Adobe Photoshop CS5 for Photographers - Martin Evening [10]
Figure 1.14 The New Guide dialog.
View menu options
The View Extras items can also be selected via the View menu. To turn ruler visibility on or off, choose View Rulers ( ) and use the View Show submenu to toggle the visibility of the Guides ( ), or Grid ( ). If a tick mark appears next to an item in the View Show menu, it means it is switched on. Select the item in the menu again and release the mouse to switch it off.
Altering the Ruler units
If the ruler units need altering, just right mouse-click on one of the rulers and select a new unit of measurement. If the rulers are visible but the guides are hidden, dragging out a new guide will make all the other hidden guides reappear again.
‘Snap to’ behavior
The Snap option in the View menu allows you to toggle the ‘snap to’ behavior for the Guides, Grid, Slices, Document bounds and Layer bounds. The shortcut for toggling the ‘snap to’ behavior is . When the ‘snap to’ behavior is active and you reposition an image, type or shape layer, or use a crop or marquee selection tool, these will snap to one or more of the above. It is also the case that when ‘snap to’ is active, and new guides are added with the key held down, a guide will snap to the nearest tick mark on the ruler, or if the Grid is active, to the closest grid line. Objects on layers will snap to position when placed within close proximity of a guide edge. The reverse is also true: when dragging a guide, it will snap to the edge of an object on a layer at the point where the opacity is greater than 50%. Also note that when Smart Guides are switched on in the View Show menu, these can help you align layers as you drag them with the move tool (see page 122 for more details).
Pixel Grid view
The Pixel Gird view described in Figure 1.17 is only seen if you have OpenGL enabled and the Pixel Grid option selected in the View menu. It is useful when editing things like screen shots and can, for example, aid the precise placement of the crop tool.
Figure 1.17 The Pixel Grid view can be enabled by going to the View Show menu and selecting ‘Pixel Grid’. When checked, Photoshop displays the pixels in a grid whenever an image is inspected at a 500% magnification or greater.
Application bar
The Application bar allows you to quickly access essential controls such as the N-up document layout options and the View Extras items I just mentioned such as Rulers, Guides or the Grid. Those I haven't covered yet include a button to launch the Bridge program (see pages 76–80) from where you can double-click on an image in the content panel thumbnail grid to open it in Photoshop. The Mini Bridge button that's next to it allows you to open the new Mini Bridge extension panel, which is like a cut-down version of the main Bridge program (see page 81). The Zoom Scale box shows the current zoom setting and you can use this menu to quickly select a 25%, 50%, 100% or 200% zoom view setting. The Screen display mode options (discussed on page 60) allow you to select the desired screen view mode to work with. The Workspace settings are displayed in an expandable menu that can be dragged out from the right. This allows you to quickly switch between different workspace settings (see pages 24–25). The main difference between the Mac and PC versions of Photoshop CS5 is that the Photoshop menu remains static at the top of the screen in the Macintosh interface (Figure 1.19), whereas in Windows the application menu items are incorporated into the Application bar itself (Figure 1.20). The CS Live menu options shown in Figure 1.18 provide you with links to external Adobe website resources.
Figure 1.19 The Photoshop CS5 Application bar (Mac OS X).
Figure 1.20 The Photoshop CS5 Application bar (Windows OS).
Figure 1.18 The CS Live menu.
The Photoshop panels
The default workspace layout settings place the panels in a docked layout where they are grouped into column zone areas on the right. However,