Adobe Photoshop CS - Setting Display and Cursor Preferences - Task 3

 How To Do Setting Display and Cursor Preferences in 

Adobe Photoshop CS 

I cons are all over Photoshop. They enable you to quickly pick and choose from a wide array of editing options. In the Display & Cursor preferences dialog box you can choose whether to show channels in color, double the pixels of your images, or use dithering. You can also specify what icons you would like to see while editing an image. 

1. For Macintosh users, go to the Photoshop menu and select Preferences ➪ Display & Cursors (see Figure 3-1). For Windows users, select Edit ➪ Preferences and select Display & Cursors. If you are in the dialog box from the previous task, you may select Display & Cursors from the drop-down menu at the top of the dialog box. 

Figure 3-1: Accessing the Display & Cursor preferences dialog box 

2. In the Display and Cursor preferences dialog box (see Figure 

3-2), under Display, you can colorize each channel component. To have a channel reflect the color it represents, select Color Channels in Color, instead of the default gray-scale representation in the color channels. 

3. If you want to dither colors that your video card cannot render properly, select Use Diffusion Dither. Diffusion dithering is a method to position multicolored pixels in a scattering effect so as to simulate colors. 

4. To speed up preview modes or command tools, select Use Pixel Doubling. The image resolution is halved by doubling the pixels, giving the image a temporary blurry effect that lasts until the preview mode or commands are finished.

notes 

• The only real benefit of changing the channels to reflect the color is that it might help you realize which channel you are operating in. However, keeping the channels set to gray-scale enables you to see the tone of the color more easily: White areas represent portions of the image where the color is at full opacity and the area where it is black is the absence of that color. 

• The only time you might need to select Use Diffusion Dither is when you have a cheap video card on your system or an old laptop. Hopefully that will never happen to be you. 

• While pixel doubling does speed up the preview of an image, it might not be to everyone’s liking due to the jarring effect of having part of your image blurred out. Most computers powerful enough to run Photoshop will have enough processing power to render the file nicely.

Figure 3-2: The Display & Cursor preferences dialog box 

5. Under Painting Cursors you can specify the type of cursor Photoshop displays when you are using the painting tools. These tools include the brush, pencil, art sprayer, color replacement brush, history and art history brushes, eraser, healing brush, rubber stamp, pattern stamp, smudge, blur, sharpen, dodge, burn, and sponge tools. You have three options: Standard, which uses the icon of the current painting tool; Precise, which resembles a cross-hair with a small target pixel at its center; and Brush Size, which indicates the size of the brush currently selected as shown in Figure 3-3. 

Figure 3-3: The paintbrush set at 100 pixels overlaps the image window. 

In this predicament, you should resize the window and continue painting. 

6. Under Other Cursors you have two options: Standard and Precise. This option controls cursor appearance for the non-painting tools, which include the marquee, lasso, polygon lasso, magic wand, crop, slice, patch, eyedropper, pen, line, paint bucket, gradient, magnetic lasso, magnetic pen, measure, and color sampler tools.

tips 

• Select the Brush Size as your painting cursor. The outline you get when painting provides a visual indicator of the brush size you are using. The other brush sizes do not give you this kind of helpful clue, which may come in handy if you accidentally pick a 400- pixel-sized brush. 

• While using a tool in Photoshop, press Caps Lock and the precise cursor appears. Press Caps Lock again and the tool icon pops back.

cross-reference 

• Having the right cursor at the right time in production work can make digital imaging go faster. If you want to see how shortcut keys can make your work go faster, check out Task 21.