and ability to do things like view the image at multiple zoom levels while you're editing it, which is handy when retouching images. Keep in mind that this doesn't create a separate copy of your document. It simply opens the exact same document in two or more document windows. What you do in one of the document windows affects the image in every document window.

The "Workspace" option allows you to save your palette locations, keyboard shortcuts, and/or custom menus into what Photoshop refers to as a "workspace", so you can quickly recall them when you need to. This is handy if you share your computer with someone else who prefers to have his or her palette locations arranged differently, or has their own keyboard shortcuts they like to use. You can both save your own custom workspaces so you can switch between them instantly.

Custom workspaces are also great for doing different types of work inside Photoshop. For example, you may prefer to have different palettes on the screen for doing image retouching than you do when using Photoshop as a painting program. You can save separate workspaces for each type of work you do inside Photoshop. Your saved workspaces appear at the bottom of the Workspaces menu.

Showing and Hiding Palettes

The second group under the Window menu is for showing and hiding Photoshop's palettes. Palette names with checkmarks beside them are currently being displayed on the screen, while the ones without a checkmark are currently hidden.

The only potentially confusing aspect here is that by default, many of Photoshop's palettes come grouped with other palettes. For example, the History palette comes grouped by default with the Actions palette. The Color palette comes grouped with the Swatches and Styles palettes. The Layers palette comes grouped with the Channels and Paths palettes. This is all fine and good except that when you hide a palette from view which is grouped with other palettes, you effectively hide every palette in that group. You can't hide one palette in a group while still showing the others. The only way to do that would be to ungroup the palettes first by clicking on them and dragging them out of the group, and then hiding the individual palettes you don't want visible.

Currently Open Documents

Finally, at the very bottom of the Window Menu, you'll find a list of all the documents you currently have open, and you can quickly select them by clicking on their names.

Here's a handy trick: If you have one or more document window(s) already open in Photoshop and you want to open a new document set to the same dimensions as one of existing document windows, select "New..." from the File Menu to bring up Photoshop's New Document dialog box, then go to the Window Menu and click on the name of the document at the bottom that you want to match the size of. Photoshop will automatically enter that document's width and height into the New Document dialog box for you!