This tutorial will cover the three main parts to working with repeating patterns. First, we’ll design a single tile which will eventually become our repeating pattern. Next, we’ll learn how to save the tile as an actual pattern in Photoshop. Finally, with our new pattern created, we’ll learn how to select the pattern and make it repeat across an entire layer! In the next set of tutorials, we’ll take repeating patterns further by adding colors and gradients, using blend modes to blend multiple patterns together, creating patterns from custom shapes, and more!

I’ll be using Photoshop CS5 here, but the steps apply to any recent version of Photoshop.

Step 1: Create A New Document

Let’s begin by creating a single tile for the pattern. For that, we need a new blank document, so go up to the File menu in the Menu Bar along the top of the screen and choose New:

Go to File > New.

This opens the New Document dialog box. Enter 100 pixels for both the Width and Height. The document’s size will determine the size of the tile, which will affect how often the pattern repeats in the document (since a smaller tile will need more repetitions to fill the same amount of space than a larger tile would). In this case we’ll be creating a 100 px x 100 px tile. You’ll want to experiment with different sizes when creating your own patterns later. I’ll leave my Resolution value set to 72 pixels/inch. Set the Background Contents to Transparent so our new document will have a transparent background:

Enter the width and height of your document and make sure Background Contents is set to Transparent.

Click OK when you’re done to close out of the dialog box. The new document appears on your screen. The checkerboard pattern filling the document is Photoshop’s way of telling us that the background is transparent. Since the document is rather small at only 100 px x 100 px, I’ll zoom in on it by holding down my Ctrl (Win) / Command (Mac) key and pressing the plus sign ( + ) a few times. Here, the document is zoomed in to 500%:

The new blank document, zoomed in to 500%.

Step 2: Add Guides Through The Center Of The Document

We need to know the exact center of our document, and we can find it using Photoshop’s guides. Go up to the View menu at the top of the screen and choose New Guide:

Go to View > New Guide.

This opens the New Guide dialog box. Select Horizontal for the Orientation, then enter 50% for the Position. Click OK to close out of the dialog box, and you’ll see a horizontal guide appear through the center of the document:

Select Horizontal and enter 50% for the Position.

Go back up to the View menu and once again choose New Guide. This time in the New Guide dialog box, select Vertical for the Orientation and again enter 50% for the Position:

Select Vertical and enter 50% for the Position.

A vertical and horizontal guide runs through the center of the document.

Changing The Guide Color (Optional)

If you’re having trouble seeing the guides because of their light color, you can change their color in Photoshop’s Preferences. On a PC, go up to the Edit menu, choose Preferences, then choose Guides, Grid & Slices. On a Mac, go up to the Photoshop menu, choose Preferences, then choose Guides, Grid & Slices:

Select the Guides, Grid and Slices Preferences.

This opens Photoshop’s Preferences dialog box set to the Guides, Grid & Slices options. The very first option at the top of the list is Guide Color. As I mentioned, it’s set to Cyan by default. Click on the word Cyan and choose a different color from the list. You’ll see a preview of the color in the document window. I’ll change mine to Light Red:

Selecting Light Red as the new color for the guides.

Click OK when you’re done to close out of the Preferences dialog box. The guides in the document window now appear in the new color (note that Photoshop will continue to display guides in this new color until you go back to the Preferences and change the color back to Cyan or choose a different color):

The guides now appear in the new color, making them easier to see.

Step 3: Draw A Shape In The Center Of The Document

You can create very complex patterns in Photoshop, or they can be as simple as, say, a repeating dot or circle. Let’s draw a circle in the center of the document. First, select the Elliptical Marquee Tool from the Tools panel. By default, it’s hiding behind the Rectangular Marquee Tool, so click on the Rectangular Marquee Tool and hold your mouse button down for a second or two until a fly-out menu appears, then select the Elliptical Marquee Tool from the list:

Click and hold on the Rectangular Marquee Tool, then select the Elliptical Marquee Tool.

With the Elliptical Marquee Tool selected, move the crosshair directly over the intersection point of the guides in the center of the document. Hold down Shift+Alt (Win) / Shift+Option (Mac), click in the center of the document, then with your mouse button still held down, drag out a circular selection. Holding the Shift key as you drag will force the shape of the selection into a perfect circle, while the Alt (Win) / Option (Mac) key tells Photoshop to draw the selection outline from the center. When you’re done, your selection outline should look similar to this (don’t worry about the exact size as long as it’s close):

Hold down Shift+Alt (Win) / Shift+Option (Mac) and drag out a circular selection outline from the center.

Step 4: Fill The Selection With Black

Go up to the Edit menu at the top of the screen and choose Fill:

Go to Edit > Fill.

This opens the Fill dialog box, where we can choose a color to fill the selection with. Set the Use option at the top of the dialog box to Black:

Set the Use option to Black.

Click OK to close out of the dialog box. Photoshop fills the circular selection with black. Press Ctrl+D (Win) / Command+D (Mac) to quickly remove the selection outline from around the shape (you could also go up to the Select menu at the top of the screen and choose Deselect, but the keyboard shortcut is faster). Keep in mind that my document is still zoomed in to 500%, which is why the edges of the circle appear blocky:

The selection has been filled with black.

Step 5: Duplicate The Layer

With just this one circle added in the center of the tile, we could save the tile as a pattern, but let’s make it look a bit more interesting before we do that. First, make a copy of the layer by going up to the Layer menu at the top of the screen, choosing New, then choosing Layer via Copy. Or, if you prefer keyboard shortcuts, press Ctrl+J (Win) / Command+J (Mac):

Go to Layer > New > Layer via Copy.

Nothing will happen yet in the document window, but a copy of the layer, which Photoshop names “Layer 1 copy”, appears above the original in the Layers panel:

The Layers panel showing a copy of Layer 1 above the original.

Step 6: Apply The Offset Filter

When designing tiles to use as repeating patterns, there’s one filter you’ll use almost every time, and that’s Offset, which you can get to by going up to the Filter menu at the top of the screen, choosing Other, then choosing Offset:

Go to Filter > Other > Offset.

This opens the Offset filter dialog box. The Offset filter moves, or offsets, the contents of a layer by a specified number of pixels either horizontally, vertically, or both. When creating simple repeating patterns like the one we’re designing here, you’ll want to enter half the width of your document into the Horizontal input box and half the height of your document into the Vertical input box. In our case, we’re working with a 100 px x 100 px document, so set the Horizontal option to 50 pixels and the Vertical option also to 50 pixels. At the bottom of the dialog box, in the Undefined Areas section, make sure Wrap Around is selected:

Set the Horizontal and Vertical options to half the dimensions of the document and make sure Wrap Around is checked.

Click OK to close out of the dialog box. In the document window, we see that the Offset filter has taken the copy of the circle we made in the previous step and split it into four equal parts, placing them in the corners of the document. The circle remaining in the center is the original circle we drew on Layer 1:

The image after running the Offset filter.

Step 7: Define The Tile As A Pattern

With the tile designed, let’s save it as an actual pattern, a process Photoshop refers to as “defining a pattern”. Go up to the Edit menu at the top of the screen and choose Define Pattern:

Go to Edit > Define Pattern.

Photoshop will pop open a dialog box asking you to name the new pattern. It’s a good idea to include the dimensions of the tile in the name of the pattern in case you design several similar tiles at different sizes. In this case, name the tile “Circles 100×100″. Click OK when you’re done to close out of the dialog box. The tile is now saved as a pattern!

Name the pattern “Circles 100×100″.

Step 8: Create A New Document

We’ve designed our tile and defined it as a pattern, which means we can now use it to fill an entire layer! Let’s create a new document to work in. Just as we did back in Step 1, go up to the File menu and choose New. When the New Document dialog box appears, enter 1000 pixels for both the Width and Height. Leave the Resolution set to 72 pixels/inch, and this time, set the Background Contents to White so the background of the new document is filled with solid white. Click OK when you’re done to close out of the dialog box. The new document will appear on your screen:

Create a new 1000 px x 1000 px document with a white background.

Step 9: Add A New Layer

We could simply fill the document’s Background layer with our pattern, but that would seriously limit what we can do with it. As we’ll see in the next tutorial when we look at adding colors and gradients to patterns, a much better way to work is to place the repeating pattern on its own layer. Click on the New Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers panel:

Click on the New Layer icon.

A new blank layer named “Layer 1″ appears above the Background layer:

The new layer appears.

Step 10: Fill The New Layer With The Pattern

With our new layer added, let’s fill it with our pattern! Go up to the Edit menu and choose Fill:

Go to Edit > Fill.

Normally, Photoshop’s Fill command is used to fill a layer or selection with a solid color, just as we did back in Step 4 when we used it to fill the circular selection with black. But we can also use the Fill command to fill something with a pattern, and we do that by first setting the Use option at the top of the dialog box to Pattern:

Change the Use option to Pattern.

With Pattern selected, a second option, Custom Pattern, appears directly below it, which is where we choose the pattern we want to use. Click on the pattern preview thumbnail:

Click directly on the Custom Pattern thumbnail.

This opens the Pattern Picker, which displays small thumbnails of all the patterns we currently have to choose from. The circle pattern we just created will be the last thumbnail in the list. If you have Tool Tips enabled in Photoshop’s Preferences (they’re enabled by default), the name of the pattern will appear when your hover your cursor over the thumbnail. Double-click on it to select it and exit out of the Pattern Picker:

Select the “Circles 100×100″ pattern in the Pattern Picker.

Once you’ve selected the pattern, all that’s left to do is click OK to close out of the Fill dialog box. Photoshop fills the blank layer in the document with the circle pattern, repeating the tile as many times as needed:

Layer 1 is now filled with the repeating circle pattern.

And that’s really all there is to it! Obviously our black and white circle pattern won’t win us many awards, but the important things to take away from this first tutorial are the steps we used to create it, designing a single tile, defining the tile as a pattern, then using Photoshop’s Fill command to fill an entire layer with the pattern.

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Easier interface management with live workspaces
Automatically store task-specific workspaces that reflect your workflow, and quickly switch between them. See Save and switch workspaces.

Intelligent selection technology
Extract subjects from backgrounds more quickly and accurately, creating realistic composites. See Refine selection edges.

Content-aware filling and healing
Easily remove image elements and replace them with content that seamlessly integrates into its surroundings. See Content-aware, pattern, or history fills and Retouch with the Spot Healing Brush tool.

HDR Pro
Apply greater tone-mapping power, creating high dynamic range images that range from photorealistic to surreal. Or apply an HDR look to standard images with the HDR
Toning adjustment. See Merge images to HDR and Adjust HDR toning.

Extraordinary painting effects
Take advantage of realistic painting effects, mixing colors on the canvas and simulating bristles to produce results that rival traditional painting media. See Paint with the Mixer Brush and Bristle tip shape options.

Puppet Warp
Radically transform specific image areas, while anchoring others in place. See Puppet Warp.

Automated lens correction
Quickly fix distortion using installed profiles of popular lenses, or custom profiles of additional models. See Correct lens distortion and adjust perspective.

Easy extrusions with 3D repoussé
Convert 2D text and artwork into 3D objects, and then extrude and inflate their surfaces. See Create 3D repoussé (Photoshop Extended).

Enhanced 3D performance, workflow, and materials
Quickly optimize performance with dedicated 3D preferences. Get faster previews and rendering with the improved Adobe Ray Tracer engine. Apply materials interactively with Material Load and Drop tools. See 3D panel overview (Photoshop Extended) and 3D Materials settings (Photoshop Extended).

Streamlined creative reviews
Collaborate with colleagues and quickly get client feedback with CS Review, an online service that accelerates the review process. See CS Review.

Integrated media management
Take advantage of improved watermarking, web galleries, and batch processing in Adobe Bridge CS5. Access assets directly in Photoshop using the Mini Bridge panel. See Adobe Bridge and Mini Bridge.

State of the art Camera Raw processing
Remove noise in high ISO images while preserving color and detail. Add creative effects like film grain and post-crop vignettes. Or precisely sharpen images with minimal artifacts. See Correcting lens distortions in Camera Raw, Sharpening and noise reduction in Camera Raw, and Vignette and grain effects in Camera Raw.

Dozens of customer-inspired productivity enhancements
Boost your efficiency with countless workflow improvements. Selected highlights let you:

• Create layers by dragging files from Windows or Mac OS. See Create a layer from an existing file.
• Straighten images with the Ruler tool. See Straighten an image.
• Protect detail with the Sharpen tool. See Sharpen image areas.
• Apply a graduated neutral density filter. See Apply a gradient fill.
• Reverse the direction of a clone source. See Retouch with the Clone Stamp tool.
• Customize defaults for layer styles. See Change style defaults to custom values.
• Paste in the same relative location, or into or outside selections.
  See Understanding the copy and paste commands.
• Store image-specific print settings. See Print images.

New GPU-accelerated features
Harness increased hardware power with features like brush previews, a color sampler ring for the Eyedropper tool, and a Rule Of Thirds grid for the Crop tool. See Choose a color while painting and Crop an image using the Crop tool.

Faster performance with cross-platform 64-bit support
Complete day-to-day imaging tasks at least 10% faster on 64-bit versions of Mac OS and Windows. See Memory and performance.

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The Photoshop scratch disk is your hard drive. Photoshop uses your hard drive as temporary “swap” space, or virtual memory, when your system does not have enough RAM to perform an operation. If you only have one hard drive or partition in your computer, then the scratch disk will be the drive where your operating system is installed (the C drive on a Windows system).

Setting Up Scratch Disks
You can change the scratch disk location and add multiple scratch disks from Photoshop Preferences. Many power users like to create a dedicated hard drive partition for the Photoshop scratch disk. Although Photoshop will function with a single scratch disk on the system partition, you can improve performance by setting the scratch disk to be the fastest drive in your system. Other useful guidelines for setting scratch disks are to avoid using the same drive where your operating system is installed, avoid using a drive where the files you edit are stored, and don’t use network or removable drives for a scratch disk.

Delete Photoshop Temp Files
If Photoshop is shut down improperly or crashes in the middle of an editing session, this can leave fairly large temporary files behind on your scratch disk. Photoshop’s temp files are typically named ~PST####.tmp on Windows and Temp#### on Macintosh, where #### is a series of numbers. These are safe to delete.

Clear Disk Space
If you’re getting an error message that the scratch disk is full, it usually means you need to clear some space on whatever drive is defined as the scratch disk in Photoshop Preferences, or add additional drives for Photoshop to use as scratch space.

Defragment Your Hard Disk
It is also possible to get the “scratch disk is full” error, even if the scratch disk drive has free space. This is because Photoshop requires contiguous, unfragmented free space on the scratch disk drive. If you are getting the “scratch disk is full” error message and your scratch disk drive does show a good amount of free space, you may need to run a disk defragmentation utility.

Scratch Disk Errors When Cropping
If you are getting a “scratch disk full” error when attempting to crop an image, it’s likely that you inadvertently have size and resolution values entered in the options bar for the crop tool, or you entered values in the wrong units. For instance, entering dimensions of 1200 x 1600 when your units are set to inches instead of pixels is going to create a huge file that could trigger the scratch disk full message. The solution is to press clear in the options bar after selecting the crop tool but before dragging a crop selection.

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1. Open the image you want to use as pattern.

2. Then, go to Edit > Define Pattern. Type in the name you want for the new pattern and click OK.

3. Now, we want to use the new pattern as a background in our new project. Open a new document, whatever the size is up to you.

4. Go to Layer > New Fill Layer > Pattern. You’ll see this small window.

Click OK and you’ll see another window for you to select the pattern you want to use. Choose the pattern you created just now and click OK.

And you’ll have a nice background for your new project.

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This Photoshop tutorial is about customizing the interface of the Photoshop.  This is one of the best features available to the user. This is because every user has their own way of doing things, keeping this in mind the software has provided a totally customizable interface. By using this any user can use Photoshop CS4 in a way which suits them.

The Photoshop CS4 tutorial for custom interface is really simple. This is done as follows, as we know that we have various panels at the right  hand side of the interface, some of them being layers, channels paths etc. you  will eventually find that you use some of the panels more frequently than the others, while some u may never use. Keeping this in mind the Photoshop has devised an ingenious way to make the interface user friendly. What you do is that when you open any panel you can see tabs at the right top corner of the panel and u can switch from panel to panel by clicking on them, so what you do is that you can click on the tabs and actually drag them out of the panel resulting in a new panel consisting of only one tab.

You can also merge more panels into a single panel. This Photoshop CS4 tutorial is done by dragging the panel into another when this happens there appears a blue glow in the panel below, drop your panel into it and you will find that the panels have merged hence condensing the workspace. You can also separate out the unwanted panels and close them off saving only the used ones with you. You can also drag the panels to the left corner and drop them beyond the tool box; here you will see that you can arrange the panels as you please. This Photoshop CS4 tutorial will mean nothing if you do not want to be more creative and efficient.

When you are comfortable using a specific customized interface you can actually save the settings for further use. This can be done by going to the menu “windows” click on “workspace” and then “Save workspace” by doing this you can directly have the settings the next time you use the interface. If you want to reset the settings or change to some other predefined interface you can go to the button on the top left corner called “Essentials” and click on it,  you will see that the default interface is restored. You can select any other interface too.

In Photoshop CS4 we can also customize the entire menu at the top. This is done by going to the menu “File” and then “Menus” here you can add or delete any menu required by the user. It is very easy to use. You can also change the color of the menus from that dialog box reminding you to use the option more frequently or for any other use.

In this way the Photoshop interface is very flexible and easy to modify as per the needs of the user.

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Photoshop Tutorials at Melissa Clifton
Enjoy this impressive showcase of free Photoshop tutorials, 2D and 3D animation, illustration, concept art and character design by New Zealand artists.

PHOTOSHOP Tutorials and Training
Photoshop tutorial web sites visited by DTG readers, and students…. in the Photoshop department of The Design and Publishing Center, featuring DTG

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Photoshop carving wood A reader wrote in with a client who wants his web site menu buttons to be on a tree looking hand-carved.

Photoshop Tutorials – Adobe Photo Shop Tutorial – CS2 Video Training
Photoshop Tutorials making it super easy to create cool effects and graphics using CS2 Video Training with Adobe Photo Shop Tutorials Expert Shane Goldberg.

Photoshop Tutorials, Tips, Tricks, News and Reviews Photoshop Lab
Digital Painting with Light Photoshop Tutorial Painting with Light Like dodge and burn on steroids.

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This tutorial will show you how to create some of the more popular “Web 2.0″ design effects using Photoshop.

Worth1000.com Photoshop Contests
With more than 80 all-original Photoshop tutorials not available online.

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The site may be down for some time, but rest assured that we will return with our extensive tutorial database in the future!

Photoshop Tutorials Hands-On Training by DocOzone
Features techniques and tips to become skilled at just about anything that concerns Photoshop.

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Latest Tutorials Category: Third Party Plugin Title: SiteGrinder 2 Photoshop Plugin Category: Automation Title: Sequential Batch Renaming

Tutorials Garden Photoshop, PHP, Flash, CSS, XHTML
Tutorials Garden offers free tutorials on variety of softwares and tools.

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Bert Monroy is the show’s Photoshop Guru and demonstrates a new technique every time he is a guest.

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This video shows you how to import layered Photoshop files into After Effects.

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Free Adobe Photoshop Tutorials, and Html Tutorials. Also Video tutorials and Articles.

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At PhotoshopPoint you can find free Photoshop tutorials in many different categories.

Magic’s Photoshop Tutorials
Quite extensive and helpful tutorials and workshop.

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This tutorial will help you to learn how to create a High tech menu in photoshop.

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PageCruve.com – now listing 62 Adobe Photoshop tutorials.

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Tutorialwiz.com – FREE Adobe Photoshop tutorials, tips and Tricks.

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Pixel2life is the largest tutorial search engine on the internet catering to graphic designers and programmers.

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PhotoshopSupport.com features free Photoshop tutorials by Jennifer Apple, free Photoshop video tutorials, and a daily Photoshop Blog.

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SweDesignz offers over 150 content rich photoshop tutorials. We our one of the largest photoshop tutorial sites on the net!

Photo Effects, Photo Editing, Drawing
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Login and show your photoshop art in our high resolution photoshop contests and learn from our excellent photoshop tutorials!

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Making Patterns from Stripes

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Welcome to pstut.com, we are dedicated to bringing you tutorials on how to use Photoshop the world leading graphics editing software from adobe.

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Photoshop tutorials from Vertustech, featuring Flud Mask and Colour Mask software. Free Photoshop tutorials for beginners.

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Photoshop tutorial and help website with current photoshop related news and forum.

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Welcome to photoshopcstutorial.com where we offer Photoshop CS Tutorials, Photo Effects Tutorials, Text Effects Tutorials, Photo Manipulation Tutorials, etc.

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Al Mackey’s Photoshop Tutorial
This tutorial is aimed at people who are artistically inclined, but may not know much about digital paint programs, and covers digital inking, coloring, etc.

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Learn It 2 Photoshop, Illustrator and ImageReady Tutorials.

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Have you ever wanted to completely brand your Twitter Profile but didn’t either have the time or know how to do it in Photoshop or Gimp? With MyTweetSpace you can easily do that.

Smushit is a service that goes beyond the limitations of Photoshop, Fireworks & Co. It uses image format specific non-lossy image optimization tools to squeeze the last bytes out of your images – without changing their look or visual quality. You’ll get a report of how many bytes you can save by optimizing your images and all the changed images as a single zip for download.

At Photoshop Express you can quickly and easily accentuate your photos with easy-to-use options for resizing, cropping, sharpening, and more. Make your photos pop with fun, eye-catching effects and enhancements. Then share your photos in My Gallery, where you can create customized photo displays, or upload them to your Facebook page, blog, or anywhere else online.

FlickrShop is a plug-in for Adobe Photoshop that allows you to upload images to Flickr photo sharing website directly from Adobe Photoshop. No need to save your image to a temporary file, no more switching between applications – just open your image, tweak it in Photoshop and share it with the world via Flickr.

CutMyPic is an application that allows it’s users to upload a picture, crop it, round the corners, and add a drop shadow, all in a couple of clicks. You can then either save it or send it to a friend. The site focuses on simplicity and speed.

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Head on over to Honkkiat’s blog to download the styles preset and take the tutorial. You will soon be able to create your very own Web 2.0 logo.

If you need inspiration when creating your Web 2.0 logo then check out Go2Web20.net where you can find hundreds of Web 2.0 logos.

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Here is a quick collection of speed-enhancing tips for getting the most efficient usage out of your software and computer:

Allocate a Scratch Disk
Photoshop uses RAM memory to run itself, store picture information, and to save undo and History State steps. Unless you are working with particularly small photo files it won’t take too many editing changes before the RAM is completely used up. At this point Photoshop cleverly uses a portion of hard drive space as “fake” RAM. This is not a new idea. Most operating systems use the same approach (called Virtual Memory) to ensure that enough memory is available for running essential programs. Photoshop calls this extra memory a “Scratch Disk”, and correctly setting up the disk will provide immediate speed and efficient benefits.

To set your Scratch Disk, select Edit>Preferences>Plug-Ins & Scratch Disks. Then choose a drive that has the most free space from those listed in the pop-up menu. If you have other drives listed you can also allocate these as extra Scratch Disks. Photoshop will make use of the drive listed first until it is full and then move to the next drive, even if more memory is needed. Most imaging professionals who regularly work with large files install a specific “fast access” drive just to be used as a Scratch Disk by Photoshop.

Set RAM percentage
Photoshop shares the RAM on your computer with the operating system (Windows or Mac OS X) and any other programs running at the same time. The percentage designated in the Photoshop Memory & Image Cache preferences determines the upper amount of RAM memory that can be used by Photoshop. Most new users push this setting as high as possible, some as much as 90 percent, thinking that this will speed up the processing of their files.

Unfortunately if this allocation is set too high, the operating system, as well as Photoshop, may need to move information from the fast RAM memory to the slower hard drive memory while processing. This action is called “page swapping” as the data is moved back and forth between the different memory spaces, and results in Photoshop actually running slower.

If you experience slower performance when raising the percentage of RAM allocated to Photoshop, try reducing the total amount to 50-60 percent for systems with up to 2GB, and 70 percent for computers with 4GB of RAM. Remember that you have to restart Photoshop after making any memory changes to ensure that these alterations will take effect.

Defragment your drives
As images and files are saved and resaved to disk they tend to become fragmented. This means that rather than the whole file being saved in one continuous space on the hard drive the information is broken into bits and stored in several locations (where ever there is empty disk space). Later, when the file is reopened, the document is reconstructed from each of the individual pieces. This file fragmentation slows down the opening and saving of files, as well as the running of programs such as Photoshop, if they were fragmented when initially installed. You can overcome this problem by regularly defragmenting the drives you use to store your images and load your programs.

To defragment a drive in Windows XP: Click Start>All Programs>Accessories> System Tools>Disk Defragmenter. Choose the drive to be defragmented and then select the Defragment button.

To defragment a drive in Mac OS X: Despite the fact that the latest version of Mac OS X contains automatic defragmentation of files smaller than 20MB, most Apple users prefer to defrag their drives with third-party utilities.

Minimize History States
The Photoshop History palette is a great feature, especially if you make mistakes as often as I do. Each successive edit is recorded as a step in the palette, enabling you to step back through the changes, gradually reversing your edits as you go. But this great feature does come at a cost. Each step uses memory resources and, when you make complex changes to large files, you can imagine how much memory is used to store a collection of steps.

Thankfully Adobe provides a setting in the Edit>Preferences>General dialog that can be used to alter the number of History States (or undo steps) stored by your system. By default it is set to 20, but if you find that Photoshop is running slowly after making a few editing changes then try reducing the number. Less History States does mean less opportunity to reverse editing changes, but this action frees up memory resources and can bring new life back to a slow running machine.

Reduce the number of open files
It may seem like stating the obvious, but the more pictures you have open in Photoshop the more of the total resources of the machine is taken up just maintaining each open file. When you add in the memory used to ensure undo or multiple History States for each file, it is not too hard to imagine that you will very quickly run out of RAM, forcing Photoshop to use the much slower Scratch Disk space. To speed up the processing, make sure that you only open (and keep open) files that are essential for your current editing task.

Run Photoshop by itself
A simple measure to speed up Photoshop is to make sure that no other programs are running at the same time. Seemingly simple utilities such as iTunes, Outlook, and Word all chew up memory and processor resources that could be used to drive Photoshop more efficiently. The golden rule is that if the program is not essential for the editing task then close the software. Click on the photo below to enlarge.

Alter the tile size
When Photoshop processes a photo it splits the picture into smaller image sections called tiles, and works on each in turn. By default the size of each of these tiles is 132KB. You can increase the amount of memory used for the processing of each tile by activating the Bigger Tiles plug-in.

To enable the Bigger Tiles plug-in: Close Photoshop and find the ~Bigger Tiles plug-in file in the following directories:
Mac OS: Applications/Adobe Photoshop CS2/Plug-Ins/Adobe Photoshop Only/Extensions/Bigger Tiles
Windows: Program Files/Adobe/Adobe Photoshop CS2/Plug-Ins /Adobe Photoshop Only/Extensions/Bigger Tiles
Now rename the file and in the process remove the tilde (~) from the title. Restart Photoshop. Now if you assign from 261MB to 1GB of RAM in the Memory & Image Cache preference, the tile size increases to 260KB. Increasing the allocation to more than 1GB increases the tile size to 1MB. Larger tile sizes reduce the amount of time Photoshop takes to process an image, especially on computers with more than 1GB of RAM.

Scratch Disk vs. Virtual Memory
Both Photoshop and the Windows XP operating system use hard drive space as extra “fake” RAM. Adobe recommends that Photoshop Scratch Disks be positioned on a different drive to the one used by Windows for its Virtual Memory system. On most setups the Windows swap file is stored on the Startup or C drive. To help with overall Photoshop and Windows performance, ensure that you don’t position the Scratch Disk on the same drive. To set the location of your Scratch Disk select Edit>Preferences>Plug-Ins & Scratch Disks and choose the drive to use from the drop-down menu. Remember don’t select Startup or C drive unless you have no other choices.

Alter the Image Cache setting
Photoshop uses a special Image Cache to help redraw high-resolution images quickly. Instead of displaying all the information contained in these big files, Photoshop creates lower-resolution versions of the photo that are then used to update the screen quickly.

You can elect to store from 1-8 cached versions of the photo. A value of 1 disables the caching. Higher values store multiple versions of the file, which in turn produces faster screen redraws. The default setting is 4, but inputting higher numbers will help speed up the redraw process.

When a high cache number is set, it will take longer to open files as Photoshop creates the low-resolution versions of the photo at this point. To alter the Image Cache setting select Edit>Preferences> Memory & Image Cache and enter a value from 1-8 in the Cache Levels text box.

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1. Go to File > Preferences > Saving Files

2. Set Image Previews to Never Save.

3. Go to File > Preferences > Units and Rulers

4. Set the Unit of measure to pixels.

5. Click one of the color swatches on the toolbar and check the box for Only Web-Safe Colors.

Image previews have been known to cause problems for AOL users viewing JPEG images through AOL’s default browser.

It also adds several bytes to the file size.

Pixels are the standard unit of measure for Web images.

72 pixels equal approximately one inch on a standard monitor.

Restricting the color palette to web-safe colors will ensure that colors will not shift or dither when your images are viewed on another computer.

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