Photoshop CS4 Interface - The Application Bar
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The Application Bar
New in Photoshop CS4 is the Application Bar. On a Windows system, you'll find the Application Bar combined with the Menu Bar at the top of the screen. On a Mac, the Application Bar is separate and located directly below the Menu Bar:
The Application Bar itself may be new, but many of the options you'll find here are not. The bar's main purpose is not really to wow us with new features (although there are some new ones) but to give us a central location for some commonly used features, tools and options rather than having them scattered throughout Photoshop. For example, the first icon on the left (not counting the blue PS icon in the Mac version) will quickly open Adobe Bridge:
To the right of that is the View Extras icon, giving us easy access to Photoshop's Guides, Grid and Rulers.
Next is the Zoom Level icon which allows to quickly choose from four preset zoom levels - 25%, 50%, 100% or 200%. You can also type your own zoom level directly into the input box if none of the presets work for you:
Also found in the Application Bar are Photoshop's standard Hand and Zoom Tools which have traditionally been (and still are) found at the bottom of the Tools panel:
Next, we come to a brand new feature in Photoshop CS4, the Rotate View Tool, which also happens to be available in the Tools panel (click and hold on the Hand Tool in the Tools panel and select the Rotate View Tool from the fly-out menu). We'll take an in-depth look at this new feature in another tutorial, but essentially, the Rotate View Tool allows us to rotate our view of the image on screen as if we were rotating a photo on a desk or table, which can make it easier to paint or edit certain areas. What's great about it is that since we're only rotating our view of the image, not the image itself, no pixels are harmed by the rotation and the image will still save, print and export upright. Again, we'll look more closely at the new Rotate View Tool in another tutorial:
Also new in Photoshop CS4 is the Arrange Documents icon which gives us lots of new layouts for viewing multiple documents on screen at once. You'll also find some standard viewing options from the Window menu like Match Zoom and Match Location, but the new multi document layouts are a great new feature and one we'll look at in more depth later:
Finally, rounding out the options in the new Application Bar is the Screen Mode icon, allowing us to quickly choose between Photoshop CS4's three screen modes - Standard, Full Screen with Menu Bar and Full Screen Mode:
Next up, we'll look at the Panels column in Photoshop CS4!
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