How to Configure Photoshop 5.5 in OS 9

Set your preferences to get the most out of Photoshop 5.5.

Adobe Photoshop 5.5 offers several sets of preferences to customize the application's behavior. The choices you make in these preference dialog boxes control everything from the on-screen appearance of tool cursors to the way Photoshop displays color and converts it from one color mode to another. Some of these preferences really do have a "better" option, but others offer choices you should evaluate in light of the way you want to use the software.

Things You'll Need

• Apple Macintosh computer running Mac OS 9
• Adobe Photoshop 5.5

Instructions

Adobe Color Management Assistant and Adobe Gamma

1. Start Adobe Photoshop 5.5. You have not set your preferences yet, so the "Adobe Color Management Assistant" appears on screen as soon as Photoshop finishes loading.

2. Click the "Next" button on the "Adobe Color Management Assistant" if you already have calibrated your monitor, and skip to Step 5. Otherwise, click the "Open Adobe Gamma" button to begin the process of calibrating your monitor.

3. Choose the "Step by Step (Assistant)" option in the "Adobe Gamma" dialog box. Click "Next" and follow the steps to calibrate your monitor.

4. Click the "Finish" button on the eighth and last screen of the "Adobe Gamma" dialog to return to the process of setting your Photoshop preferences after you finish calibrating your monitor. Click the "Next" button in the "Adobe Color Management Assistant" to continue setting color preferences.

5. Click the "Customize for prepress and other uses" button if you want to get the full benefit of Photoshop's color management capabilities. (If you choose any of the other options, your color management setup will be complete as soon as you press the "Next" button at the bottom of the dialog, and you can skip to Section 2).

6. Read the information on the next screen of the Adobe Color Management Assistant. It explains why your choice of RGB working space is important. Click the "Next" button when you have finished reading.

7. Click on the pop-up at the top of the "Adobe Color Management Assistant" and change the working RGB space to "Adobe RGB (1998)." Read the information about the color space. Click "Next."

8. Leave the color conversion choice set at "Ask me what to do with mismatched files." Click "Next."

9. Set the "untagged files" option to "Ask me what to do when opening untagged files." Click "Next."

10. Read the information about CMYK setup. If you plan to work with CMYK images, you will need to make adjustments in the "CMYK Setup" and "Profile Setup" dialogs. You will find these dialogs in the "File" Menu under the "Color Settings" fly-out menu. For now, click the "Finish" button to complete your basic color management setup.

General and Other Preferences

1. Press Command-K to bring up the "Preferences" dialog or choose the "File" Menu and select "General" from the "Preferences" fly-out menu.

2. Leave the "General" preferences at the default settings unless you work in a page layout application such as QuarkXPress, Pagemaker or InDesign. If so, click the checkbox in front of the "Short PANTONE Names" preference. This way, any file you save with spot color information will use the same spot color names as your page layout application. Click "Next."

3. Leave the "Saving Files" preferences at their defaults with two exceptions. First, to avoid creating unnecessarily large files, uncheck "Include Composited Image With Layered Files." Second, if you don't send many files to Windows users, uncheck "Windows Thumbnail." Click "Next."

4. Turn off the "Video LUT Animation" preference on the "Display & Cursors" panel. Set "Painting Cursors" and "Other Cursors" to "Precise" so you can see exactly how large your brush and other cursors actually are. This setting also makes it easier to determine exactly where your cursor is located on screen. Click "Next."

5. Leave the "Transparency & Gamut" preferences at their defaults unless you find the gray-and-white checkerboard of the transparency grid distracting. Some Photoshop users prefer to click on the "Grid Size" pop-up and set the grid to "None" so they can see small details on an otherwise-transparent area of a working file. When you have made your choices, click "Next."

6. Leave the "Units & Rules" preferences at their defaults unless you prefer your Photoshop rulers to display another unit of measure besides inches. For example, if you do a lot of web design, you might prefer your rulers set to pixels. If you have a special need to set the "Column Size" option to a different set of values, you can do so now as well. Make your choices and then click "Next."

7. Change the "Guides" color to a different shade if you are accustomed to working in page layout or other software that uses 100 percent cyan as the guide color or prefer something other than the default of light blue. If you have specialized needs for a custom layout grid, change the "Grid" settings to your requirements. Click "Next."

8. Set the "Plug-Ins & Scratch Disks" preferences to match your computer system configuration. The "Plug-Ins Folder" preference is useful if you have third-party Photoshop plug-ins installed under another version of Photoshop on this computer. If you do, click the "Choose" button to navigate to the location of your other copy of Photoshop and its Plug-ins folder. If you have a scratch partition, secondary scratch drive inside your computer or external scratch drive connected via SCSI, Firewire or USB, change the "Scratch Disks" pop-ups to match the locations of your dedicated scratch space. Click "Next."

9. Leave the "Image Cache" settings at their defaults except for the "Use cache for histograms" check box. Turn this off to improve the accuracy of histogram display. Click the "Next" button and you'll discover you're back at the "General" preferences. That's because the "Preferences" dialog is an endless loop. If you keep clicking the "Next" button (or "Prev" to cycle through the preferences in reverse), you'll just keep moving through the same set of options. Click "OK" to exit the Preferences dialog.

10. Press Command-Q or go to the "File" Menu and choose "Quit." Photoshop doesn't save your preferences until you exit the application, so now would be a good time to shut down Photoshop.

Tips & Warnings

• Once you finish setting all your preferences, it's a good idea to make a copy of each of the two files that contain preference information and store those copies in a folder on your hard drive where you can find them if you need them. If your preferences become corrupt, Photoshop can crash or display other odd behavior. With a backup set of preferences, all you need to do is copy them into the "Adobe Photoshop 5.5 Settings" folder within your Photoshop folder and you're back in business. Saving copies of your preferences files also can speed the process of setting up multiple Macs with identical settings for a lab or workshop. The two files you need to copy are called "Adobe Photoshop 5.5 Prefs" and "Color Settings."

References

• "Adobe Photoshop 5.0 User Guide"; Adobe Systems; 1998
• "Real World Photoshop 5: Industrial Strength Production Techniques"; David Blatner and Bruce Fraser; 1999
• "Photoshop 5.0/5.5 Wow! Book"; Linnea Dayton and Jack Davis; 2000