Adobe Photoshop CS5 for Photographers - Martin Evening [14]
Figure 1.32 This shows an example of how you might like to arrange the Photoshop panels on a second display, positioned alongside the primary display.
Adobe™ Configurator 2 application
Adobe Configurator 2 is a small application that can be used to create custom Extension panels containing all your favorite and most-used Photoshop shortcuts. It's a perfect solution for those customers who wish Photoshop could be made less complicated. Basically, you can use the Configurator interface that's shown in Figure 1.33 to drag and drop various tools and menu commands to the workspace area. Using Configurator you can design a custom panel that contains all your favorite and most-used tools and commands. Once you are happy with the layout you can choose File Export to save it as a new Photoshop panel. To load the exported panel, relaunch Photoshop, go to the Window Extensions submenu in Photoshop and select the new panel from the menu list. Configurator 2 provides built-in support for localized languages, can include HTML links and includes container objects to help create more efficient panel layouts.
Figure 1.33 This shows on the left the Configurator 2 interface and on the right what the exported Extension panel looked like when it was opened in Photoshop.
Extensions panels
There are now a number of Extension panels you can load into Photoshop CS5, which I have grouped together in Figure 1.34. These have all been built using Adobe AIR™, which is based on Adobe Flash technology. For example, Configurator 2 is actually an AIR application for building custom tool and command selection panels for Photoshop or InDesign. The extension panels shown here are initial examples of how this technology can be used to create panels for Photoshop that allow you to extend (pun intended) how you work.
Connecting Photoshop to the Internet
Many of the Extension panels require Photoshop be connected to the Internet in order for them to function. To check whether this is the case, go to the Photoshop menu, choose Preferences Plug-ins and makes sure the ‘Allow Extensions panels to connect to the Internet’ option is checked and then restart Photoshop.
Figure 1.34 shows most of the Extensions panels that are now available in Photoshop CS5 as well as those that you can download and install separately. Let's start with the Kuler panel, which was actually one of the first AIR panels to be released by Adobe and is designed as a creative tool for exploring different sets of color harmonies. You can also explore more of these on-line via this panel and choose from the many custom color sets other users have created.
Figure 1.34 This shows some examples of the Photoshop CS5 Extension panels.
Next, we have the CS Review panel. This allows you to share and get feedback on your creative projects, but you must first sign in to the CS Review service to create a review using this panel.
With the Access CS Live panel you need to sign in here too using your Adobe ID and password. Once you have done so you can use this panel to share your screen and communicate with up to two other Adobe registered users. Basically, the concept here is similar to using Skype™ or Apple's iChat™ to hold on-line conferences.
The Knowledge and Toolbox panels are not included in the main Photoshop install, but are available as optional downloads from the Adobe website. The intention here is that when installed the content of these two panels is directly linked to whichever workspace you are currently in. Therefore, when you are working in the Photography workspace the Toolbox and Knowledge panels