Wednesday, April 24, 2013

PSP Basics #1: Changing Your Default Workspace (Hide the "Manage" Pane)

  I can't be the only user who got frustrated and lost trying to understand the layout of the PSP X5 workspace with it's various tabbed "panes."

It took me a while to grasp what they were for and figure out how to change which one was active on startup.  So, I thought I'd write this in case anyone else was still having trouble.



When you open PSP X5, the first thing you see is a splash screen that tells you the program's loading.  When the splash screen resolves, you'll most likely see this:

Manage Pane


It's called the Manage Pane.  It's supposed to be a way for you to organize images into different groups so that you can find them more easily when you want to use them in Paint Shop Pro.  I think it's redundant and very slow compared to just opening the folder in Windows Explorer.  PSP has a drag and drop feature so you can get your image into the program pretty easily without the manage pane.

If you click the Adjust tab, you'll see this:

Adjust Pane

This is your Adjust Pane.  It looks like it would be fairly useful to photographers who want to load their images and make basic adjustments quickly.  Since I'm not a photographer, I've never used it.  You can access all the same features in the Edit pane, which is this:

Edit Pane

Once you're in the Edit pane, most of the program features will be accessible to you.  e

You can change which pane you want displayed on startup like this:

Go to File>Preferences>General Program Preferences.

This window will pop up.

Click on "Default Workspace," and change it to whichever one you want.  Click "Okay" and you're done.

If most of the work you do in PSP consists of web graphics or other design projects, you probably want the "Edit" pane.

I hope you found this useful.  Feel free to link others to this post.

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