Workspace set-up - “Now let’s get Organised!”

As somebody who keeps an untidy office of legendary stature I am the last person to lecture anybody else on this topic, but here goes!

The Work Area

f you are forced to work for extended periods at your computer, make sure everything is well set up. No stray, glaring light across the screen, no reflected lights from behind your head are allowed. Your chair should be of such a height that your forearms are parallel to the floor as you type. Your desk should be matched to your chair height and your monitor should be set so that your eyes are about two inches below the top of the screen. If you use a Wacom and a key board at the same time they should be positioned so that you are square on to your desk, don’t type on a skew, it will twist your back. Invest in a good chair; it will save the bills at the physiotherapist in no time! A point of some importance – if you have an area for a cuppa, make sure it is out of range of your mouse, the little beggars are forever colliding with mugs and making a mess over that print you have just made.

Your Desktop should be clean!

The monitor, not the wooden bit you lean upon! Do not store files on your desktop – if you lose your Windows installation due to a corruption, you lose everything on the desktop, including your pictures. Files on the desktop also slow down your screen refresh rate. Use Windows Classic with a plain grey backdrop rather than the crappy, eye-crunching Windows XP blue with its machine slowing gradients – and don’t even get me started on Windows Vista! Coloured backdrops impair your colour judgement and to some extent that also goes for the backdrop behind the screen.

Organise Photoshop

In all the later versions of Adobe Photoshop you can arrange your palettes, select your settings and brush sets, and then save the whole lot as a Workspace. You can recall any one of a number of workspaces with three clicks of the mouse. Pare down your palettes to the minimum you employ for a given task. As an example, you might have one for retouching, one for colour correction and (if you are a wedding photographer) one for page building.

What do you need?

The default brush set contains dozens of brushes to wade through each time you tackle a job. It is far better to have a smaller number and use the square brackets to change the size – you can even use Shift-Square brackets to change the hardness/softness of a brush. In reality you can get away with a 50-hard and a 50-soft brush and tap the square brackets keys for the rest. For retouching, you will need an ‘eye set’ for catch lights, eye lashes, iris-colouring and a small scatter brush for clean-up with the Clone Tool – about 10 in total.

You delete unwanted brushes from a set by Alt-clicking from the context sensitive drop-down of the brush tool. Eliminate unwanted brushes, then save a new set – you can always retrieve the larger set should you suddenly need it, providing it is saved. The choice between showing brushes as thumbnails or text depends on whether you can remember where brushes are, in the set. When brushes are small, the text name of the brush is easier to see. Remember that even complex brush shapes can be scaled using the square brackets.

Photo Quote: The world is going to pieces and people like Adams and Weston are hotographing rocks! - Henri Cartier-Bresson(during the 1930's)